PARIS.- The eagerly anticipated Salon du dessin takes place again this spring under the vaulted roof of Paris’s Palais Brongniart and once again features a selection of outstanding works on paper, some of them well in excess of £1m. It is the place where the highest density of collectors, connoisseurs and museum curators to be found.

Now a ritual for 20 years, Drawing week, a highly popular off-site event organized in partnership with over 20 museums and institutions, offers access to graphic arts collections that are usually off-limits to the public.

Highlights of Salon du dessin (27th March / 1st April – Palais Brongniart – Paris)
Among the 39 exhibitors from around the world are four handpicked new galleries and two that are returning after an absence of a few years. Among the treasures on display is a rare drawing by Egon Schiele (€1,900,000), which has been exhibited at Louis Vuitton’s Foundation exhibition Basquiat/Schiele in Paris, presented by the Austrian gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher.

With its spontaneous lines and subtle contrasts of light rendered with sometimes dense crosshatching, this unpublished drawing by Guercino (1591-1666), presented by Galerie Terrades, is the artist’s first sketch for a painting that now belongs to a private collection. This remarkable drawing bears the stamps of three collections.

Jean-Luc Baroni and Emmanuel Marty de Cambiaire exhibit together for the first time, presenting a selection of fine works on paper . Edouard Manet’s ravishing drawing of a “Man with a top hat” (€185,000) and a sketch-book by the most famous Russian painter of the 19th century, Ilya Repin (1844-1930), comprising 120 pencil drawings including drawings studies for Ballet Scene, A Paris Café, Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom, and A Newspaper Seller in Paris (€ 600,000).

“The Glass Roof,” by Leon Spilliaert (€1,000,000) which has been published and exhibited worldwide, is being featured by the Belgian Lancz Gallery, one of the fair’s new exhibitors. It shows a tight view of the porch on the family house, which also served as the artist’s studio.

Works by Picasso, Chagall, Degas are being shown by Helene Bailly Gallery, which is presenting a beautiful mixed technique on paper by Chagall (1887-1985), The blue cock or the village’s dream (1958) (€ 2,000,000/€ 3,000,000).