The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 20, 2025

Oil painting of the countryside with a cluster of vibrant vignettes in the lower half and a pink path extending through an arch in the upper half. Colorful and lanky stylized figures with light skin tones and created with thick swathes of paint sit in arm chairs, contort their bodies, eat, and more. Slightly off center, a figure in a pink dress, facing us, looks up at a figure in a suit, back to us.

Sunday Afternoon in the Country

1917

Florine Stettheimer

(American, 1871–1944)
America
oil on canvas
Framed: 139 x 103.5 x 8.3 cm (54 3/4 x 40 3/4 x 3 1/4 in.); Unframed: 128 x 92.5 cm (50 3/8 x 36 7/16 in.)
Gift of Ettie Stettheimer 1948.28
Location: 226A American Modern

Did You Know?

Although on her deathbed Florine Stettheimer instructed that all her paintings be destroyed, her family did not grant the wish.

Description

Born into a cosmopolitan German-Jewish family, Florine Stettheimer hosted numerous gatherings for cutting-edge New York cultural figures. These events often provided subject matter for her paintings, as in this rendering of a weekend picnic held at her family’s summer home on the banks of the Hudson River. In the background at the upper right, Stettheimer portrays herself working at her easel, recording the varied activities taking place. Dismissed as not being serious art in their day, almost all her paintings remained unsold when she died. Afterward, her sister Ettie—seen here standing at lower left in a red coat—donated many of them to selected museums, including this work.
  • ?–1948
    Ettie Stettheimer (Durlacher Brothers, New York), given to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    1948–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Mulcahy, Susan, "Why Were So Many Stettheimer Art Works Up for Sale? Not All Were Real," New York Times, February 7, 2021.
     P. C-1
    "Part II. Annual Report Issue for the Year 1948." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 36, no. 6 (June 1949): 111-42. Mentioned: P. 113 www.jstor.org
    Tyler, Parker. Florine Stettheimer: A Life in Art. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1963. Reproduced: P. 34-36; Mentioned: P. 90, 131-134, 176
    "Reviews and Previews." ARTnews 62, no. 8 (December 1963): 10-14, 50-58, 68. Reproduced: P. 13
    Cullinan, Helen. "Art & Artists: Brotherly Love for Sisters." The Plain Dealer (June 9, 1974): 16E. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 16E
    Nochlin, Linda. “Florine Stettheimer: Rococo Subversive.” Art in America 68, no. 7 (September 1980): 64–83. Reproduced: P. 71
    Rosenblum, Naomi. A World History of Photography. New York, N.Y.: Abbeville Press, 1984. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 507-508, fig. 653
    Rosenblum, Naomi. A World History of Photography. New York: Abbeville Press, 1989. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 507-508, fig. 653
    Watson, Steven. Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde. New York: Abbeville Press, 1991. Reproduced: P. 119
    Watson, Steven. “Three Sisters.” Art & Antiques 9, no. 5 (May 1992): 60–67. Reproduced: P. 65
    Bloemink, Barbara J. The Life and Art of Florine Stettheimer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Reproduced: P. 77, no. 46
    Winkfield, Trevor. 1996. “Very Rich Hours.” Art in America 84 (July 1996): 64–69. Reproduced: P. 67
    Rosenblum, Naomi. A World History of Photography. New York: Abbeville Press, 1997. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 508-509, fig. 653
    Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Marchel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare : a Biography. Boston: MFA Publications, 2002. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 117-118
    Thum, Carol. "Personal Favorite." Cleveland Museum of Art 44, no. 5 (May 2004): 15. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 15
    Mühling, Matthias, Karin Althaus, Susanne Böller, Gerrit Jackson, and Florine Stettheimer. Florine Stettheimer. Munich, Germany: Hirmer, 2014. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 22-23, no. 11
    Brown, Stephen, Georgiana Uhlyarik, Cecily Brown, and Jens Hoffmann. Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. Reproduced: P. 105
    Cristia, Cintia. "Painting Jazz: Sound, Music, and Rhythm In the Work of Florine Stettheimer." In Florine Stettheimer: New Directions in Multimodal Modernism. Irene Gammel, and Suzanne Zelazo, 179-199. Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2019. Mentioned and Reproduced: P. 187-188, fig. 9.3
    Althaus, Karin, Florine Stettheimer, Susanne Böller, and Russell Stockman. Florine Stettheimer: the great masters of art. 2020, 22. Reproduced; p. 22, fig 10.
  • Florine Stettheimer. Lenbachhaus, München, Germany (organizer) (September 27, 2014-January 4, 2015).
    Munich, Germany, Lenbachhaus, Florine Stettheimer (27 September 2014-1 April 2015).
    New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Florine Stettheimer: Manhattan Fantastica (13 July-5 November 1995) illus. p. 36; listed p. 138.
    Florine Stettheimer: Still Lifes, Portraits, and Pageants, 1910-1942. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Boston, MA (organizer) (March 4-April 27, 1980).
    Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art, Florine Stettheimer: Still Lifes, Portraits and Pageants 1910 to 1942 (4 March-27 April 1980); traveled to San Antonio, TX, Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute (7 July-15 August 1980); to Poughkeepsie, NY, Vassar College Art Gallery (28 September-9 November 1980); illus. fig. 6, listed. cat. no. 8.
    Florine Stettheimer: One Man Show. Durlacher Brothers, New York, NY (organizer) (October 29-November 23, 1963).
    New York, Durlacher Bros., Florine Stettheimer: One Man Show (29 October-23 November 1963).
    Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts (3-27 April 1951), no catalogue but see Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts (Annual Report, 1951-1952) vol. 31, no. 2, p. 29.
    New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Florine Stettheimer (1946); traveled to Chicago, Arts Club (1947); to San Francisco, De Young Memorial Museum (1947); illus. plate 14, listed p. 54; ownership attributed to Durlacher Bros, New York.
  • {{cite web|title=Sunday Afternoon in the Country|url=false|author=Florine Stettheimer|year=1917|access-date=20 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1948.28