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Armand Berton
About the Artwork
Associated with the 19th-century Symbolist movement in France, Carrière developed a distinctive, almost monochromatic palette suggesting a dream world. The limited color in this portrait of his friend, the deaf painter Armand Berton, also focuses attention on the psychology of the sitter. Translucent glazes make Berton's face emerge from the shadows. Engulfed in silence, Berton seems to rely on his other senses to perceive the world around him.
Inscriptions
Signed in paint at lower left: Eugène Carrière
Provenance
Armand Berton, Paris. M. G. Masson (written in pencil on stretcher). Paris sale, Drouot, 5 May 1970 (lot 12), Portrait du peintre Armand Berton, 46 x 38 cm, ff 3,800. (A photograph in the Musée d'Orsay, Documentation, gives the information that the painting was at one point with Galerie Alain Lesieutre, Paris.) London sale, Sotheby's, 6 December 1973 (lot 29, repr.), Portrait du peintre Armand Breton [sic], for £700 to Dabney Associates. London sale, Sotheby's, 4 December 1975 (lot 335, repr.), Portrait du peintre Armand Breton [sic] [bought in]. Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin, Cleveland. Bequeathed to the CMA in 1980.
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1980. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (June 24-July 19, 1981).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Eugène Carrière (French, 1849–1906)
- Date
- c. 1891
- Medium
- oil on fabric
- Dimensions
- Framed: 62.2 x 54 x 7.6 cm (24 1/2 x 21 1/4 x 3 in.); Unframed: 46 x 38 cm (18 1/8 x 14 15/16 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Bequest of Noah L. Butkin
- Accession no.
- 1980.244
More by Eugène Carrière 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-00010078
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