NEW YORK.- The Frick Collection will present the first exhibition of drawings by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. This touring exhibition is the first devoted exclusively to the drawings of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), the remarkable French eighteenth-century painter and draftsman. Indeed, while countless exhibitions have presented the works of other great French artists such as Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard, Greuze has been accorded only one comprehensive show of any sort since his death in 1805. Nonetheless, his work has enthralled connoisseurs during and since his lifetime. While most of his paintings have long ago entered public collections, his drawings are actively sought today by collectors both public and private. Organized by Edgar Munhall, Curator of The Frick Collection from 1965 to 1999, and now Curator Emeritus, this long-awaited and unprecedented exhibition brings together at each of its two venues approximately seventy works on paper culled from international collections such as The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; Musée du Louvre, Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon; Amsterdam’s Historisch Museum; the Albertina, Vienna; the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Art Institute of Chicago; and others (a total of ninety-five works on paper are on loan and featured in the catalogue, with some drawings on view at only one venue, but an equal number presented both in New York and Los Angeles). The works were chosen to demonstrate the full range of Greuze’s graphic oeuvre in pen and ink, brush with tinted washes and watercolor, and colored chalks and pastels. Included are preparatory studies for his major paintings as well as independent drawings executed for discriminating connoisseurs.
Greuze the Draftsman has been made possible through the generosity of Michel David-Weill, The Florence Gould Foundation, the Isaacson-Draper Foundation, Mrs. Russell B. Aitken, Jean A. Bonna, James Fairfax, Joseph Koerner, Diane A. Nixon, Stephen K. Scher, and Melvin R. Seiden, with additional support from the Fellows of The Frick Collection.
According to Edgar Munhall, "This artist’s drawings have an immediate appeal that is irresistible. Never labored in their execution, they make the viewer feel as if he is looking at something created only moments before. Children are recorded as real people, women offer their attractions boldly, men look up in terror, dogs bark. It is the real world in all of its varied manifestations that Greuze captured in his endless catalogue of life. Had he lived a hundred years later, he would have been called a realist; had he lived two hundred years later, he would have been a great filmmaker."
Adds Director Samuel Sachs II, "We are thrilled to have had the opportunity to continue working together with Edgar Munhall, before and after his retirement, on this exciting project. Indeed, to our delight, the exhibition has kept a cherished colleague very much in our midst at The Frick Collection. He is uniquely qualified as the leading Greuze scholar to have organized this presentation and its accompanying catalogue, which represent the climax of decades of critical thought and research. He presents for us a subject of great beauty that has long needed illumination, and we are proud to share Greuze the Draftsman with the public."
