Lilac
Medium
Silhouette cut from off-white laid paper mounted to modern blue laid paper
Dimensions
sheet: 39.4 × 27 cm · matted: 55.9 × 40.6 cm
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
John L. Severance Fund
Accession Number
2023.120
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
About this artwork
Lilac belongs to a series of cut-out silhouettes created by Philipp Otto Runge around the early 1800s. Each presents a plant or flower in exacting detail, including each petal and leaf. The technique used was a traditional folk practice, which Runge learned early on from his mother. He ultimately produced well over one hundred such works, which he occasionally gave as gifts; this work, for example, was offered by the artist to the Specktors, a Hamburg based family of artists.