David to Corot: French Drawings in the Fogg Art Museum (Reform]) - Hardcover

Mongan, Agnes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674193202 ISBN 13: 9780674193208

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1996

Synopsis

French Drawings in the Fogg Art Museum

About this title

Review:

The Fogg's holdings of early 19th-century French drawings are a near embarrassment of riches. Along with the Ingres, the Fogg owns the most significant groups of drawings of David, Gericault, Delacroix and Prud'hon outside of France...'David to Corot: French Drawings in the Fogg Art Museum' also celebrates the publication of a major catalog of the same name. Thirty years in the making, it is the grand effort of the legendary curator of drawings and former director of the Fogg, Agnes Mongan...[A] landmark.--Nancy Stapen "Boston Globe "

[A] masterful piece of scholarship...Author Agnes Mongan and a host of contributing scholars assembled this catalog over the course of decades, creating a work whose text offers as much to the historian and biographer as its handsome plates do to fanciers of draftsmanship. For those who can't travel to Boston to visit this superb collection, Mongan has created a portable resource...whose first-rate illustrations capture the nuances of touch that are so much the appeal of drawing for connoisseurs. More than 300 drawings are illustrated in black and white, including works by such major figures as Delacroix, Gericault and Ingres...To see them all reproduced in this catalog is a bit like peeking over the artist's shoulder as he sketched.--Chris Waddington "Lagniappe "

[Mongan's] catalog includes a detailed, interesting, and scholarly text, which accompanies the reproduction of each drawing. The provenance is included for each drawing, as well as an extensive bibliography of books and an appendix of historically relevant exhibitions. The book provides a wonderful visit to the Fogg's internationally renowned collection of these 19th-century French drawings.--Choice

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0674193202
• ISBN 13: 9780674193208
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 318