This exhibition presents European works on paper spanning the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, including a number of recent acquisitions in the area of French drawings. A highlight of the group is Jean-Honoré Fragonard's Rinaldo in the Enchanted Forest, a virtuoso display of the bold and free handling—in this case of sepia wash—that found favor in the Rococo period. The development of the Neoclassical style is also explored through a selection of French drawings and prints for ornament and the decorative arts, ranging from playful to serious in approach.
Also presented is a selection of recently acquired drawings from Denmark's "Golden Age," including works by C. W. Eckersberg and Christen Købke, and German and Austrian nude studies from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century.
Further highlights include a selection of prints from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries featuring odd human-animal encounters, including Max Klinger's Bear and Elf (1887), a surreal image of a woman taunting a bear in a treetop, and David Hockney’s Jungle Boy (1964), showing a naked man staring down a snake.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, Grasse 1732–1806 Paris). Rinaldo in the Enchanted Forest, ca. 1761–72. Brush and brown wash over black chalk underdrawing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Louis V. Bell, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest; Guy Wildenstein Gift; Louis V. Bell Fund; The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund; Kristin Gary Fine Art Gift; and funds from various donors, 2009 (2009.236).
This boldly handled and beautifully preserved drawing in sepia ink by Jean-Honoré Fragonard illustrates a scene from Canto XVIII in Torquato Tasso's epic poem Jerusalem Delivered (Gerusalemme liberata), which was first published in 1581. The poem was a highly fictionalized and fantastic account of the First Crusade, when Christian knights liberated Jerusalem from the Muslims in 1099.
Rinaldo, the Christian knight on his way to the Holy Land, is detained by the pagan enchantress Armida until two of his knights break the spell. Seen here in the decisive moment of his victory, Rinaldo brandishes his sword overhead in the act of chopping down Armida's massive myrtle tree, thereby dispelling its enchantments.
