Romanticism and the School of Nature: Nineteenth-Century Drawings and Paintings from the Karen B. Cohen Collection

More than one hundred paintings, drawings, and oil sketches are on view in this exhibition of selected works from the holdings of Karen B. Cohen, noted New York collector. Included are landscapes, portraits, figure compositions, and still lifes by great artists of the Romantic period, the School of Barbizon, and their followers, from Prud'hon to Seurat. The Cohen collection represents several artists in depth; thus, the exhibition features a varied range of work by such masters as Couture, Gericault, Daubigny, Rousseau, and especially Delacroix, several of whose drawings and watercolors are promised gifts to the Metropolitan. Among other highlights are a group of oil paintings—both landscapes and portraits—by Courbet and a series of cloud studies by Constable.

The Cohen collection reflects the highly personal taste of its owner, who has sought to build an integrated assemblage of works that share common themes and in some cases are related to other drawings and paintings in the collection.