Châteauvieux-sur-Suran (1848): Art, History and Details

Châteauvieux-sur-Suran (1848) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Antoine-Claude Ponthus-Cinier (French, 1812–1885).

The work and its context

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

This view of a ruined building on a rocky cliff in Châteauvieux above the Suran river in the French Alps is constructed in the manner of a classical or ideal landscape. Forms recede at a measured pace along a sinuous, curving path that passes through carefully defined planes of fore, middle, and background. The warm, glowing light and imaginary figures pursuing their daily tasks contribute to the mood of timeless, pastoral bliss.

Object facts

• Title: Châteauvieux-sur-Suran
• Date: 1848
• Creator attribution: Antoine-Claude Ponthus-Cinier (French, 1812–1885)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on paper mounted on fabric
• Dimensions: Unframed: 53.3 x 75.1 cm (21 x 29 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1980.251

A detail from the museum

The son of a merchant, Ponthus-Cinier was one of the principle artists of the School of Lyon and painted neoclassical views of the countryside around Lyon and the Alpine region near the Swiss border.

Collection credit

Bequest of Noah L. Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163–219. Published as: Attributed to Theodore Caruelle d'Aligny
• Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.

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.