Chrysanthemum (1906–42): Art, History and Details

Chrysanthemum (1906–42) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944).

The work and its context

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

Fascinated by the complex structure of chrysanthemums, Mondrian painted these delicate flowers throughout his career. This single, frontal blossom recalls the stylized chrysanthemums of Japanese prints. Mondrian added the initials and date near the bottom edge sometime after painting the flower. Since he returned to this subject repeatedly, even during his later years, this painting may have been produced as late as 1942, the year Mondrian exhibited it in New York.

Object facts

• Title: Chrysanthemum
• Date: 1906–42
• Creator attribution: Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 52.1 x 49.2 x 5.1 cm (20 1/2 x 19 3/8 x 2 in.); Unframed: 41.5 x 38.5 cm (16 5/16 x 15 3/16 in.); Former: 52.1 x 49.2 x 4.5 cm (20 1/2 x 19 3/8 x 1 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1958.38

Collection credit

Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Neet, Jane. “Mondrian’s ‘Chrysanthemum.’” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 7 (September 1987): 282–303.
• Welsh, Robert P., and Joop M. Joosten. Piet Mondrian: Catalogue Raisonné. Blaricum, Netherlands: V+K Publishing, 1998.

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.