Cincinnati Art Museum

The Cincinnati Art Museum is one of the oldest art museums in the United States. Founded in 1881, its collection of over 100,000 works spanning 6,000 years of human history.

The Romanesque-revival building opened in 1886. A series of additions and renovations have considerably altered the building over its 133-year history.

The Cincinnati Wing houses a permanent exhibit of art created for Cincinnati or by Cincinnati artists since 1788. The Cincinnati Wing contains the work of Frank Duveneck, Rookwood Pottery, Robert Scott Duncanson Mitchell, and Rammelsberg furniture.

The art museum has paintings by European masters, including Master of San Baudelio, Jorge Ingles, Sandro Botticelli, Matteo di Giovanni, Mattia Preti, Bernardo Strozzi, Frans Hals, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Peter Paul Rubens, and Aert van der Neer.

The art collection also includes works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso.

A Virtual Tour of the Cincinnati Art Museum

• “Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects” by James Tissot
• “Samson and Delilah” by Peter Paul Rubens
• Saint Helena with the Cross by Lucas Cranach, the Elder
• “Daughters of Revolution” by Grant Wood

Highlights Tour of the Cincinnati Art Museum

“Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects” by James Tissot

Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836 – 1902), anglicized as James Tissot, was a French painter and illustrator. He was a successful painter in Paris before moving to London in 1871.

He became famous as a genre painter of fashionably dressed women. Tissot left Paris after the Franco-Prussian War and resided in London from 1871.

He knew James McNeill Whistler and Edgar Degas, but turned away from Impressionism and focused mainly on portraits and genre paintings of the Victorian upper classes in a more polished academic style.

These pictures are typical of Tissot’s work, depicting his subjects with almost photographic realism. He composed ambiguous narratives that hinted at risqué behavior among the wealthy classes and the boundaries of propriety.

“Samson and Delilah” by Peter Paul Rubens

“Samson and Delilah” by Peter Paul Rubens depicts an episode from the Old Testament story of Samson and Delilah. Samson was a Hebrew hero of the ancient Israelites described in the Book of Judges.

Samson was granted immense strength to aid him against his enemies and allow him to perform superhuman feats, including defeating an army of Philistines.

However, if Samson’s long hair were cut, then his vow would be violated, and he would lose his strength. Unfortunately, he fell in love with Delilah, who betrayed him. 

Delilah had been bribed by the Philistines to learn Samson’s secret of his great strength. Rubens portrays the moment when, having fallen asleep on Delilah’s lap, Samson’s hair is cut.

Delilah is shown with all of her clothes, but with her breasts exposed. The man cutting Samson’s hair is crossing his hands, which is a sign of betrayal.

Philistine soldiers can be seen waiting in the background waiting for Samson to lose his strength and to capture him.

The older woman’s face standing behind Delilah may symbolize Delilah’s future looks. The two women are shown with similar profiles.

Saint Helena with the Cross by Lucas Cranach, the Elder

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472 – 1553) was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving.

He was a court painter to the Electors of Saxony and is famous for his portraits of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced.

He was a close friend of Martin Luther, and he is commemorated in the liturgical calendars of the Episcopal and Lutheran churches. 

Cranach also painted religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition, and then later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art.

Cranach had a large workshop, and many of his works exist in different versions. His son Lucas Cranach the Younger, and others continued to create versions of his works for decades after his death.

He is considered the most successful German artist of his time.

“Daughters of Revolution” by Grant Wood

“Daughters of Revolution” by Grant Wood is a satirical portrait of three women from the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). H

e emphasized the contrast of three aged women in faded dresses framed against the heroic painting of “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”

In 1927, Wood was commissioned to create a stained glass window in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

He was unhappy with the quality of domestic glass sources, and after traveling to Europe and conducting research, he decided to source glass made in Germany.

The local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) complained about using German sourced products for a World War I memorial.

Germany had been an enemy of the US in World War I, and the protests to the idea of German source glass grew. As a consequence, the window was not dedicated until 1955, after Grant Wood had died.

Wood disliked the DAR’s attitude and viewed the DAR as trying to set up an aristocracy of birth in a Republic. He believed that there was irony and ignorance in their objections.

To make his satirical point, his composition included the famous painting of George Washington that had been painted by a German American artist.