The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of September 14, 2024

Cordelia Parting from her Sisters

Cordelia Parting from her Sisters

1854
(British, 1821–1893)
England, 19th century
pen and oil on paper on panel
Framed: 30.5 x 36.8 x 3.5 cm (12 x 14 1/2 x 1 3/8 in.); Unframed: 19.5 x 26.5 cm (7 11/16 x 10 7/16 in.)
Gift in memory of Helen Borowitz 2013.261
Location: 203B British Painting and Decorative Arts

Did You Know?

In 1861, Ford Madox Brown became a founding member of William Morris’s decorative arts company. Besides painting, he also designed stained glass and furniture.

Description

Reimagining English history was one way that Victorian (1837–1901) artists rooted themselves during a period of tremendous social and political change and life-altering technological advances. Ford Madox Brown’s expressive and vividly colored sketch for an unrealized project takes a story from Britain’s most famous playwright, Shakespeare. The artist chooses the dramatic moment when King Lear’s daughter Cordelia parts ways with her sisters.
  • July/August 1854 - D.T. White (dealer), acquired for £10
    by February 1855 - B.G. Windus
    July 19 1862 - Windus auction, Christie's, London (43), sold as Goneril and Regan
    June 1873 - Tooth, London, auction, acquired by John Miller for £16, who exchanged it with the artist for a portrait of himself (Miller)
    1874 - Edward Bright, purchased from the artist for £65
    by 1897 - Thomas Reid Wilkinson, Manchester
    November 11, 1960 - Christie's, London (lot 109), bought by J.S. Maas & Co. Ltd., £22.2s.od
    Charles Handley-Reid, London [?]
    by 1973 - Robert Walker, Paris
    J.S. Maas & Co., sold to private collection
    1973-2013
    Helen [1929-2012] and Albert Borowitz, Cleveland, Ohio, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    2013-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Borowitz, Helen O. "King Lear in the Art of Ford Madox Brown." Victorian Studies, Vol 21, no. 3 (Spring, 1978). Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN: 309-334. Mentioned: p. 326-328; Reproduced: p. 327
    Surtees, Virginia. The Diary of Ford Madox Brown. New Haven, CT: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1981. Mentioned: p. 71, 80, 82, 123, 125, 131
    Macleod, Dianne Sachko. Art and the Victorian Middle Class: Money and the Making of Cultural Identity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 451-452
    Bennett, Mary, and Ford Madox Brown. Ford Madox Brown: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Reproduced: p. 178
  • British Gallery Reinstallation (June 2020). The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer).
  • {{cite web|title=Cordelia Parting from her Sisters|url=false|author=Ford Madox Brown|year=1854|access-date=14 September 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2013.261