A Woman from the Arctic

A Woman from the Arctic — Léon Cogniet. 1826.

Medium: oil on fabric. Dimensions: Framed: 62.9 x 57.2 x 8.9 cm (24 3/4 x 22 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.); Unframed: 42.5 x 36.5 cm (16 3/4 x 14 3/8 in.).

Collection record: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

When this painting was shown in an 1826 exhibition, the accompanying catalogue stated that it was "painted after nature." Although Léon Cogniet never traveled to North America, he may have encountered a native person from the Arctic. In 1820, an American sea captain, Samuel Hadlock, met two Inuit from Labrador, George Niakungitok and Mary Coonahnik, who accompanied Hadlock on a tour of America and Europe. The tour, an early example of a commercial show presenting people from lesser-known parts of the world to paying European audiences, concluded in Paris in 1826. The show also included a panoramic view of Baffin Bay (located between northeast Canada and Greenland) that may have inspired the cloudy sky and ice formations in Cogniet's painting.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.