Nineteenth Century French Drawings from the Robert Lehman Collection

This exhibition of nineteenth-century French drawings continues the series that will eventually bring all the drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection to public view.

Among these eighty-five sheets are drawings in various media, including watercolor, representing the most important French masters of the century as well as lesser-known French artists. Important groups of portraits by Ingres and Chassériau demonstrate the high standards of draftsmanship in force at the beginning of the century. The landscape drawings by the masters of the Barbizon School comprise another outstanding assembly. Boudin and Rousseau are especially well represented among the Barbizon sheets, the former with an unusual large landscape in variations of gray. Drawings by the Impressionists are again outstanding: the groups by Renoir and Degas and important single sheets by such artists as Bazille, Morisot, and Pissarro form the greatest part of the exhibition. The black-and-white studies of Seurat and Redon and a group of radiant watercolors by Cross complete this survey of nineteenth-century draftsmanship in France.

The catalogue is restricted to giving the basic information on each drawing. In addition, unpublished versos are reproduced here for the first time. The bibliographies are short and limited to catalogues raisonnés and basic publications.