The Arrival of the Muses of Art at Architecture
Jan Toorop (Dutch, 1858–1928)
1890
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink and colored crayons on cream wove paper (discolored to buff), pieced
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 20.6 × 24.8 cm (8 1/8 × 9 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Jan Toorop was born in Indonesia, raised in the Netherlands, and married to an English wife. His art was as diverse as his cultural background. He experimented with many different styles, from Impressionism to Symbolism, and was adaptable even when working on a single image. This composition must have evolved as he drew. It comprises three individual pieces of paper.
Traversing a watery expanse, personifications of the arts (music, painting, poetry or literature, and sculpture) come to alleviate laborers from drudgery. The muse of architecture sits unshackled at the foot of the image.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
