The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 29, 2024

Study for the Mother in The Fisherman's Family

Study for the Mother in The Fisherman's Family

c. 1875
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes also worked out the composition of the female figure seen in this drawing through a more developed study now in the collection of the Musée Saint-Nazaire in Bourbon-Lancy, France.

Description

This study relates to the figure of the mother in Pierre Puvis de Chavannes's The Fisherman's Family, a painting first shown at the 1875 Paris Salon, and which the artist also painted in reduced scale in 1887. While Puvis represented his female figure completely nude in the study, in the painting he left bare just a breast, shoulder, and arm. The artist derived the mother figure seen in this drawing from an earlier canvas, Summer, purchased by the French state at the 1873 Salon. In this study, the figure retains some naturalistic features smoothed away in the later paintings, as seen in her proper right arm and hand and her collar and cheekbones.
  • ?-1945
    Adrien Karbowsky [1855-1945], Paris, by descent to his family
    1945-?
    Family of Adrien Karbowsky, Paris
    ?-probably 1980
    (Galerie Jacques Fischer-Chantal Kiener, Paris, sold to Muriel Butkin, Shaker Heights, OH)
    Probably 1980-2008
    Muriel Butkin [1916-2008], Shaker Heights, OH, by bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
    2008-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001. Mentioned: pp. 124-25, 144, no. 57; Reproduced: p. 125
  • French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 26-October 28, 2001); Dahesh Museum of Art (February 19-May 18, 2002).
  • {{cite web|title=Study for the Mother in The Fisherman's Family|url=false|author=Pierre Puvis de Chavannes|year=c. 1875|access-date=29 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2008.390