Youth Playing a Lyre to a Maiden by a Fountain (1803): Art, History and Details

Youth Playing a Lyre to a Maiden by a Fountain (1803) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Carl Wilhelm I Kolbe (German, 1757–1835).

The work and its context

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

Youth Playing a Lyre to a Maiden by a Fountain features seated lovers singled out by the light that strikes their upper bodies, which counters the overwhelming scale of the fantastical growth of vegetation surrounding them. Carl Wilhelm Kolbe’s “vegetable sheets” broke new ground in Germany around 1800 by focusing on giant vegetation, allowing the viewer to experience the mysterious life in the undergrowth, a place untouched by humankind. Here, the vegetation is magnified, filling almost the entire sheet, and creating a distorted and somewhat surreal perspective combined with the meticulous observation of botanical details.

Object facts

• Title: Youth Playing a Lyre to a Maiden by a Fountain
• Date: 1803
• Creator attribution: Carl Wilhelm I Kolbe (German, 1757–1835)
• Culture: Germany, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching on heavy wove paper
• Dimensions: Image: 38.7 x 51.1 cm (15 1/4 x 20 1/8 in.); Plate: 40.7 x 52.9 cm (16 x 20 13/16 in.); Sheet: 45.7 x 59.7 cm (18 x 23 1/2 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 2019.243

A detail from the museum

Carl Wilhelm Kolbe was nicknamed Eichenkolbem (Oak Kolbe) for his devotion to trees, which he credited with inspiring him to become an artist.

Collection credit

Gift of Virginia Barbato

Further reading listed by the museum

• Jentsch, Ernst. Der Radierer Carl Wilhelm Kolbe, 1757 Berlin – 1835 Dessau. PhD diss., Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Breslau, 1920
• Martens, Ulf. Der Zeichner und Radierer Carl Wilhelm Kolbe d. Ä. (1759-1835). Berline: Gebr. Mann, 1976
• Griffiths, Antony, and Frances Carey. German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe. London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, 1994.

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.