{
"data": {
"id": 311857,
"accession_number": "2018.78",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Washing the White Blood from Daniel Boone, 1939. Jared French (American, 1905\u20131988). Tempera on masonite; 71.1 x 77.5 cm (28 x 30 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of William Kelly Simpson in memory of his wife Marilyn M. Simpson and her grandfather, John D. Rockefeller Jr., 2018.78",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Washing the White Blood from Daniel Boone",
"creation_date": "1939",
"creation_date_earliest": 1939,
"creation_date_latest": 1939,
"artists_tags": [
"male",
"LGBTQ+ (after 1900)"
],
"culture": [
"United States"
],
"technique": "tempera on masonite",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "American Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "American - Painting",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "71.1 x 77.5 cm (28 x 30 1/2 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"No Extent Specified": {
"height": 0.711,
"height_inch": 28,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"depth": 0.775,
"depth_inch": 30,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.5
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (January 10-February 18, 1940).",
"opening_date": "1940-01-10T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Fine Arts Exhibition. Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, CA (May 25-September 29, 1940).",
"opening_date": "1940-05-25T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "9 American Artists. Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL (February 3-28, 1942).",
"opening_date": "1942-02-03T05:00:00Z"
},
{
"description": "Paintings and Drawings by Jared French. Edwin Hewitt Gallery, New York, NY (April 21-May 12, 1955), as The Baptism.",
"opening_date": "1955-04-21T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940-1960. Rutgers University Art Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ (January 17-March 26, 1982); Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL (April 15-June 13, 1982); The Art Gallery, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD (September 7-October 18, 1982).",
"opening_date": "1982-01-17T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Cadmus, French, and Tooker: The Early Years. Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York, NY (March 1-May 5, 1990).",
"opening_date": "1990-03-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "The Rediscovery of Jared French. Midtown Payson Galleries, New York, NY (April 23-May 29, 1992); Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, MA (October 2-November 29, 1992).",
"opening_date": "1992-04-23T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "American Realism Between the Wars, 1919-1941. Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY (April 3-June 5, 1994).",
"opening_date": "1994-04-03T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "The WPA Decade, 1933-1943: Art Across America. Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY (August 15-October 31, 2004).",
"opening_date": "2004-08-15T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "The artist",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "Monroe Wheeler [1899\u20131988], Rosemont, NJ, by purchase in 1944",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Anatole Pohorilenko [1943\u20132014], Cheltenham, PA, by inheritance",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "[Middendorf Gallery, Washington, DC]",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "[Christie's, New York, \"Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries,\" November 30, 1990, lot 209]",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "William Kelly Simpson [1928\u20132017], New York, NY, by purchase in 1990",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 6
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, by bequest in 2018",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 7
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "In 1940, a closeted gay art critic punningly described this painting as a \"queer picture.\"",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Washing the White Blood from Daniel Boone relates an episode in the life of the frontiersman: his adoption ritual performed upon his temporary capture by the Shawnee people. One of the first American artists whose same-sex desires were recognized by his contemporaries, French homoeroticized the narrative by substituting men for the women who were thought to have performed the rite.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60483001"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Schwartz, Constance, and Franklin Hill Perrell. American Realism Between the Wars: 1919-1941. Exh. Cat. New York: Nassau County Museum of Art, 1994.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: pp.29,60; Reproduced: p.53",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "San Francisco (Calif.) Golden Gate International Exposition. Contemporary Art; Official Catalog. Department of Fine Arts, Division of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture. 1939.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.131",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "1940 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art. Exh. Cat. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1940.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.5 (unpaginated)",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "McBride, Henry. \"At the Whitney Museum: A Show of Native Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings and Prints.\" The New York Sun, January 13, 1940.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.11",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Brenning, Margaret. \"The Whitney's Enlarged Annual.\" The Magazine of Art, Vol.33 (February 1940).",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.102",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Jewett, Eleanor. \"Arts Club Puts Works of Nine Artists on View.\" Chicago Daily Tribune, February 3, 1942.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.19",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Jewett, Eleanor. \"Nine American Artists Exhibit in Modern Show.\" Chicago Sunday Tribune, February 8, 1942.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.3",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Edwin Hewitt Gallery. Paintings and Drawings by Jared French. Exh. Cat. New York: Edwin Hewitt Gallery, 1955.",
