1880
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
A Funeral is a 1880 by Jean-Paul Laurens, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a somber funeral scene with a coffin and mourners. The painting is interesting because it shows a bishop's funeral, indicated by the crosier leaning against the door. This detail suggests the artist was drawn to church history and the stories of clergy. Look up the technique of sfumato to learn more about how artists create subtle, nuanced scenes like this one.
The macabre subject matter of A Funeral is typical of Jean-Paul Laurens, whose interest in depicting cadavers and coffins earned him the nickname "the painter of the dead." Laurens was also attracted to subjects from church history, and, here, the crosier leaning against the door behind the coffin indicates the deceased was a bishop. Highly finished drawings like this one are rare in Laurens's production. His technique of covering the surface with a variety of media and scratching away for highlights is quite similar to the one used by another artist in the exhibition-Alexandre Bida, in his…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jean-Paul Laurens (French pronunciation: ; 28 March 1838 – 23 March 1921) was a romanticist French painter and sculptor, and he is one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style.
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