Public data from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Learn more
About the Artwork
During the 1880s, the Netherlands became a magnet for several American artists, among them Walter MacEwen. His most famed painting, The Ghost Story, presents a group of individuals in a Dutch interior listening with rapt attention to spooky narration delivered by a woman at a spinning wheel. A young girl clutches her doll in fascination.
Inscriptions
signed upper left: W. McEWEN
Provenance
Mrs. Edward S. Harkness.
Exhibition history
Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914. Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (organizer) (September 26, 2009-January 3, 2010). Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art. The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH (June 12-September 5, 2021); Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY (October 7, 2021-January 2, 2022); Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN (organizer) (February 19-May 15, 2022).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Walter MacEwen (American, 1860–1943)
- Date
- 1887
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Unframed: 121 x 191.5 cm (47 5/8 x 75 3/8 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- American Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Edward S. Harkness
- Accession no.
- 1923.416
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00009396
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