The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Raven's Head in Profile

1875

Édouard Manet

(French, 1832–1883)
France, 19th century
lithograph
Image: 17 x 15.5 cm (6 11/16 x 6 1/8 in.); Sheet: 32.5 x 24.7 cm (12 13/16 x 9 3/4 in.)
Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund 1923.215
Catalogue raisonné: Harris 83
Location: Not on view

Description

Edouard Manet created this lithograph for his friend Stephane Mallarmé’s 1875 French translation of American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem “The Raven” (1845) about a man mourning his deceased love who is visited by a raven that repeatedly cries, “Nevermore.” Mallarmé’s edition is considered one of the first modern livres d’artistes—books created specifically as works of visual art. Manet created four full-page illustrations, including the scene in which the raven stares at the narrator from the top of the bust of the goddess Athena, and a raven head design used on the book’s cover and on its advertising poster.
  • Catalogue of an exhibition of the art of lithography: commemorating the sesquicentennial of its invention, 1798-1948. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, November 11, 1948-January 2, 1949. Published as: Le Corbeau (Tête de profil). Mentioned: p. 51 archive.org
    Richards, Louise. "Prints of Edouard Manet." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 44, no. 8 (October 1957): 187-191. Mentioned: p. 191 www.jstor.org
  • Fairy Tales and Fables: Illustration and Storytelling in Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 4-September 8, 2024).
    From Block Books to Baskin: Artists as Illustrators. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 13-August 17, 1986).
  • {{cite web|title=Raven's Head in Profile|url=false|author=Édouard Manet|year=1875|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1923.215