Synopsis
The Harvard University Art Museums hold one of the world's finest collections of early 19th-century drawings. The nearly 500 works reproduced in this catalogue include the most significant groups of drawings outside France by the masters of the age - David, Gericault, Ingres, Delacroix and Prud'hon. Drawing is the most direct and spontaneous of all artistic media, and many studies in the collection vividly evoke the genesis of some of the period's enduring images. A design by Jacques-Louis David marks a stage in the development of his major revolutionary composition, "The Oath of the Tennis Court", while two precious sketchbooks, consisting of more than 100 drawings, document the painstaking evolution of David's greatest Imperial project, the massive canvas depicting "The Coronation of Napoleon". Of parallel significance is a large-scale and beautifully rendered drawing for what is arguably the peerless masterpiece of Romantic painting, Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa". While many sheets derive their importance from their association with key paintings, others stand out as independent works in their own right.
These include several of the portraits by Ingres - among them "The Family of Lucien Bonaparte", his largest and most prestigious work in this genre - as well as watercolours by Gericault and Delacroix. Although familiar to scholars, the collection has never been the subject of a comprehensive catalogue, and many of the drawings are published here for the first time. In addition to the major holdings of works by the artists mentioned above, the catalogue features a selection of drawings by Barye, Corot, Chasseriau, David d'Angers, Decamps, Delaroche, Girodet, Huet, Hugo, Eugene Isabey, and other masters of the period.
