Decoration Executed for the Birthday of His Majesty the King of Westphalia (1811): Art, History and Details

Decoration Executed for the Birthday of His Majesty the King of Westphalia (1811) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri (French, 1782–1868).

The work and its context

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

A scenic designer for the Paris Opera, Cicéri created this decoration for a performance celebrating the birthday of Emperor Napoleon’s brother, Jérôme Bonaparte (1784–1860), King of Westphalia, a vassal state of territories taken from Prussia and its allies. Antoine-André Bruguière, named in the inscription as the commissioner of the decoration, was Westphalia’s secretary of the ministry of war and the superintendent of theaters in Kassel, the state’s capital city. The title of the special performance is unknown, but the triumphal arch, Corinthian columns topped with vases, and classical statues all suggest a Roman theme.

Object facts

• Title: Decoration Executed for the Birthday of His Majesty the King of Westphalia
• Date: 1811
• Creator attribution: Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri (French, 1782–1868)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Pen and black ink and watercolor with graphite; heightened with white gouache on off-white wove paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 32 x 42.3 cm (12 5/8 x 16 5/8 in.); Secondary Support: 44 x 53.2 cm (17 5/16 x 20 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.341

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.

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.