Complete Checklist
The order of the works in the checklist corresponds loosely to their arrangement in the exhibition.
Complete Checklist (click for larger images)
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Édouard Manet (1832–1883) Manet produced this Goyaesque figure for inclusion in an 1869 publication of etchings and poems. It appeared side by side with a sonnet by the contemporary poet Armand Renaud about a woman’s intoxicating beauty. |
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Édouard Manet (1832–1883) In 1867, Napoleon III of France appointed Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian emperor of Mexico, which was then under French occupation. Realizing the impossibility of ruling through Maximilian, Napoleon gradually withdrew military support, leaving Maximilian unprotected. On June 19, 1867, Maximilian and two of his generals were executed by Mexican nationalists, an event that sparked a storm of controversy in France. Manet dedicated multiple canvases, as well as this lithograph, to the incident. The print was intended for wide circulation but banned from publications by the French government until after the artist’s death. |
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Édouard Manet (1832–1883) The Barricade represents the bloody repression of Parisian rebels — the Communards — by France's national guard in 1871. The sketch-like quality of the lithographic crayon makes it appear as if the artist captured the horrific action while it was occurring. |
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Édouard Manet (1832–1883) This sheet is one of very few known impressions of Manet’s gillotage of a scene in the Café Guerbois, a Parisian establishment frequented by artists and writers. Gillotage was a new photomechanical process capable of conveying painterly effects. |
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Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898) The idealized, chiseled features of the head in this study bring to mind classical sculpture, which Puvis de Chavannes emulated in much of his work. By stumping — rubbing the graphite into the grainy paper with a small roll of leather — he achieves a smooth, stone-like finish, particularly in the hair. |
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William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) This study for one of the figures in the ceiling of the Grand Théâtre in Bordeaux embodies the academic principles of proportion and finish to which Bouguereau fully subscribed. The figure of Venus accords precisely with the classical ratio of a body exactly seven times the length of its head. |
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Edgar Degas (1834–1917) Underlying Degas’s prowess as a draftsman was a thorough academic training that included drawing after Old Master paintings and Greek and Roman sculpture in the Louvre. An example of this practice, this student work combines images of the celebrated antique marble gladiator, represented from different viewpoints, with the profile of the head of another sculpture. |
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Edgar Degas (1834–1917) This virtuoso drawing was made from life during Degas’s Italian sojourn. The artist studied the half-length figure up close, ingeniously combining two views into a harmonious composition. The facial features and smooth skin are rendered lifelike through fine gradations of light and shadow, achieved through blended strokes of graphite and the addition of white highlights. |
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Edgar Degas (1834–1917) Degas’s exquisite handling of the graphite medium in this sheet, made on his return to Paris after a period in Italy from 1856 to 1857, brings to life both the outer form and the spirit of this unidealized figure — no longer a classical nude but an actual person posing for an artist. |
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Edgar Degas (1834–1917) In this delicate sheet from early in Degas’s career, the artist observes a dead fox’s limp body. Long and short directional strokes coalesce into a convincing representation of the coarse fur of the animal’s coat while a combination of looser marks with the white of the paper suggests the softer underbelly. The red stamp bearing Degas’s name at lower left was applied to this sheet — and to the many others that remained in the artist’s studio until his death — on the occasion of his estate sales of 1918 and 1919. |