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In the print series Los Caprichos , which translates as “caprices” or “artistic fantasies,” Francisco de Goya drew on his expansive imagination to comment on Spanish society. The artist’s critiques are not always clear, and many of the prints are intentionally ambiguous. Here, three witches support a young woman taking flight. Caught in the wind, her dress and veil transform her into a human butterfly, perhaps reflecting views at the time that characterized women as flighty. However, both the association of butterflies with life’s fragility and the presence of witches—often used by the artist to symbolize immorality and sex work—may instead invite a more sinister interpretation. When Los Caprichos was first published in 1799, the series was sold in a perfumery and liquor shop in Madrid.
Balancing an hourglass on his head, Death stalks this fashionable couple strolling in the countryside. When Dürer created this print, figures of Death were moral reminders that life was brief, and they were also associated with the dangers of carnal desire. The improper placement of the man’s sword betrays his dishonorable intentions, while the woman’s bonnet signifies her married status. Their liaison is not innocent, but one of sinful infidelity. As if to reinforce the uncertain status of this couple, Albrecht Dürer portrayed the woman stepping on the hem of her gown.
Like Two Poplars in the Alpilles near Saint-Rémy (on view nearby), Vincent van Gogh painted this autumnal landscape while living in a psychiatric hospital near Saint-Rémy in southern France where he was treated for severe depression. Understanding that painting from nature eased his symptoms, Van Gogh’s physician permitted the artist to paint landscapes outside. Van Gogh described this painting in a letter to his brother Theo: “The last study I did is a view of the village, where they were at work under some enormous plane trees—repairing the pavements. . . . There are heaps of sand, stones, and the gigantic trunks—the leaves yellowing and here and there you can get a glimpse of a house front and small figures.” Van Gogh sometimes created what he called "repetitions," in which he painted the same subject and composition again. This painting has a repetition, currently in the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Conservation research has shown that the Cleveland painting is the first version.
Rembrandt made this etching the same year he completed his most celebrated painted self-portrait, and it stands as one of the largest and most technically ambitious prints he ever produced. It is an etching by Rembrandt van Rijn, made in the Netherlands in 1639. The composition crowds the deathbed of the Virgin Mary with mourning apostles, attendants, and onlookers in the lower half, while above them a radiant heavenly vision bursts open the ceiling with tumbling angels and cherubs emerging from swirling clouds of light. The sheer scale of the plate and the breathtaking range of tone Rembrandt achieves through etching alone, from near-black shadow to luminous celestial glow, made this one of the most admired prints of the seventeenth century and a defining demonstration of what the medium could do in the hands of its greatest master.
The Beggars
Dürer made four engravings of the Virgin and Child standing on a crescent moon. These devotional images link the Madonna with the pregnant woman of the apocalypse from chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation. The verse says that "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars . . . " appeared in heaven, delivering a son to conquer Satan—a prefiguration of Christ. In direct contrast with the crowned Virgin here, whose double aureole shines extravagantly around her figure, Dürer conceived the Madonna (1958.116) with simplicity and humility. In each he presents the dual roles of the Virgin as the Queen of Heaven and as the humble mother of Jesus.
Late in his career, Hiroshige explored the poetic theme of setsugekka , “snow, moon, and flowers,” in a set of three triptychs. This panoramic scene features a river passing snow-covered mountains along the Kiso Road.
Albrecht Dürer's engraving tool could render flesh, fabric, and anguish with a precision that no painter's brush could quite match at this scale, and this small print proves exactly why collectors across Europe obsessed over his work. This is an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, made in Germany in 1511, one of the most technically demanding printmaking methods of the period. Christ hangs on the cross beneath the INRI tablet, his muscular body rendered with dense, controlled crosshatching, while the Virgin Mary swoons in grief on the left, Saint John kneels in prayer on the right, a Roman soldier stands behind him, and at the foot of the cross a skull rests on the ground alongside Dürer's distinctive AD monogram. The extraordinary fineness of the lines, achievable only through Dürer's mastery of the burin on copper, gave printed images a new standard of anatomical and emotional detail, and helped carry his reputation far beyond any single patron or city.
