XIXth Century Drawings and Water-Colors

The evolution of painting in the nineteenth century — the century that ranged from the last years of the classicist David to neoclassicism, the Impressionists, and the first years of Picasso — is far better known than the drawings of that period. It is a curious fact, however, that the drawings of certain artists in their graphic conceptions anticipated by several years their esthetics of painting. More intensive study of the drawings of that time — the work both of those artists who are better known as painters and of those who are celebrated primarily for their mastery of drawing — obliges us to revise opinions about the history of art that were based solely on the study of painting. Moreover, this study of drawings permits the reader an absorbing view of the work methods of a Gericault, of a Delacroix, of a Seurat, from first sketches and outlines through the genesis of a great composition.