Join us for a conversation between collector Jeffrey Horvitz and Alvin L. Clark, Jr., (Curator, The Horvitz Collection and The J.E. Horvitz Consultative Curator, Department of Drawings, Division of European and American Art, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg) on the evening of the opening of the exhibition A French Affair: Drawings and Paintings from The Horvitz Collection, Thursday, January 24 at 5 p.m. in the Diffley Board Room, Bellarmine Hall. Reserve your free ticket on Eventbrite.
History, mythology, poetry, and portraiture provided a vast range of subject matter for French artists of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. Drawn from the peerless holdings of The Horvitz Collection—one of the world’s most distinguished collections of Old Master and early modern French art—this two-part presentation features drawings by such celebrated artists as Charles Le Brun, Nicolas de Largillière, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jean-Baptiste Oudry and Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy Trioson, and a small complement of paintings by Fragonard and other 18th-century masters.The exhibition Imaging Text, the centerpiece of this presentation, is an impressive selection of over 50 drawings for book illustration. These highlight not only the creative inventiveness of the artists who formulated lavish visual imagery from the written word, but also the rich literary traditions of France and the vibrant book publishing industry they spawned.