For Immediate Release

NEO-CLASSICISM TO BARBIZON: French Drawings and Oil Sketches from the First Half of the 19th Century September 25-October 30, 1999 Wildenstein & Company is pleased to announce an exhibition of oil sketches and drawings by French artists active during the first half of the nineteenth century, one of the most creative and artistically diverse moments in the history of France. The show consists of over thirty-five master drawings, oil sketches and watercolors by such major figures as Degas, Delacroix, Géricault, Ingres and Millet. The Neo-classical movement is exemplified by two late drawings by Jacques Louis David and three works by his pupil Ingres, including a delicate pencil and wash study for his Romulus Victorious Over Acron, a large painting commisioned by Napoleon in 1811. By another pupil of David, Girodet, is a dramatic gouache drawing depicting a scene from Virgil’s Aeneid. French advocates of Romanticism, Neo-classicism’s stylistic and ideological antithesis, are also represented, most notably the movement’s champions, Géricault and Delacroix. By the latter artist is an electrifying composition drawn from Byron’s “The Giaour” illustrating a furious struggle between the Venetian subject of the poem and his Turkish nemesis. Another aspect of the literary imagination that informed Romanticism is a haunting view of a castellated town by Victor Hugo and a chilling depiction of a hanged man by the same author. Also included are examples of pure landscape by such painters as Jean-François Millet, Théodore Rousseau and Camille Corot. These artists formed the so-called School of Barbizon, named for a town in the Forest of Fontainebleau that was one of their favorite locales. Particularly lush is a painting from Corot’s first visit to Italy, Civita Castellana: fabriques au sommet des rochers. Outstanding examples of portraiture are also featured. From the hand of Ingres, France’s greatest portraitist at this time, are two notable drawing likenesses of close friends of the artist. In the same genre is an usually sympathetic portrait by Théodore Chasseriau, possibly depicting the French civil servant Victor Barthe. An extreme form of portraiture popular during this period was caricature. A fascinating example is Carle Vernet’s watercolor The Allies in Paris, which depicts members of the victorious allied nations in Paris after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire; aside from its satiric bite, the drawing is notable for the artist’s keen interest in period costume. Finally, a lively encounter between two key authors of the period, Balzac and George Sand, is the subject of a pencil drawing by Louis Gavarni, which is dated 1837. FOR PHOTOGRAPHS AND FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT ROBIN WAGGE at RUBENSTEIN ASSOCIATES (212)843-8006, e-mail: rwagge@rubenstein.com or RITA ROBBINS at WILDENSTEIN & COMPANY (212)879-0500, e-mail: pr_info@wildenstein.com