Exhibition dates: November 8, 2005 – January 29, 2006
Exhibition location: Special Exhibition Galleries, first floor
Four centuries of French draftsmanship will be on view in Clouet to Seurat: French Drawings from The British Museum, opening November 8, 2005, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition features nearly 100 masterpieces, ranging from rare Renaissance portraits by Jean and François Clouet to selections from The British Museum's incomparable holdings of Claude Lorrain and Antoine Watteau, through stellar works of the 19th century, from Ingres and Delacroix to Degas, Cézanne, and Seurat. A majority of these works have never before been exhibited in the United States. Clouet to Seurat will remain on view at the Metropolitan through January 29, 2006.
The exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is in memory of William Slattery Lieberman,
February 14, 1923–June 1, 2005.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and The British Museum.
The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan, commented: "This exhibition presents Metropolitan Museum visitors with a truly remarkable opportunity to see rarely exhibited drawings by master draftsmen, and to witness the development of French art unfold before them. Surveying such a broad period allows one to appreciate the cyclical nature of stylistic development. For instance, the battles waged in the 17th century between the Rubénistes, who favored color and naturalism, and the Poussinistes, proponents of line and the study of antiquity, are echoed in the contrast between the classicism of Ingres and the Romanticism of Delacroix in the early 19th century."
Exhibition Organization and Contents
Organized chronologically, Clouet to Seurat creates a visually compelling picture of the evolution of French draftsmanship from the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century. Whether the drawings were made as part of a working process or as works of art in their own right, they reveal the mastery and exquisite beauty of the French artistic tradition in the artists' most direct and immediate means of expression. Among the works on view will be two of a group of royal portraits from the 16th century by Jean Clouet (1485/90–1541) and his son François Clouet (ca. 1516–1572) that are rare examples of the early use of different colored chalks to produce naturalistic effects. Under Queen Catherine de Médici such royal portraits in colored chalks were collected and valued as independent works of art.
A more unified national style developed in the 17th century, in part due to the establishment in 1648 of the French Royal Academy (Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture), where the influence of Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) gave rise to a cool and classicizing Baroque idiom. Another formulation of the Baroque style reached its apogee in the work of landscape painter Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682) who spent his working career in Rome. Indisputably the French Baroque artist most beloved by British collectors, Claude is represented in the exhibition by five works — selected from among 500 in The British Museum's collection — which demonstrate the range of his production, from free plein air studies to the breathtakingly fresh drawings from his Liber Veritatis, in which he made record drawings of his completed paintings.
The French Enlightenment is represented, on the one hand, by the sparkling trois crayons drawings by Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), the most original and influential Rococo draftsman, and on the other hand by the more cerebral drawings of Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825). Tendencies inspired by Watteau's informal and accessible style were stifled by the French Revolution of 1789, and with David at the helm, French art returned to a conservative classicism.
During the 19th century, great innovation often co-existed with a deep respect for the art of the past. Artists such as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), David's leading pupil, and Jean-Louis Gérôme (1824–1904) continued the academic tradition. Romantics like Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) and Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) and Realists like Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), all represented in the exhibition, laid the foundations for ground-breaking movements such as Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Drawings continued to play an integral role in this evolution, even as artistic traditions were challenged and re-invented. Two studies for La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat (1859–1891) will be on view, as will drawings by Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), among others.
The British Museum Collection
The Department of Prints and Drawings at The British Museum oversees one of the oldest and finest collections of works on paper in the world. Founded in 1753 with the bequest of Sir Hans Sloan (1660–1753), which contained more than 200 French drawings, and built up over subsequent centuries through bequests and judicious acquisitions, the collection now contains over 3,500 drawings by French artists. In 1965, an important bequest of 16 works from César Mange de Hauke (1900–1965) enriched the collection significantly, including 13 masterpieces of the 19th century. Nonetheless, The British Museum's splendid holdings of French drawings are comparatively little known having long been overshadowed by its works from the Italian and Northern schools.
Exhibition Credits and Catalogue
The exhibition is organized by Perrin Stein, Curator, in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints, and Martin Royalton-Kisch, Senior Curator, Department of Prints and Drawings at The British Museum. Following its showing at the Metropolitan, Clouet to Seurat will be exhibited at The British Museum.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with entries by Perrin Stein and an essay on French drawing and the history of the collection at The British Museum by Martin Royalton-Kisch. Published by The British Museum Press and distributed by Yale University Press, the catalogue will be available in the Museum's book shops.
Exhibition design is by Michael Langley, Exhibition Designer, with graphic design by Constance Norkin, Graphic Designer, and lighting by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Designers, all of the Museum's Design Department.
A variety of educational programs will be offered in conjunction with the exhibition, including gallery talks, a teacher workshop, and outreach programs for adult groups.
The exhibition will be featured on the Museum's website (www.metmuseum.org).
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