Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Composition with Four Figures
Jacques Louis David French
Not on view
During his final decade, spent in exile in Brussels, David produced a large body of enigmatic drawings: expressive partial figures, depicted singly or in groups, without clear narrative or function. In a recently discovered 1818 letter to a student, David describes this body of work with pride. Begun as "caprices," or drawings made following no particular logic, they increasingly took on a seriousness of purpose. Difficult to decipher today, they evoke the compelling characters that had peopled his history paintings, filtered through the distorting lens of memory.
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