1903
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Cléo de Mérode is a 1903 by Alfredo Müller, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a woman, Cléo de Mérode, a famous dancer. She's dressed in a fancy outfit. The artist used a special technique to create rich, detailed areas. The technique used here is interesting because it was new for the time. It involved combining aquatint with wiped plates to get a rich effect. You can learn more about this style by looking into the technique of chiaroscuro.
Although a few printmakers experimented with printing etchings in color beginning in the 1870s, the idea did not really become popular until the 1890s. Müller represents this new interest and produced about 100 color etchings that combine densely bitten aquatint with irregularly wiped plates, epitomizing the turn-of-the-century taste for rich, painterly effects. The portrait of Cléo de Mérode (1875-1966), a fashionable dancer, is produced almost entirely in aquatint printed as broad planes and shapes of color that simplify and flatten the figure and define a shallow space. The very texture of…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Alfredo Müller (June 30, 1869 – February 7, 1939) was a Franco-Italian painter and printmaker of Swiss nationality.
See the richer artist pageYour cart is empty
Explore artworks →
