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November Issue 2005
Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, Offers Exhibition of Drawings from Prat Collection
One hundred extraordinary works of art from one of the world's premier private collections of French drawings are on exhibit at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC. The exhibition, PASSION FOR DRAWING: Poussin to Cézanne, Works from the Prat Collection, explores three centuries (1615 - 1900) of French drawing, beginning with the late mannerist style and continuing through the triumph of impressionism. The collection has been painstakingly assembled by Louis- Antoine and Véronique Prat of Paris, and works in the exhibition have been selected by Dr. Pierre Rosenberg, honorary president-director of the Louvre and guest curator for this exhibition. The exhibition will be on view through Dec. 4, 2005.
PASSION FOR DRAWING: Poussin to Cézanne, Works from the Prat Collection features landscape and portrait drawings as well as those of mythological, literary, and biblical subjects, executed in a variety of media including red and black chalk, lead pencil, and pen and ink. Meticulously finished drawings and sketches hastily thrown onto the paper, known as "first thoughts" (pensées) in the eighteenth century, are of particular interest. Such celebrated drawings, frequently published and reproduced, as Nicolas Poussin's 1640s masterpiece Pluto Abducting Proserpine and Claude Lorrain's Magdalene in the Desert, will be presented in the company of incredible unpublished works by less well-known artists, including Rape of Europa by Laurent de La Hyre and Head of Christ by Charles de La Fosse.
Arranged chronologically, the exhibition begins by illustrating various trends of the seventeenth century: the heirs of mannerism include Jacques Callot, whose images of soldiers and gnomes are at once beautiful and ugly; and those French artists who trained in Rome, including Poussin and Lorrain. French classicism of the Louis XIV era is illustrated by four masterpieces by the king's official court painter, Charles Le Brun, whose drawings are rarely seen outside the Louvre.
Drawings by such master artists of the eighteenth century, including Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, are well represented. The pinnacle of the neoclassical style is apparent in: three superb drawings by Jacques-Louis David; important studies by Jean-François- Pierre Peyron; and monumental drawings by Charles Meynier and Guillon Lethière. Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (with four masterly studies on blue paper), Antoine-Jean, Baron Gros (final study for The Plague -Stricken People of Jaffa) and Anne-Louis Girodet (Arab from Behind) mark the route toward romanticism, followed by four beautiful drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Eugene Delacroix's L'Amoureuse au piano, a symbolic image from romantic poetry.
The realism of the mid-nineteenth century is evoked in Honoré Daumier's Intermission and beautiful drawings by Jean-François Millet that appear to presage the work of British sculptor Henry Moore. Impressionist and post-impressionist works in the exhibition allow comparisons between the figure studies of Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, and the symbolist interpretations of Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau, and Odilon Redon.
The exhibition culminates with a drawing by Cézanne, who is considered by some scholars "the last classicist" for his use of such geometric elements as the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone, on the eve of a century that would explode volume and form with the birth of cubism.
Viewed together, the drawings in the Prat Collection constitute an evocative representation of the evolution of French art between 1615 and 1900, with a special emphasis on the human figure as it was depicted by the seminal artists of the French school.
In 1974, Louis-Antoine and Véronique Prat began collecting. Graduates of l'Ecole du Louvre, the Prats set out to bring together exquisite works of art that highlighted the mastery of French artists active before 1900, and included both drawings by great masters as well as superb examples by less well-known artists. Today, the Prat Collection presents one of the most in-depth explorations of French draftsmanship in the world. Portions of the collection were exhibited in 1990-91 in New York, Fort Worth, and Ottowa, with subsequent exhibitions held at the Louvre, the National Gallery of Scotland, and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Substantial additions have been made to the collection since 1991. Many of the works selected for this exhibition have never been displayed previously. The Prat Collection is now considered the most beautiful collection of French drawings in private hands.
Featuring one hundred extraordinary French drawings from the Prat Collection, PASSION FOR DRAWING: Poussin to Cézanne will be on view in the Main and Rotunda Galleries of the Gibbes Museum of Art. This exhibition is organized and circulated by Art Services International, Alexandria, VA.
Established as the Carolina Art Association in 1858, the Gibbes Museum of Art opened its doors to the public in 1905. Located in Charleston's historic district, the Gibbes houses a premier collection of over 10,000 works of fine art, principally American works with a Charleston or Southern connection. During 2005, the Gibbes Museum of Art celebrates the centennial anniversary of its Beaux-Arts building at 135 Meeting Street; enriching the lives of Charleston's residents and visitors through the visual arts for one hundred years.
For further information check our SC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Museum at 843/722-2706 or at (www.gibbesmuesum.org).
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