Eleanora Duse
1965-1970
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
collage with wash on Masonite
Dimensions
board: 25.4 × 19.05 cm (10 × 7 1/2 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation)
Accession Number
2015.19.3459
Art Historical Context
Step into the whimsical world of Joseph Cornell with *Eleanora Duse* (1965–1970), a delicate collage with wash on Masonite measuring just 10 × 7½ inches. Created late in the artist's life—he passed in 1972—this intimate work pays homage to the legendary Italian actress Eleonora Duse, a muse for Cornell, whose oeuvre often blended theater, dreams, and found objects in Surrealist-inspired assemblages. Though classified as a drawing, its collage technique reveals Cornell's signature method of layering ephemeral papers, photographs, and subtle washes to evoke nostalgia and mystery. Cornell's inno...
About the Artist
Joseph Cornell
Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) was an American artist and filmmaker best known for his poetic assemblage boxes — small, glass-fronted shadow boxes containing carefully arranged collections of found objects that create intimate, dreamlike worlds. Born in Nyack, New York, he had no formal art training and spent most of his life in a modest house on Utopia Parkway in Flushing, Queens, caring for his disa...