Rembrandt made this nocturnal scene of Christ being lowered from the cross without a single visible light source - yet the body glows as if lit from within, a technical and spiritual achievement that had no real precedent in printmaking. It is an etching and drypoint by Rembrandt van Rijn, made in the Netherlands in 1654. The composition is almost entirely consumed by darkness, with the pale, limp body of Christ descending diagonally from the upper left, supported by figures on a ladder and below, while a shroud is spread across the ground to receive him and mourners cluster in the lower right. Rembrandt used the velvety depth of drypoint burr to create shadow so dense it becomes tactile, making this one of his most technically extreme prints and a radical demonstration of how darkness itself could carry emotional weight.
Rembrandt van Rijn spent more time and creative energy on this single print than on almost any other he produced, reworking the copper plate across multiple states to achieve an effect that no painting of the same scene could quite replicate. It is an etching and drypoint made in the Netherlands in 1639, a large and technically ambitious work that pushed the boundaries of what intaglio printmaking could achieve. The composition fills the sheet with a deathbed scene crowded with mourners, physicians, and attendants surrounding the dying Virgin Mary, while above the earthly scene the ceiling dissolves into a luminous heavenly vision of angels and cherubs breaking through swirling clouds. The radical division of the image between the dim, cluttered world below and the radiant supernatural world above is achieved entirely through the density and direction of etched line, demonstrating how completely Rembrandt had transformed printmaking from a reproductive craft into an independent art form.
Drawn in vivid layers of pastel crayon, this work depicts the head of the poet and musician Orpheus. The story of the god of music, whose music carried on after his death through his lyre and head, fascinated Redon, who related to Orpheus's dedication to his art. The subject also aligned with Redon's broader interest in dreams and spirituality around this time and he represented Orpheus several times throughout his career, in various media. Here, the god's head floats as if in stasis while Mount Parnassus—the home of Apollo and the Muses—soars from behind. Another version of this pastel (now in the collection of the Musée Fabre de Montpellier) was part of a group of later works by Redon shown at the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art—better known as the Armory Show—which introduced the artist to American audiences.
Late in his career, Hiroshige explored the poetic theme of setsugekka , “snow, moon, and flowers,” in a set of three triptychs. This panoramic scene shows the autumn moon over Kanazawa, near Tokyo. Hiroshige’s contemporaries would have recognized the coastline dotted with villages, fishing boats, and the distinctive double-arched bridge at the bottom right.
Homer spent the summer of 1878 at Mountainsville, New York, where his brother's business partner, Lawson Valentine, had a country place called Houghton Farm. While there he developed pastoral images of shepherdesses. The flirtatious quality of these depictions becomes intriguing when we consider that Homer never married, and that he worked not only from female models but also sometimes from boys in girls' clothing.
How I Lost My Whiskers
This painting depicts Abbeville, a city in northern France famous for its canals and architecture. It lies near the seaport of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Cazin's hometown and where he spent the last decades of his life painting the countryside, beaches, and nearby towns. Cazin specialized in landscapes, often influenced by his knowledge of English and Dutch painters. The title, Midnight , and the image itself suggest silence and stillness—Cazin's hallmarks—but only rarely did he attain this almost surrealistic atmosphere. Cazin was educated in Paris at the famous Ecole Gratuite de Dessins (Free School of Drawing), an innovative and unorthodox institution teaching drawing from memory. He studied there with fellow artists Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904), Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), and Alphonse Legros (1837–1911). They all shared an interest in Symbolism—the movement that sees symbols in reality and perceives reality through symbols. Cazin preferred to paint in his studio using memory techniques learned in his artistic training which he later passed on to his own students.
When the famous matador Pepe Illo was gored to death in the Madrid bullring in 1801, Goya was so gripped by the event that he returned to it obsessively, producing three separate compositions - this being the most dramatically compressed and final of them. This engraving, made by Francisco de Goya in Spain in 1816 and printed in 1876, belongs to his celebrated series La Tauromaquia, a sequence of prints documenting the history and spectacle of bullfighting. In the image, a massive dark bull dominates the left foreground as a figure is thrown or pinned at the centre of the arena, while a horseman with a lance charges from the right and a crowd of spectators watches from the shadowed barrier behind, their faces barely discernible in Goya's characteristically murky tonal atmosphere. Goya's mastery of aquatint-like tone within the engraving gives the scene an almost nocturnal violence, and the three versions of this same death together reveal an artist unusually fixated on a single moment of public catastrophe - less a sports document than a meditation on mortal spectacle.
