The Good Samaritan (1861): Art, History and Details

The Good Samaritan (1861) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Rodolphe Bresdin (French, 1822–1885); Lemercier.

The work and its context

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

This is a highly original treatment of the biblical story of a Jewish man who had been beaten, stripped, robbed, and left for dead, and the Samaritan who helped him. This kind act is all the more heroic considering the great hatred between the Samaritans and Jews (each claimed to be the exclusive descendants of Abraham and Moses). The small scene in the center of the large sheet is surrounded by an exuberant landscape teeming with an unrealistic assortment of tropical and nontropical plants and a variety of peering animals. Bresdin used a pen and lithographic ink to detail the fauna and flora of his extraordinary imagination. However, these bizarre visions were appreciated during his lifetime by only a select circle primarily comprising inventive writers such as Victor Hugo (1802–1885) and Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867).

Object facts

• Title: The Good Samaritan
• Date: 1861
• Creator attribution: Rodolphe Bresdin (French, 1822–1885); Lemercier
• Culture: France, Paris
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Dimensions: Image: 56.7 x 44.3 cm (22 5/16 x 17 7/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1928.750

A detail from the museum

Rodolphe Bresdin was known in his time as "Chien-Caillou" after the impoverished artist who served as the protagonist in an 1845 novel with the same title.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. George A. Martin

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Some Phases of the Romantic Movement." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 16, no. 3 (March 1929): 43-46, 49-51
• Catalogue of an exhibition of the art of lithography: commemorating the sesquicentennial of its invention, 1798-1948. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, November 11, 1948-January 2, 1949.

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.