The Jewish Boy (c. 1892): Art, History and Details

The Jewish Boy (c. 1892) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Medardo Rosso (Italian, 1859–1928).

The work and its context

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

Medardo Rosso was a highly experimental sculptor who deliberately cultivated coarse, unrefined surfaces in his work. In this head of a boy—which the artist considered one of his most successful works—he effectively utilized the fluid properties of wax to suggest the fleeting movement of a child’s expression as well as the ephemeral nature of childhood.

Object facts

• Title: The Jewish Boy
• Date: c. 1892
• Creator attribution: Medardo Rosso (Italian, 1859–1928)
• Culture: Italy, 19th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: wax on plaster
• Dimensions: Overall: 23.2 x 18.1 x 14.9 cm (9 1/8 x 7 1/8 x 5 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Sculpture 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1970.33

A detail from the museum

Like the Impressionist painters of his time, Rosso sought to capture the fleeting and ephemeral qualities of light. However, he did not work directly from nature. His images were created from memory and emotion.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hawley, Henry H. "Sculptures by Jules Danlou, Henry Cros, and Medardo Rosso," The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LVIII, no 9 (September, 1971):199-209
• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1970." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 58, no. 2 (1971): 22-71.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Gabriel P. Weisberg, and H. W. Janson. Traditions and Revisions: Themes from the History of Sculpture. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975.

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.