Wisdom and Destiny (1912): Art, History and Details

Wisdom and Destiny (1912) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Henry Keller (American, born Germany, 1869–1949).

The work and its context

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

Henry Keller championed modern art in Cleveland through lectures, teaching, and the example of his own work. Wisdom and Destiny, based on an essay by the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck, features the two allegorical figures at the right, while a carefree shepherd at the left seems oblivious to their existence. The painting was featured in the famed Armory Show of 1913, a large-scale traveling exhibition often credited with introducing the American public to avant-garde art. Because of the critical success surrounding Wisdom and Destiny, Keller was commissioned to create a 70-foot mural of the composition for Cleveland City Hall. However, he resentfully withdrew from the project when asked to paint clothing on the nude figure.

Object facts

• Title: Wisdom and Destiny
• Date: 1912
• Creator attribution: Henry Keller (American, born Germany, 1869–1949)
• Culture: America, Ohio, Cleveland
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 94.6 x 120 x 5.8 cm (37 1/4 x 47 1/4 x 2 5/16 in.); Unframed: 76.5 x 101.9 cm (30 1/8 x 40 1/8 in.)
• Collection: American - Cleveland School
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1928.580

A detail from the museum

Henry Keller's cousin once reminisced, "He is the only noted artist who doesn’t smoke, that I ever heard of."

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Henry A. Everett for the Dorothy Burnham Everett Memorial Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Henry G. Keller family papers. 1891-1949. Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• "The Dorothy Burnham Everett Memorial Collection." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 20, no. 1 (January 1933): 1-3

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.