Goya made this print to commemorate a real death, one he had personally witnessed: the fatal goring of the celebrated matador Pepe Illo in the Madrid bullring on May 11, 1801. It is an etching and aquatint from Goya's series La Tauromaquia, created in 1816 and printed in this later edition in 1876, produced in Spain. A massive dark bull looms over Illo's fallen, limp body on the pale sand of the arena, while a second bullfighter rushes forward in a desperate attempt to draw the animal away, and ghostly figures scramble for safety along the barrier wall in the background. The scene captures not spectacle but catastrophe, and it stands as one of the most direct confrontations with death in Goya's entire printed output, made all the more striking by the fact that he recorded it as eyewitness testimony translated into line and tone.
Goya pushes the carnage to one corner of the page and leaves the rest empty, a compositional choice so unsettling that the vast open space feels as violent as the chaos it frames. This etching and aquatint by Francisco de Goya is plate 21 from his "Tauromaquia" series, made in 1816 and printed in 1876 in Spain. At the far right, a massive dark bull towers over a writhing heap of fallen bodies, hats, and limbs, while a lone survivor clings to the wooden barrier at the left and a figure in white is caught mid-collapse beneath the animal. Goya uses the aquatint's velvety grey ground to create an eerie atmospheric stillness that makes the concentrated brutality in the corner feel not like spectacle but like aftermath, embedding a record of two real disasters, including the death of the mayor of Torrejon, within what is nominally a celebration of bullfighting's history.
During the 1880s, the Netherlands became a magnet for several American artists, among them Walter MacEwen. His most famed painting, The Ghost Story , presents a group of individuals in a Dutch interior listening with rapt attention to spooky narration delivered by a woman at a spinning wheel. A young girl clutches her doll in fascination. The women in this painting wear the traditional clothing of Volendam, a fishing village located in the province of North Holland.
This fine enameled cross is named the "Spitzer Cross" after the Viennese art dealer and collector Baron Frédéric Spitzer, who owned it in the 19th century. It has justly been hailed as the finest Limoges enameled cross to survive. The work’s coloration exemplifies its refined craftsmanship. Rendered in white enamel, with fine lines defining the rib cage, abdomen, and muscles, Christ’s body contrasts strikingly with the vibrant green, blue, and yellow of his halo, loincloth, and the cross.
This woodcut comes from a series of 15 scenes from the Apocalypse. Dürer drew upon late northern Gothic traditions infused with the reality of spiritual events, biblical interpretation, and dense composition, as well as careful attention to naturalistic details of flora and fauna. He interprets Saint John’s visions by giving them a convincing physical existence. This scene depicts the war in heaven, a final battle between good and evil. Saint Michael and his angels defeat the dragon (Satan) and the other fallen angels, now morphed into repulsive demons, casting them into hell.
Why Hide Them?, Plate 30
What happens to the man who fights a duel for love - does he win the woman, or does she end up carrying his dying body from the field? This is an etching and aquatint by Francisco de Goya, plate ten from his satirical series Los Caprichos, published in Madrid in 1799 and printed in this impression around 1855. A woman strains under the dead weight of a man she clutches from behind, his head lolling back and his legs buckling, while a sword lies abandoned on the ground below them and dark stone walls press in from behind; the title El amor y la muerte - Love and Death - is inscribed in Goya's hand beneath the image. Los Caprichos was one of the first times a major European artist used printmaking not to record history or glorify power but to satirise the absurdities and cruelties of his own society, and this plate distills that project into a single, devastating image of romantic convention collapsing into grief.
This sculptural relief belongs to a large series made for the Franciscan friary of San Vivaldo (founded 1350) in the Tuscan hills southwest of Florence. The friary was enlarged between 1500 and 1530 when 32 chapels were built, each dedicated to an incident in the life or Passion of Christ. San Vivaldo became a recognized pilgrimage site thematically linked to the holy sites of Jerusalem. Each single chapel at San Vivaldo was embellished with colorful terracotta sculptures produced by the Della Robbia workshop in Florence. This relief representing Christ and the Samaritan Woman was originally installed within the Chapel of the Samaritan Women. Over time the chapel fell into disrepair and eventually became the friar's wash house. The sculpture was sold by the friary in the early 1900s to fund repairs to the various chapels. The fine modeling of the heads of Christ and the Apostles and of the landscape masses gives an indication of the original quality of this badly damaged relief sculpture. The animation of the faces and complexity of the composition suggest that it was made under the supervision of Giovanni rather than by some lesser member of the Della Robbia workshop. The Samaritan woman’s bust was replaced by a reproduction before entering the museum’s collection.
