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About the Artwork
The mutilated ray fish in this painting is strung across the top of the canvas, as if tortured or crucified, as its internal organs spill forth. The fish seems to express human anguish, transforming it into a powerful metaphor for suffering. Below the fish is a kettle that seems to twist away from the fish. Chaïm Soutine frequently depicted animal carcasses in his paintings, highlighting their vulnerability and the violence of their deaths. Such paintings may allude to his own despair, from his youth as the 10th of 11 children of parents in poverty in a small Orthodox Jewish community in what is now Belarus, to his early years in Paris as a struggling artist.
Inscriptions
Signed lower right: "Soutine"
Provenance
By 1927-1928: (Paul Guillaume [1891-1953], Paris, probably sold to Jacques Doucet 1928-1929: Jacques Doucet [1853-1929], Paris, presumably by inheritance to his wife Jeanne Roger Doucet Until 1951: (Cesar de Hauke, New York, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1951-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
Exhibition history
In Memoriam: Leonard C. Hanna, Jr.. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 4-April 7, 1958). Soutine. Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, France (April 27-September 17, 1973). La Nature Morte de Brueghel à Soutine (The Still Life of Brueghel in Soutine). Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, F-33000 Bordeaux, France (organizer) (May 5-September 1, 1978). Chaïm Soutine. Museo d'Arte Moderna (organizer) (March 12-June 18, 1995). Chaim Soutine. Israel Museum, 91710 Jerusalem, Israel (April 26-August 14, 1998); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (September 17, 1998-January 3, 1999); The Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH (February 14-May 2, 1999). Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Seoul Art Center, South Korea (December 22, 2006-March 28, 2007); Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, South Korea (April 7-May 20, 2007); Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (June 9-September 16, 2007); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 2007-January 13, 2008); Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (February 15-June 1, 2008); Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT (June 22-September 21, 2008); The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (October 12, 2008-January 18, 2009). Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943), l'ordre du chaos. Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, France (October 2, 2012-January 21, 2013). Chaïm Soutine - Against the Current. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany (organizer) (September 1, 2023-January 14, 2024); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humbelbaek, Denmark (February 9-July 14, 2024); Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland (August 16-December 1, 2024) https://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch/en/ausstellung/chaim-soutine.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Chaïm Soutine (Russian, 1893–1943)
- Date
- 1923
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Framed: 111.8 x 94.3 x 11.8 cm (44 x 37 1/8 x 4 5/8 in.); Unframed: 80.5 x 64.5 cm (31 11/16 x 25 3/8 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of the Hanna Fund
- Accession no.
- 1951.357
More by Chaïm Soutine in museum collections
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-00009495
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