Eugene Delacroix, Cliffs at Fécamp, c. 1835-1839, Private Collection.

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi (1606-1680), Fortress on a Hilltop, detail, Pen and
brown ink with brown wash, Private Collection.

Niccolo Dell'Abate (ca. 1512-1571), Noli me tangere (Christ and the Magdalen),
1567/1571, Pen and brown ink with brown wash over black chalk, heightened
with white, Private Collection.

National Gallery
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Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings
May 6-September 16, 2007

Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings offers works from one of America’s most significant private collections of master drawings. The exhibition, on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from May 6 through September 16, features 100 of the finest drawings from the collection, and represents 85 artists of the Italian, French, Dutch, Flemish, German, Swiss, British, and Swedish schools from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

The exhibition was jointly organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, where it was on view from January 18 through April 8, 2007.

"The collection we celebrate here reflects the direct communication of the artist through a wide range of drawings spanning four centuries and eight national schools," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "They range from the quickest personal notations to the most elaborate and finished works of art and are a reflection of the collector’s enormous taste and great passion."

The chronoligical-by-century exhibition by century, combines various schools. Half of the exhibited drawings are by Italian artists, including Fra Bartolommeo’s delicate The Virgin and Child Surrounded by Saints and Angels (c. 1500); a deeply moving study of The Dead Christ by Agnolo Bronzino (1529/1535), and three studies in colored chalks by Federico Barocci. Two 17th-century Italian highlights are a rich red chalk figure study by Mattia Preti titled Study for the Figure of Adrian Fortescue (1662/1666) and Two Studies of St. Cecilia Playing the Organ by Pier Francesco Mola (1648). Eighteenth-century highlights include The Annunciation (1735/1740) by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo; Marta Gandolfi (1778), a tender portrait of Gaetano Gandolfi’s daughter; and a Lagoon Capriccio with a Fortified Tower (1780s) by Francesco Guardi.

About one-quarter of the show consists of French drawings, with artists ranging from Etienne Delaune and Claude Lorrain to Edgar Degas and Odilon Redon. Eighteenth-century highlights include The Drawing Lesson (1777) and The Gardens of the Villa Negroni (1773), two of the greatest drawings by François-André Vincent; A Man Playing a Guitar (1717/1718), a brilliant trois-crayons (three chalks) work by Antoine Watteau; and three outstanding works by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Little Park (1765), Two Cypresses in an Italian Garden (1774), and The Bread Box (1777). Nineteenth-century works include Cliffs at Fécamp (1835/1839), a vibrant watercolor by Eugène Delacroix, and Madeleine Ingres with the Artist (1830), a double portrait of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and his wife.

Among those works representing Dutch and Flemish art are a wonderfully calligraphic sketch by Ferdinand Bol and The Wijde Kapelsteeg in Amsterdam with the Burgerweeshuis in the Distance (1793), a beautifully detailed view of a street in Amsterdam by Jacob Cats.

The British drawings begin with a rare work by the l7th-century artist Francis Place, Ruins of Old St. Paul’s Cathedral (1670/1672), featuring landscapes, such as Wooded Landscape with a Stream (mid-1780s) by Thomas Gainsborough and Figures Entering an Extensive Valley (1820) by John Martin.

Among work by German artists rounding out the selection is a small but magical 19th-century landscape by Caspar David Friedrich, Moonlit Landscape with Lovers and a Church (1797/1798); a mesmerizing study of a woman by Wilhelm Leibl, Young Peasant Woman (1889); and two silvery graphite drawings by Adolf Menzel, Seated Man Leaning Forward (1887) and A Couple Looking at a Painting (1893). German 20th-century drawings include powerful portrait studies by Käthe Kollwitz and Lovis Corinth.

Exhibition curators are Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Andrew Robison at the National Gallery and Rhoda Eitel-Porter and Jennifer Tonkovich at the Morgan Library & Museum.

François-André Vincent (1746-1816), The Drawing Lesson, detail, 1777, Brush and brown wash over graphite, Private Collection, partial and promised gift to the National Gallery of Art, Washington.