Seaweed Gatherers, Yport (c. 1889): Art, History and Details

Seaweed Gatherers, Yport (c. 1889) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Claude-Emile Schuffenecker (French, 1851–1934).

The work and its context

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

Claude-Emile Schuffenecker worked closely with Paul Gauguin to form Synthetism, a style of art that broke from Impressionism in favor of flat planes of bold color and invented subjects. This drawing, which exists in two versions, is one of Schuffenecker’s most important works from the period. The other interpretation (owned by the Art Institute of Chicago) was featured in an influential 1889 exhibition organized by Gauguin and Schuffenecker at the Café Volpini on the grounds of the Universal Exposition. Both artists saw imagery of seaweed gatherers—a task undertaken by working-class people in rural French coastal towns—as exemplifying the simplicity they sought in their art.

Object facts

• Title: Seaweed Gatherers, Yport
• Date: c. 1889
• Creator attribution: Claude-Emile Schuffenecker (French, 1851–1934)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 29.2 x 22.7 cm (11 1/2 x 8 15/16 in.); Framed: 57.2 x 49.8 x 4.5 cm (22 1/2 x 19 5/8 x 1 3/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2009.380

A detail from the museum

This drawing is one of numerous depictions of seaweed gatherers that Claude-Emile Schuffenecker created throughout his career in various media.

Collection credit

Gift from Samuel and Paul Josefowitz in tribute to Jane Glaubinger and Heather Lemonedes

Further reading listed by the museum

• Rochefoucauld, Antoine de la. "Emile Schufffenecker." Le Coeur (July 1894): 3-8.
• "Émile Schuffenecker." Revue Encyclopédique (1896): 236-37.
• Exposition de peintures et pastels par E. Schuffenecker. Exh. Cat. Paris: Librairie de l'art indépendant, 1896.

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.