View of the Château of Pierrefonds (c. 1870): Art, History and Details

View of the Château of Pierrefonds (c. 1870) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is François-Louis Français (French, 1814–1897).

The work and its context

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

This lush landscape shows the château of Pierrefonds in the distance framed by flourishing foliage in the foreground. The picture depicts the château from the same viewpoint as in a painting by Camille Corot (see photo), an artist who significantly influenced Français. (Corot is represented in the exhibition by a charcoal drawing [cat. no. 45] hanging nearby.) Corot's picture of Pierrefonds shows the château in ruins, whereas the pristine condition of the building in Français's view indicates that his drawing dates after the château's extensive restoration by the architect Viollet-le-Duc in 1870.

Object facts

• Title: View of the Château of Pierrefonds
• Date: c. 1870
• Creator attribution: François-Louis Français (French, 1814–1897)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and black ink, brush and black and gray wash, and graphite, heightened with white gouache
• Dimensions: Sheet: 42.2 x 56.2 cm (16 5/8 x 22 1/8 in.); Matted: 54.6 x 67.3 cm (21 1/2 x 26 1/2 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.380

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.

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.