French Drawing of the XX Century

Fülszöveg

ABOUT THE SERIES
Drawings bring one face to face with the moments of illumination. The artist sees and feels and sets down his first impression with chalk, pencil or pen, or he explores his feeling in one drawing after another. Thus the study of drawings brings us into the privacy of art, behind all the pomp of pigments, masterpieces and gilded frames.
The English master Richard Wilson told one of his pupils he must draw for a year with black chalk and not be " dazzled and misled by the flutter of colours " ; and it is the paradox of drawing that those moments of illumination can only be set down in strength after the most arduous training in draughtsmanship. So the good drawing is not just an essay in technique, and not just a spirit of emotion ; it shows both the springs of the artist's being and the hard discipline of his craft.
In this new series the drawings of the French School are explored from the era of the Clouets and École de Fontainebleau century by century to the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

ABOUT THE SERIES
Drawings bring one face to face with the moments of illumination. The artist sees and feels and sets down his first impression with chalk, pencil or pen, or he explores his feeling in one drawing after another. Thus the study of drawings brings us into the privacy of art, behind all the pomp of pigments, masterpieces and gilded frames.
The English master Richard Wilson told one of his pupils he must draw for a year with black chalk and not be " dazzled and misled by the flutter of colours " ; and it is the paradox of drawing that those moments of illumination can only be set down in strength after the most arduous training in draughtsmanship. So the good drawing is not just an essay in technique, and not just a spirit of emotion ; it shows both the springs of the artist's being and the hard discipline of his craft.
In this new series the drawings of the French School are explored from the era of the Clouets and École de Fontainebleau century by century to the present day —the drawing, that is to say, of the school which has been the western centre of feeling and technique for the best part of three centuries. A final volume surveys English drawing—so much influenced in the eighteenth century and later by French example—from Samuel Cooper and Charles Beale to Gwen John.
FRENCH DRAWING OF THE
XVI CENTURY Jean Adhémar
99 gravure reproductions
FRENCH DRAWING OF THE
XVII CENTURY Jian Vallcry-Radot
Notes hy Philippe Jaccottet 145 gravure reproductions
FRENCH DRAWING OF THE
XVIII CENTURY François Boucher
Notes hy Philippe Jaccottet 136 gravure reproductions
FRENCH DRAWING OF THE XIX CENTURY René Huyghe Notes hy Philippe Jaccottet 146 gravure reproductions
FRENCH DRAWING OF THE ^XX CENTURY Jean Cassou 149 gravure reproductions
ENGLISH DRAWING FROM SAMUEL COOPER TO GWEN JOHN Geoffrey Grigson 148 gravure reproductions
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FRENCH DRAWING OF THE XX CENTURY
Jean Cassou
English Museums and galleries abound in modern French pictures. Drawings of the School of Paris, however, are not so well known. So this volume supplies a need, displaying the first moments of illumination of artists with whose painting we have so long been familiar.
For sheer unreflecting delight here are drawings by Dufy and Marquet; here also are drawings instinct with humanity and warmth by Renoir, Modigliani and Suzanne Valadon; drawings for the mind by Picasso and Matisse, in the great tradition of Leonardo and Ingres, each adding his own strength to that tradition and renewing its life for the future.
These drawings are the quieter moments of an art which has often appeared "sensational"; nevertheless they startle, dazzle and bewitch us with their perceptive power and their implications. They are, in fact, the drawings of our modern world; the drawings we might have made had we the vision and the gift, reflecting our own serenities, alarms, discoveries, thoughts and disciplines.
The drawings have been chosen and introduced by Jean Cassou, Conservateur en chef of the Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne at Paris. M. Cassou's aim is appreciation rather than final assessment or judgment, for which contemporary observers, he maintains, are too closely involved. M. Philippe Jaccottet has added biographical notes and brief bibliographies. Vissza