The Cleveland Museum of Art

• Provenance
  1882

  (Sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 6, 1882, no. 82, probably sold to Bernheim-Jeune)

  1882-

  (Probably Bernheim-Jeune, Paris)

  By 1892 - by 1896

  Consul Eduard Friedrich Weber [1830-1907], Hamburg

  1896

  (Ribot (his widow) estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, France, May 30, 1896, no. 3)

  1911

  (Probably Bernheim-Jeune, Paris)

  1931-

  (Bernheim-Jeune, Paris)

  By 1972-1973

  (Galerie Brame and Lorenceau, Paris, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)

  1973-

  The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

  Provenance Footnotes

  1 “Bernheim,” presumably referring to Bernheim-Jeune, is written in as the buyer of the Ribot in an annotated copy of the sale catalogue.  

  2 Weber is listed as the owner of a painting, La petite laitière, with a title and size matching those of the CMA picture in an 1892 exhibition of works by Ribot.  It seems unusual that the painting was with Weber in 1892, and was subsequently sold in the estate sale of Ribot’s widow in 1896.  But because the Cleveland painting appears neither in an 1887 auction of paintings from his collection, nor in a 1907 catalogue of his nineteenth-century paintings, it is possible that Weber sold the work privately and it was eventually added to the estate sale in 1896. 

  3 The Ribot was likely exhibited at Bernheim-Jeune in the 1911 Exposition T. Ribot (no. 13, La petite laitière), as art historian Gabriel Weisberg does not believe that the artist painted any other versions of the subject.  

  4 It appears that this painting was once again with Bernheim-Jeune: the presence of a Bernheim-Jeune stock number (6292) on the stretcher corresponds to the gallery's purchase of Ribot's "Jeune fille au chien" in June 1931 from an unidentified seller.  The gallery's archives do not record the date it was sold to the subsequent owner.
• Citations
  Hôtel Drouot. Catalogue de tableaux modernes. April 6, 1882.

  Hôtel Drouot. Catalogue de tableaux modernes. April 6, 1882.

  Sertrat, Raoul. Exposition Th. Ribot: au Palais national de l'École des beaux-arts : ouverte du 3 mai au 31 mai 1892. Paris: Impr. de l'art, E. Ménard, 1892.

  Hôtel Drouot. Tableaux, études, aquarelles, dessins par Théodule Ribot. May 30, 1896.

  Ribot, Théodule. Exposition Ribot: du jeudi 2 au mercredi 8 février 1911 ... : Paris ... chez MM. Bernheim Jeune & cie. Paris: Bernheim Jeune, 1911.

  Gabriel P. Weisberg, fax to Roger Diederen, Jan. 25, 1996, in CMA curatorial file.

  Guy-Patrice Dauberville, letter to Victoria Sears Goldman, Feb. 2, 2016, in CMA curatorial file.

  
  d'Argencourt, Louise, Roger Diederen, and Alisa Luxenberg. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999.

  Lefort, Paul. "Theodule Ribot." Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1891): 298-309.

  Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1973." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXI, no. 2 (February, 1974):31-78. Reproduced: p. 50; Mentioned: p. 74, no. 42

  "Recent Accessions of American and Canadian Museums." The Art Quarterly 37 (Spring 1974): 98-114. Mentioned: P. 101; reproduced: P. 112

  Weisberg, Gabriel P. "Theodule Ribot: Popular Imagery and The Little Milkmaid." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXIII, no. 10 (October, 1976):253-263. Reproduced: p. 2545, fig. 1; Mentioned: p. 262, no. 4

  The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 212 archive.org

  Weisberg, Gabriel P. The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing, 1830-1900. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980. Referenced: no. 9, p., 47, Reproduced

  Sutton, Denys. “Cross-Currents in Nineteenth-Century French Painting.” Apollo: The International Magazine of Art & Antiques 113 (April 1981): 244–54. Reproduced: P. 248, fig. 11

  Chong, Alan. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993. Reproduced: P. 198

  D'Argencourt, Louise and Roger Diederen. The Cleveland Museum of Art: Catalogue of Paintings, Part Four; European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999. Reproduced: p. 190

  Faroult, Guillaume and Sophie Eloy. La collection La Caze: chefs-d'œuvre des peintures des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris, France: Musée du Louvre, 2007. Reproduced: p. 137, fig. 105

  Weisberg, Gabriel P. "Theodule Ribot: la Vie dans l'Art." In Théodule Ribot, 1823-1891: Une Délicieuse Obscurité. Emmanuelle Delapierre, Luc Georget, Gabriel Weisberg, eds., 22-35. Paris: LienArt, 2021. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 30, fig. 7
• Exhibition History
  Redefining Genre: French and American Painting 1850-1900. Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN (September 24-December 17, 1995); Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL (January 5-February 4, 1996); Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA (February 24-April 21, 1996).

  The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830 - 1900. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 12, 1980-January 18, 1981).

  Year in Review: 1973. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 30-March 17, 1974).

  Dutch Art and Life in the Seventeenth Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 10-September 2, 1973).

  Exposition Thedule Ribot. Palais National de l'École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France (1892).

  Exposition Ribot. Bernheim Jeune & Cie, Paris, France (February 2-8, 1911).
• Cite this Page
  {{cite web|title=The Little Milkmaid|url=false|author=Théodule Ribot|year=c. 1865|access-date=19 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}