Architecture (1878): Art, History and Details

Architecture (1878) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Marie Bracquemond (French, 1840–1916).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Marie Bracquemond was among a few women artists within the Impressionist circle. After exhibiting at the Salon from a relatively young age, she married the printmaker Félix Bracquemond and met artists such as Claude Monet and Edgar Degas through his friendship with them. This drawing is one of several compositions related to Muses of the Arts, one of Bracquemond’s best known works, featuring personifications of various artforms—such as, here, architecture. The completed work was featured in the Exposition Universelle in 1878, while the related drawings, possibly including this one, were singled out for praise in the 1879 Impressionist group exhibition.

Object facts

• Title: Architecture
• Date: 1878
• Creator attribution: Marie Bracquemond (French, 1840–1916)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk on pale pink wove paper
• Dimensions: Matted: 55.9 x 43 cm (22 x 16 15/16 in.); Sheet: 38.3 x 26.1 cm (15 1/16 x 10 1/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2023.165

A detail from the museum

Although Marie Bracquemond was supported and widely respected by her colleagues in her own time, her husband’s reticence to her pursuing a career ultimately led her to limit her artistic production.

Collection credit

The Jane B. Tripp Charitable Lead Annuity Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Gustave Geffroy, “Préface,” in Catalogue des peintures, aquarelles, dessins et eaux-fortes de Marie Bracquemond, exh. cat.(Paris: Bernheim-Jeune & Cie, 1919).

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.