Frank Duveneck loved Venice and spent several months there during the early decades of his career. Titled The Venetian Girl , this painting depicts a young woman—likely an artist’s model—who holds a shallow brass bowl containing lemons and grapes. The artist was also an esteemed art instructor, teaching hundreds of students in Germany, Italy, and the United States.
Unlike fragile portrait miniatures painted in watercolor on vellum or ivory, which are prone to cracking, fading, and flaking, enamels are resilient, impervious to the effects of light, and retain their striking original colors over time. Partly for this reason enamel was considered ideal for reproducing famous paintings and treasured portraits in a reduced and luminous form. The complicated and labor-intensive process of enameling required the artist to fire numerous layers of colored metal oxide at different temperatures. This process made it difficult to produce a faithful portrait likeness, though masters of the medium like Jacques Thouron were able create portraits of remarkable subtlety imbued with the sitter's personality.
Mademoiselle Marie-Anne Adelaide Le Normand, a famous Parisian fortune teller, was born in Alençon, France, between 1768 and 1772. Little is known of her early years, but by 1790 she had already established a strong following in Paris. Fortune telling was a highly lucrative field perhaps due to the extreme political unrest that permeated Paris in the 1790s. Although the practice of fortune telling was illegal at the time, people from the highest social classes sought Le Normand's services. She prophesied the bloody deaths of the French revolutionaries Maximilien Robespierre, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, and Jean-Paul Marat when they visited her salon. Additionally, Alexandre Dumas was one of many to describe Le Normand's prediction of the monumental rise and fall of both Napoleon and his wife Josephine, who visited Le Normand's studio frequently. The fortune teller managed to retain her popularity through the Napoleonic era and the reign of King Charles X before retiring from Parisian life after correctly foretelling the outcome of the July Revolution in 1830. She moved back to Alençon and continued writing books of predictions until her death in 1843. Her greatest tangible legacy is a set of tarot cards known as the Blue Owl deck or Le Grand Jeu de Mlle. Le Normand. Grimaud, a self-proclaimed pupil of Le Normand, published the deck two years after her death. The accounts of Le Normand's physical appearance and her studio are almost as colorful as her predictions, and perhaps equally disputable. A description published in the late 1850s reported how "some thirty or forty volumes were arranged on the shelf against the wall, chiefly consisting of the works of the lady herself . . . Mademoiselle soon made her appearance-a short, fat little woman, with a ruddy face, overshadowed by the abundant curls of a flaxen wig, and surmounted by a semi-oriental turban, the rest of her attire being much in the style of a butter woman." Captain Rees Howell Gronow visited Le Normand
The sitter’s high-waisted dress, pearl necklace, and elegant hairstyle of cascading ringlets reflect the height of fashion around 1800. Her gaze is assured: her chin is tilted upward but her eyes peer down with confidence. Mason’s husband was a prosperous lawyer, an influential figure in President Thomas Jefferson’s administration, and a plantation owner in Maryland. According to an inventory from 1807, the couple enslaved approximately 185 people, ranging from the newborn Abraham to 79-year-old Rachel. The family’s wealth afforded Mason the opportunity to be painted by Gilbert Stuart, a much sought-after portraitist. Stuart also painted a portrait of George Washington, now immortalized on the dollar bill.
Ichikawa Danjuro V was a talented onnagata (female impersonator) and writer.
The print includes a portrayal of the otsu-e maiden behind the dancer to emphasize the subject’s origins in festival dances (see also Wisteria Maiden [1963.96]). The print is a surimono, an elaborately printed image designed for private distribution among friends or members of a poetry club.
Published two years after the great earthquake and fire of 1855, this print design illustrates the newly rebuilt Great Bridge over the Sumida River in Edo (now Tokyo). The design shows Utagawa Hiroshige’s skill in capturing atmospheric conditions. People try to protect themselves from sudden sheets of rain as they cross the bridge in opposite directions. The Atake neighborhood is seen in the distance. The Ohashi Bridge was one of 300 bridges that crossed the Sumida River.
This print is part of a triptych (a composition of three prints) that shows actors portraying three of the four famed protectors of imperial regent Minamoto Yorimitsu (948?–1021). Collectively, they are known as his Shitennō (四天王), or “Four Heavenly Kings,” after the Buddhist deities who guard the four cardinal directions. The characters are indicated by the large house crests on their robes.
