The Snite Museum of Art presents The Epic and the Intimate: French Drawings from the John D. Reilly ’63 Collection, on view August 28-October 9, 2011.

Organized from the rich holdings of the Snite Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition presents about sixty works illustrating the history of French drawing from before the foundation of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648, through the French Revolution of 1789 and its subsequent reforms of the 1800s.

The drawings offer visitors an opportunity to explore the range of media employed, including chalk, colored chalks, ink, and crayon; a variety of favored subjects, such as narrative compositions, portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes; and types of drawings from figure and drapery studies, quick sketches of initial ideas to complex, multi-figured, highly developed, compositional “machines.”

Artists in the exhibition include Simon Vouet, Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Honoré Fragonard and Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Later artists such as Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Anne-Louis Girodet, Honoré Daumier, Théodore Rousseau, and Edgar Degas signal the transition into the modern era that glorified the individual and the local. The Epic and the Intimate features drawings of remarkable beauty and depth from the John D. Reilly ’63 Collection of Old Master and Nineteenth-Century Drawings.

Image: Sleeping Rinaldo, 1686 Charles de la Fosse, French, 1636–1716 black, red and white chalk on blue laid paper 10.5 x 14.625 inches Gift of Mr. John D. Reilly ’63 2004.053.013

sniteartmuseum.nd.edu

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2. National Gallery of Scotland Opens French Drawings Poussin to Seurat
3. Frick Art & Historical Center to Present Storied Past: French Drawings from the Blanton Museum of Art