Mastery & elegance

About this book

Mastery & Elegance: Two Centuries of French Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz is the catalogue of an exhibition that presents, for the first time, a selection from the most comprehensive private American collection of French old master drawings. The catalogue features 115 drawings by seventy artists, which range in date from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the early years of the nineteenth. The leading French artists of the period - Jacques-Charles Bellange, Jacques Callot, Simon Vouet, Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, Francois Boucher, Jean-Honore Fragonard, and Jacques-Louis David - are all here, but the importance of the collection lies in its broad representation of the many brilliant draftsmen active during these two crucial centuries in the history of French art. The catalogue incorporates the results of years of research on these drawings and will make a significant contribution to this relatively unstudied field.