Muse with Violin Screen

designer Paul Fehér (American, born Hungary, 1898–1990)

maker Rose Iron Works (America, Ohio, Cleveland, est. 1904)

1930

Medium
Steel, brass; silver and gold plating, cotton velveteen
Classification
Metalwork
Dimensions
Overall: 156.2 x 156.2 cm (61 1/2 x 61 1/2 in.)
Culture
America, Ohio, Cleveland
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art, Decorative Art and Design
Credit line
Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
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 Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

Since the early years of the 20th century, the Rose Iron Works, a Cleveland supplier of architectural ornament, has produced distinguished metalwork. The company’s founder, Martin Rose, was born in Austria-Hungary and studied ornamental metalsmithing in Vienna prior to immigrating to Cleveland in 1902. In the 1920s, he hired a talented young Parisian designer, Paul Fehér, to work for the firm. Fehér’s designs, culminating in this massive screen, brought a modern European sensibility to the Rose Iron Works production. With its geometric patterning, highly stylized and abstracted natural forms, and the central figure reminiscent of the celebrated jazz singer Josephine Baker, this screen reflects the classic motifs of Art Deco design.