"page_number": "Mentioned (unpaginated)",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Berman, Greta, and Jeffrey Wechsler. Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940-1960. Exh. Cat. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Art Gallery, 1982.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: pp.21-22,189; Reproduced: p.22",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Wechsler, Jeffrey. \"Magic Realism: Defining the Indefinite.\" Art Journal, vol.45, no.4 (Winter 1985).",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p.295",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Loftin, Ann Jamison, ed. Museum & Arts Washington Vol.5, No.2 (March/April 1989).",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p.108",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Phelps, Robert, ed. with Jerry Rosco. Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott, 1937-1955. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.60; Reproduced: pp.301-302",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cadmus, French, and Tooker: The Early Years. Exh. Cat. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1990.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: pp.1,2,3,6 (unpaginated)",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Wolff, Theodore F. \"Artists of the Enigmatic.\" The Christian Science Monitor, April 13, 1990.",
"page_number": "Mentioned",
"url": "https://www.csmonitor.com/1990/0413/lsupr.html"
},
{
"citation": "Grimes, Nancy. \"Paul Cadmus, Jared French, George Tooker.\" Art in America 89 (September 1990).",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.159",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Christie's, New York. Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. November 30, 1990. Lot 209.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p.225",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "French, Jared, and Jeffrey Wechsler. The Rediscovery of Jared French. New York: Midtown Payson Galleries, 1992.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.8 (unpaginated)",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cotter, Holland. \"Art in Review.\" The New York Times, May 22, 1992.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.C22",
"url": "https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/22/arts/art-in-review-924192.html"
},
{
"citation": "Grimes, Nancy, and Jared French. Jared French's Myths. San Francisco, Calif: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1993.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.XII; Reproduced: p.23 (unpaginated)",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cole, Mark. \"Jared French (1905-1988).\" Ph.D. dissertation, University of Delaware, 1999.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: pp.204-213, 379; Reproduced: p.487",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Summers, Claude J. The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2004.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.145",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cheles, Luciano. \"A century-old passion: Piero della Francesca in America.\" In Nella citta di Piero, 5-29. Milton Glaser. Exh. Cat. Sansepolcro, Italy: Casa di Piero della Francesca, in association with Milton Glaser, Inc., 2007.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.18; Reproduced: p.18",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Bonhams, New York. American Paintings. November 28, 2007. Lot 123.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p.92 (preliminary sketch)",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Panzetta, Alfonso, and Jared French. Jared French by Jared French: 600 opere inedite dal fondo italiano dell'artista. Torino: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2010.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.23; Reproduced: pp.248, 322",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Ryden, Wendy, and Ian Marshall. Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness. New York: Routledge, 2012.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: pp.152-159; Reproduced: p.153",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Barnett, Timothy. \"Ryden, Wendy, and Ian Marshall. Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness. New York: Routledge, 2012. 190 pp.\" Review of Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness, by Wendy Ryden and Ian Marshall. Composition Forum 27 (Spring 2013).",
"page_number": "Mentioned",
"url": "compositionforum.com/issue/27/barnett-reading-writing-review.php"
},
{
"citation": "Schreiber, Michael. One-Man Show: The Life and Art of Bernard Perlin. Berlin: Bruno Gmunder, 2016.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.67",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cheles, Luciano. \"Piero della Francesca e l'arte americana.\" In Piero della Francesca: indagine su un mito, 343-358. Antonio Paolucci. Exh. Cat. Forli: Musei San Domenico, in association with Silvana editoriale, 2016.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.352; Reproduced: p.350",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Christies, New York. American Art. November 14-21, 2017. Lot 130.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p.30 (study)",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Sachar, Emily. \"Jared French's State Park: A Contextual Study.\" MA thesis, Hunter College, The City University of New York, New York, 2017.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: pp.39,52-53, 55; Reproduced: p.134",
"url": "academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/254/"
},
{
"citation": "Cole, Mark. \"Acquisitions 2018: American Painting and Sculpture (Until 1960).\" Cleveland Art, Vol.54.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.17; Reproduced: p.17",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cole, Mark. \u201cAcquisitions 2018: American Painting and Sculpture (Until 1960).\u201d Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine vol. 59, no. 2 (March/April 2019): 16-17.",
"page_number": "Reproduced and Mentioned: P. 17.",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Earnest, Jarrett, Ann Morris Reynolds, Kenneth E. Silver, and Michael Schreiber. The Young and Evil: Queer Modernism in New York, 1930-1955. New York: David Zwirner Books, 2019.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.80",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Edgecombe, Rodney. \"Jared French's Iconic Enigmas.\" The Gay and Lesbian Review 11 (July-August 2004).",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.15",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2018.78",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Bequest of William Kelly Simpson in memory of his wife Marilyn M. Simpson and her grandfather, John D. Rockefeller Jr.",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 311857,
"creators": [
{
"id": 62312,
"description": "Jared French (American, 1905\u20131988)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1905",
"death_year": "1988",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2018-06-04T00:00:00-04:00",
"sortable_date": 1939,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1939",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-09-19 12:14:14.661000"
}
}