Joan of Arc (c. 1889): Art, History and Details

Joan of Arc (c. 1889) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Ernest Meissonier (French, 1815–1891).

The work and its context

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

This drawing is a rare study relating to Ernest Meissonier's never-realized mural for the Pantheon in Paris. After seeking and receiving the commission in 1874, Meisonnier procrastinated on the project for many years. Here, the French heroine Joan of Arc appears at center, without a helmet, on a bare white horse, staring ahead with steadfast calm. The figure of Joan in this drawing appears to correspond to the subject in a now-lost design for the complete painting, which Meissonier presented in 1889.

Object facts

• Title: Joan of Arc
• Date: c. 1889
• Creator attribution: Ernest Meissonier (French, 1815–1891)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: graphite, red chalk, colored washes, and black and white gouache
• Dimensions: Sheet: 18.8 x 30.3 cm (7 3/8 x 11 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.358

A detail from the museum

Ernest Meisonnier found the original subject proposed for his Pantheon mural commission—Saint Geneviève—to be uninspiring and instead proposed an allegorical Triumph of France featuring Joan of Arc alongside Charlemagne and Napoleon Bonaparte, among others.

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Exposition Meissonier. Exh. Cat. Paris: Galerie Georges Petit, 1893.
• Gréard, M.O. Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier: Ses souvenirs, ses entretiens. Paris: Hachette, 1897.
• Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: 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.