: "A View to the Past: Old Master Prints and Drawings" offers a
rare opportunity to peer into the distant past. The 85 works on
view in this presentation, drawn from the New Orleans Museum of
Art's holdings and several private collections, range from the
early Sixteenth to the mid-Nineteenth Century. The show will run
through January 2.
The exhibition will unveil three newly donated and very important
prints by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669). "An
anonymous New York benefactor has honored NOMA with a generous
gift of three early Rembrandt etchings of exceptional quality,"
said Daniel Piersol NOMA's Doris Zemurray Stone Curator of Prints
and Drawings. "These marvelous impressions are the first
Rembrandts to enter the permanent collection and are the stars
among stars in this exhibition."
While many often associate the term "Old Master" with paintings
and sculpture, it applies no less to drawings and prints created
in a broad range of media. To be sure, such drawings are the
result of diverse aesthetic intents. For instance, the undated
sanguine rendering "Romulus et Remus" by Jean-Jacques-Francois Le
Barbier (1738-1826) is an image intended to be transformed into a
print. Eugene Delacroix's (1798-1863) ink 'Studies of
Sculptures," circa 1830, is this creator's interpretation of
existing three-dimensional objects. "Portrait of a Gentleman,"
1809, by Virginie Hue de Bravel (1780-1840), is a fully realized,
finished work, complete in and of itself.
Old Master prints, like the drawings, served a variety of
purposes. For instance, "Portrait of Louis XVI," 1790, by Johann
Gotthard Muller (circa 1747-1830), is an engraving after a
painting. The purpose of this reproductive print was to make
available for distribution throughout his domain the official
image of the King of France.
Francisco Goya (1746-1828) and Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), in
contrast, conceived of and executed their prints as multiple,
original compositions, independent from their unique creations in
painting. Durer's great pictorial inventiveness and powerful
content are apparent in the woodcut entitled "Hercules Conquering
Cacus," circa 1496-98, while Goya's emotional distress and sense
of outrage nearly burst from his haunting etching "Tampoco,"
circa 1819.
Of special interest among the many noteworthy works on view are
those by the preeminent Dutch etcher Rembrandt and Jean-Marc
Nattier (1683-1766), a favored portrait painter of the French
court and aristocracy.
Three small, jewel-like biblical impressions, "The Circumcision
of Christ: Small Plate," circa 1630; "The Holy Family," 1632; and
the nocturne entitled "The Flight into Egypt: Small Plate," 1633,
glow with dramatic, ethereal contrasts of light and shadow. Dark
prints such as these, derived from the Caravaggioesque approach
explored by Seventeenth Century Dutch artists, were prized by
collectors of the day.
"The circumcision," with its careful draftsmanship, grand
costumes and the slightly equivocal spatial relationships between
the figures who crowd into the temple, is characteristic of this
master's early etched work. Typical of Rembrandt's early
religious work is a heightened sense of physical and emotional
tension, evoked here by the frightened child's scream.
Nattier's "Portrait of Sir Peter Paul Rubens (After a
Self-Portrait of the Artist)," 1707, reveals Nattier's high
regard for Rubens. This image was executed at the same point that
the artist and his brother had assumed from their father the task
of copying the great series of Rubens paintings, "History of
Marie de Medici," which then hung at the Palais du Luxembourg.
Their drawings were published as engravings in 1710 as La
Galerie du Palais du Luxembourg Peintre par Rubens. The
current drawings, engraved as the volume's frontispiece by Jean
Audran (1661-1721), will be included in the forthcoming catalogue
raisonné of the artist's work, to be written by Nattier authority
Joseph Baillol and published by the Wildenstein Foundation.
For information, noma.org or 504-488-2631.
