The Curious One (1823): Art, History and Details

The Curious One (1823) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Antoine Pierre Mongin (French, 1761–1827).

The work and its context

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

Here a young man uses a ladder to climb over a garden wall. The sign at his right translates into "School for Young Ladies under the Direction of Mrs. Wachsam"—wachsam being the German word for "watchful." Apparently, overcome by curiosity, the man cannot resist his desire to see the young women concealed behind the wall. Scenes with amorous, sometimes voyeuristic overtones are common in the work of Mongin. The artist also seems fascinated with depicting the exact details of his settings. In 1824, a critic who saw The Curious One wrote that Mongin's paintings are "portraits of houses coated in plaster, garden trees, almost trivial details, and this pleases me greatly. Full of naiveté, this is what I need in a landscape, as in a representation of man's actions." The critic's comments clearly demonstrate his appreciation for Mongin's work, as well as the artist's belief in the inherent relationship between nature and man.

Object facts

• Title: The Curious One
• Date: 1823
• Creator attribution: Antoine Pierre Mongin (French, 1761–1827)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on paper mounted to canvas
• Dimensions: Unframed: 43.5 x 34.6 cm (17 1/8 x 13 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1977.116

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1977.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 1 (January 1978): 2–42.
• Talbot, William S. “Some French Landscapes: 1779-1842.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 3 (March 1978): 75–91.

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.