This triptych (a composition of three prints) shows actors portraying three of the four famed protectors of imperial regent Minamoto Yorimitsu (948?–1021). Collectively, they are known as his Shitennō (四天王), or “Four Heavenly Kings,” after the Buddhist deities who guard the four cardinal directions. The characters are indicated by the large house crests on their robes. The actor Onoe Matsusuke I’s identity is revealed by a fan with the ideograph matsu (松), or “pine,” tucked into his robe, just against his breastplate.
The liturgical book known simply as a “gradual” was the principal choir book used during the Mass. They were produced in multiple volumes, sometimes as many as 12, in order to cover the entire liturgical year. Every church required a set of graduals in addition to other liturgical books such as missals, antiphonaries, and gospel lectionaries. This volume appears to be the lone survivor from a larger set. Its illuminations were painted by an illuminator working in the circle of the much-esteemed and highly imitated painter Girolamo dai Libri of Verona, who was a prolific painter of altarpieces as well as illuminations for books. Girolamo dai Libri was only 16 years old when he painted his first altarpiece.
In this unidentified role, Iwai Hanshirō IV is costumed as a woman with long flowing hair, wielding a sword. Men of the Edo period shaved their head from the forehead back to the crown, leaving the side and back hair long, though tied in an updo. Even after the practice was abandoned for Kabuki theater actors specializing in female roles, they kept the custom of concealing the area that would once have been bare, so Hanshirō has a murasaki no bōshi (紫の帽子), or purple headband, attached to his wig.
This print of a courtesan named Kureha reading a letter comes from a five-volume series of picture books that Suzuki Harunobu designed with images of 166 beautiful courtesans of the Edo (now Tokyo) pleasure district. In intact copies of the fourth volume, of which this is a trimmed page, Kureha is the fifth and final courtesan representing her house, Gakuiseya; the house crest is a roundel formed of pine branches, seen on her outer robe’s sleeve. All poems in the volume are autumnal, and Kureha’s describes white dew on colorful maple leaves.
This print is from a group in which famous Kabuki theater actors who never performed together stand in for the Seven Gods of Good Fortune. Images of the Seven Gods symbolize hope for fortune in the coming year, and the set may have been made for the New Year of 1780. Here, Onoe Matsusuke I poses beneath curtains at the entrance to a place of business. They read, “House of Ebisu.” Ebisu is the god of fishermen, which may account for the wave imagery on the actor’s inner robe.
Shunsho was a well-known painter and printmaker in Edo who dominated the actor print field in his time.
Once the center print of a triptych (a composition of three prints), this design shows Ichimura Uzaemon IX playing Takeda Harunobu (1521–1573), a storied general who received the name Shingen upon taking Buddhist vows. In the story, Shingen attempts to cut off his enemy’s water supply, using a spell to imprison the dragon god who controlled it. However, a young woman named Sakura-hime gets him drunk. While he is indisposed, she and her lover release the dragon, whereupon it rains. Here, Shingen, in Buddhist robes, grips his string of prayer beads between his teeth.
Dora Wheeler became Chase's first student when he returned from overseas study in Munich and set up a teaching studio in New York. At the time, few American artists accepted women as private pupils. After her course of study, Wheeler joined her mother in launching a successful decorating firm, one of the first businesses in the country to be operated entirely by women. For the firm, she designed luxurious textiles, and the embroidered silk tapestry that fills the background in her portrait references her occupational interest. Chase's portrait was awarded a gold medal at an international exhibition of contemporary art in Munich in 1883, and later that year was also shown in Paris. At some later point, the painting was acquired by the sitter, who subsequently donated it to the museum. Chase and Wheeler worked together to raise money for constructing the Statue of Liberty's pedestal.
François-Auguste Ravier was initially influenced by the Barbizon tradition, but as he matured, his work became increasingly subjective and expressive. This highly worked drawing depicts the landscape around Morestel, near the artist’s native Lyon. Rather than focusing on cultivated fields of the region, Ravier preferred isolated ponds, woods, and plains that convey a poignant sense of his solitude and detachment from the Parisian art world. Ravier’s watercolors were carefully considered studio works, distillations of remembered experiences in nature. In his writing, Ravier spoke of how the most beautiful landscapes of all were those in his dreams.
