Pierrot in Criminal Court (c. 1864–70): Art, History and Details

Pierrot in Criminal Court (c. 1864–70) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Thomas Couture (French, 1815–1879).

The work and its context

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

In this painting, Couture used two famous masked characters, Pierrot and Harlequin, to satirize and critique the public and the judicial system of the 19th century. The pathetic Pierrot represents a lower-class fool on trial for stealing food from a restaurant. The stolen items are depicted lying on the courtroom floor as an indictment of his guilt. His accusers sit on the left, while Harlequin, his lawyer, argues theatrically for the defense. The artist's contempt for the legal profession and the court system is plain in the figures of the sleeping judges. A mid-19th-century observer may have sympathized with Pierrot, who for his own survival cunningly subverts authority in order to satisfy his needs.

Object facts

• Title: Pierrot in Criminal Court
• Date: c. 1864–70
• Creator attribution: Thomas Couture (French, 1815–1879)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood panel
• Dimensions: Framed: 45.8 x 52.1 x 5.2 cm (18 1/16 x 20 1/2 x 2 1/16 in.); Unframed: 32.2 x 39.2 cm (12 11/16 x 15 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1980.250

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.
• Borowitz, Helen O. “Painted Smiles: Sad Clowns in French Art and Literature.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 71, no. 1 (January 1984): 23–35.
• 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.