Skip to main content
Advanced Search
Two figures walk down a sandy lane lined with monumental oak trees draped in moss amidst sepulc…
Bonaventure Cemetery
Two figures walk down a sandy lane lined with monumental oak trees draped in moss amidst sepulc…
Two figures walk down a sandy lane lined with monumental oak trees draped in moss amidst sepulchers and obelisks marking graves.
Bonaventure Cemetery, Henry Cleenewerck, c. 1860, oil on canvas, Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia.

Bonaventure Cemetery

Artist (Belgian, 1818 - 1901)
Datec. 1860
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsCanvas: 28 7/8 × 38 7/8 inches (73.3 × 98.7 cm)
Framed: 31 1/2 × 41 1/2 × 1 1/2 inches (80 × 105.4 × 3.8 cm)
Credit LineGift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Washburn in memory of Mrs. James Cary Evans (Cecilia DeWolfe Erskine).
Object number1967.10
On View
On view
CopyrightThe images and text contained on this page are owned by Telfair Museums or used by the Museum with permission from the owners. Unauthorized reproduction, transmission or display of these materials is prohibited with the exception of items deemed “fair use” as defined by U.S. and international copyright laws.Label TextHenry Cleenewerck is best known for Romantic landscape paintings created during his wide travels from the jungles of Cuba to the American West. Born in 1818 in Watou, Belgium, Cleenewerck studied art in his home country before traveling to the United States in the 1850s. Cleenewerck arrived in Savannah in 1860 or earlier and opened a studio on Broughton Street. A March 1860 Savannah Morning News article stated that Cleenewerck had completed two paintings of Bonaventure, praising him as one of the country’s finest landscape painters. He exhibited the paintings at Savannah’s Armory Hall that same May. Cleenewerck’s time in Savannah was short, possibly due to the outbreak of the Civil War. The same year he completed the Bonaventure paintings, the artist made a drawing, reproduced as a print, showing crowds raising the flag of secession in Savannah’s Johnson Square. In this painting, Cleenewerck depicts a romanticized, rearranged image of Bonaventure. As in T. A. Richards’ earlier painting, well-to-do white Savannahians are shown enjoying the cemetery’s moss-draped arcades of oak trees. A well-dressed couple strolls in the foreground while two others ride past in a carriage followed by a likely enslaved African American nursemaid holding her small, white charge by the hand. Recognizable features include the Clinch tomb and original rustic entrance gate on the far right, older obelisks on the left, and an open view to the Wilmington River in the background. Cleenewerck exercised artistic license, rearranging these features to appear in the same view.
Subject MatterBonaventure Cemetery, 330 Bonaventure Road, Thunderbolt, Georgia, United States of America
Collections
Telfair Museum
Copyright © Telfair Museum