Cleveland Museum of Art

Souvenir of Seville

Charles Conder

Date

1905

Medium

watercolor, gouache, and shell gold with graphite on silk

Culture

England, 20th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

As famous for his watercolors on silk as he was for his self-destructive lifestyle, Charles Conder belonged to a generation that the poet W. B. Yeats called "the last Romantics." His delicately tinted watercolors seem like fragments of a lost era, conjuring an imaginary world of beauty, leisure, and luxury. This painted fan was made on a trip to Spain that Conder took with his wife, Stella Maris, to witness the celebration and pageantry of Holy Week and Easter. Its bold color and dynamic composition memorialized a period of health and happiness spent in the Mediterranean. Charles Conder exhibited his first fan design in 1893 and created a significant number of similar works over the following 15 years.

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