This traveling exhibition organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts features approximately fifty drawings, watercolors, and pastels selected from the superb collection of Minnesota collectors Gabriel and Yvonne Weisberg. The exhibition was curated by Lisa Michaux, Ph.D. acting co-curator of Prints and Drawings at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
The exhibition and the accoompanying catalogue were made possible with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Exhibitions Endowment Fund.
The Weisbergs began collecting drawings more than thirty years ago, with a focus on works by realist and naturalist artists working in France and Belgium in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The exhibition will introduce artists such as Adolphe Appian, François Bonvin, Jules Breton, Edgar Chahine, Louis Weldon Hawkins, Auguste Lepère, Leon Lhermitte, Charles Milcentdeau, and Thèodule Ribot.
The Weisbergs are committed to acquiring drawings that focus on the plight of workers – weavers, tanners, and miners are represented – and that provide fresh, unglorified glimpses into rural life and customs. These images challenge the viewer to consider the less fortunate and those living on the margins of society.
The works on paper range from meticulously executed charcoal studies to loose watercolor sketches, from layered pastels to sheets that combine multiple mediums in innovate ways. From initial sketches for mural designs to highly finished compositions intended for Salon showings, the drawings gathered here represent bold techniques and even bolder themes. They call into question traditional assumptions of what constitutes a nineteenth-century drawing and go far in expanding the visitor’s view of this vital period in the history of art.
