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Follow the shaft of light from the storm clouds down the broken walls, then compare the bright stones with the dark cypresses and the sea.
A ruined villa stands on a rocky shore, with tall cypress trees bending in the wind beside it. A flock of dark birds circles the broken walls under a stormy sky. The Cleveland Museum of Art links Böcklin’s taste for dreamlike images of death to German Romantic art of the early 1800s.
oil on fabric · Framed: 132.1 x 102.9 x 8.3 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Symbolism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Ruin by the Sea
- Artist
- Arnold Böcklin (Swiss, 1827–1901)
- Date
- 1881
- Medium
- oil on fabric
- Dimensions
- Framed: 132.1 x 102.9 x 8.3 cm (52 x 40 1/2 x 3 1/4 in.); Unframed: 111 x 82 cm (43 11/16 x 32 5/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.