A group of women amuse themselves by chasing fireflies next to a stream. A sense of movement is conveyed by their sleeves fluttering in the breeze. This print is the center print from a triptych, but the museum does not have the left and right prints.
Some Kabuki plays centered on the legend of the Soga brothers, Gorō and Jurō, who avenge their father’s murder before coming to their own demise. The setting is near Mount Fuji, part of which appears in the background. The print is likely from a diptych (a composition of two prints). The other print would have shown the rest of the mountain and Gorō’s retainer (a person retained by another to act in a military capacity), Asahina Saburō, tugging at the same pine bough as Gorō—a twist on scenes in which Saburō pulled Gorō’s armor to try to prevent him from protecting his brother.
This print depicts a courtesan dreaming about the time she was taken from her family to become a courtesan. The man leading the girl by the hand is probably escorting her to the Yoshiwara, the entertainment district in Edo. This format is called a pillar print, or hashira-e (literally, "pillar picture"). It is made by pasting two sheets together vertically to form a long, narrow picture, often hung as a decoration on the narrow support posts of the interior of Japanese houses. Pillar prints, or hashira-e (柱絵), are long and narrow Japanese woodblock prints originally intended to decorate wooden pillars.
Given to the Cleveland Museum in 1920 by the collector Jeptha H. Wade, this painting was thought to be an authentic work by Joshua Reynolds. However, after considerable study, the museum attributed it to a follower of Reynolds working in a similar style around the same time. This portrait depicts the wife of the captain (and later admiral) George Collier. The artist draws an analogy between this woman and Lesbia, a married woman who provided much artistic inspiration for the Roman poet Catullus (c. 84–c. 54 BC). The poet's writings document a love affair with Lesbia, and one poem in particular documents the death of the woman's beloved pet sparrow. The viewer can barely see the sparrow in this painting, since it lies on a table partially obscured by her right elbow. The muted colors evoke a sense of melancholy as the woman mourns with her head turned away from the viewer.
This sensitive portrait jewel was probably painted shortly after Shah Jahan came to the throne of the powerful Mughal Empire in 1628 after the death of his father, Jahangir. He decided to wear a full beard, in reference to his increased orthodoxy in comparison to his more liberal father and grandfather. The artist’s signature appears behind Shah Jahan’s nape. This portrait belonged to Cleveland mogul Jeptha H. Wade II, a cofounder of CMA.
Mary Cassatt began using pastel in the 1870s and continued to experiment with the medium throughout her career. This drawing depicts a mother and child, one of the artist's preferred subjects. Cassatt typically used the technique seen here, in which she finished her sitters' faces with a high degree of detail but rendered the rest of the composition in a much looser and sketchier style. Mary Cassatt once commented that pastel was "the most satisfactory medium for [portraying] children," since they could not sit still for long and the medium allowed for rapid sketching.
A richly patterned carpet spans the width of the composition and forms the setting for a royal visit. The status of the highest-ranking person is indicated by the tan cloth placed over the carpet and the voluminous wine-colored cushion ornamented with stylized gold clouds. An attendant holding an emblem of Indian royalty, the fly whisk, stands to one side. At the far right of the carpet are two books, indicating that they are learned men. Like the carpet, the book covers have central medallions and borders, in line with the Persian aesthetic that the Mughals of India held in high regard. A gentleman connoisseur has tucked a flowering sprig into his voluminous turban.
Men perform all the roles in Kabuki, a form of Japanese theater. Some actors specialize in onnagata (女形), or female roles. Segawa Kikunojō III was one of the most famous onnagata actors of his day. Here, he plays a character called Teruha in what was once the center print of a triptych (a composition of three prints). Teruha is officiating a wrestling match that also involves red and white roosters.
A fearless politician who engineered the act of uniting Ireland with England, FitzGibbon was the newly appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland (whose duties included that of chief judge) when Stuart painted his portrait. The crownlike upper portion of FitzGibbon's mace, or ceremonial staff, is seen on the table at the right. Propped against the table is a satin and velvet purse embroidered with the royal coat of arms. Worn around the neck like an apron, the purse held the official texts of FitzGibbon's speeches. At the time he painted this work, Stuart was living in Dublin, having spent a dozen years in London. In fact, his Irish patrons regarded him as a British painter. Stuart returned to his native America in 1793, where he remained the rest of his life. This portrait was painted on a large piece of textured linen, likely a tablecloth.