Landscape with Two Monks (c. 1840): Art, History and Details

Landscape with Two Monks (c. 1840) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is François Edouard Bertin (French, 1797–1871).

The work and its context

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

Bertin studied initially with Girodet and later with Ingres and from them acquired a grounding in classical landscape. He began his career by submitting a historical landscape to the Salon of 1827, but shortly thereafter he broke with classical tradition and devoted himself to painting and drawing from nature. He traveled widely in Europe, particularly in Italy, where he lived for more than a decade. In this drawing on blue paper, two monks populate an Italian roadside scene. Bertin combined a close examination of nature in the specific rendering of the trees and rocks with a clear, almost abstract organization of the planes that belies his classical training.

Object facts

• Title: Landscape with Two Monks
• Date: c. 1840
• Creator attribution: François Edouard Bertin (French, 1797–1871)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: graphite heightened with white chalk; framing lines (arched at top) in graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 27.4 x 32.2 cm (10 13/16 x 12 11/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1990.79

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “Acquisitions: 1990.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 2 (February 1991): 30–45.

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.