Cleveland Museum of Art
Ruin by the Sea
Arnold BöcklinLinkedCulture matchlcp-8371f4b5a169
- Date
- 1881
- Medium
- oil on fabric
- Culture
- Switzerland
- Department
- Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 149665
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
The dark, ruined villa in this painting is made especially mysterious by the strange cypress trees tossed by the wind. A nervous green light flickers through the scene. Influenced by German Romantic art of the early 1800s, Böcklin was preoccupied with dreamlike images suggestive of death. Who used to live in this crumbling villa on a lonely shore? Böcklin's eerie painting seems to beg the question of the building's history and the circumstances of its ruin. Haunted by the past, this scene also contains premonitions of future peril.
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund
- Provenance
- C. Wetter-Rüsch, St. Gallen, by 1893. Hermann Nabel, Berlin 1897. Kunsthandel Eduard Schulte, Berlin 1902. E. Junghanns, Schramberg. Paul Landenberger Jr., Schramberg. Zürich sale, Max G. Bollag, 23 March 1933 (lot 107), Ruine am Meer, reproduced. Private collection, Zürich. Fischer Fine Art, London. Purchased by the cma on 17 August 1979.
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