The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 7, 2023

Cordelia Parting from her Sisters

1854

Ford Madox Brown

(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

Fun Fact

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.

Provenance
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
Citations
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
Exhibition history

British Gallery Reinstallation (June 2020). The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer).

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