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 François Boucher (French, Paris, 1703–Paris, 1770) Bust of a Young Woman in a Shift with Her Hair Tied Up, Seen from Behind |
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
all
Photos courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
By RAYMOND J. STEINER
ART TIMES March 2009
 Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, Tournus, 1725–Paris, 1805) Pouting Girl |
SOME
120 WORKS, all from the impressive private collection of Mr. Jean Bonna
(Geneva) and each a master work that demands slow and careful scrutiny,
make up this wonderful exhibition in The Metropolitan Museum’s Galleries
for Drawings, Prints, and Photographs.* Comfortably spaced for viewing
in three well-lit galleries, this is surely an opportunity that drawing
aficionados will not want to pass up. An all-too rare experience, the
exhibition of drawings — especially old master works — seem
often to get short shrift, most museums and galleries preferring crowd-pleasing
“blockbuster” shows of paintings and/or sculpture since they draw the
biggest crowds. Granted that drawings appeal mostly to the delicate tastes
of the connoisseur — which seem to be a dwindling population (at
least in the U.S.) — but it is precisely in the pages of private
workbooks that we most often see the artist — great or otherwise
— at his/her most intimate moments of aesthetic reflection. Such
sketchbooks are, in fact, akin to private diaries, many with annotations
on proposed motifs not meant for the rude and untrained eyes of public
viewing — or comment. Indeed, in my many years of interviewing and
profiling artists, it was rarely without some inner struggle that they
were willing to hand over tucked-away sketchbooks for my perusal. “They
are just jottings to myself,” most would say as they reluctantly placed
their dog-eared, smudgy, workbooks in my hands. Yes! But what those intimate
‘note-takings’ revealed! Here you would meet the mute artist unable to
translate his “jottings” into clumsy words, un-self-conscious, spontaneous,
one-on-one with a budding motif, exploring a nascent vision sans artifice, technique, flourish, or formula — in
brief, images naked and true, as
close to that original creative impetus that we can only hope to share
in.
 François Clouet (Tours, about 1515–Paris, 1572) Portrait of François II |
And,
these are not the drawings of just any artists
— the list includes a four hundred-year range of the work of such
giants as Carracci, Canaletto, del Sarto, Tiepolo, Rembrandt (don’t miss
his miniature townscape “View of Sloten from the East”), Jordaens, Greuze,
Lorrain, Chardin, Boucher (see especially his “Bust of a Young Woman in
a Shirt with Her Hair Tied up, Seen from Behind”, a lovely sketch revealing
that most sensuous part of a woman, the nape of her neck), Fragonard,
Ingres, Delacroix, Watteau, to name but a handful among other masters,
as well as some lesser-known but equally talented artists as Carlo Dulci
(see his angelic “Young Boy in Left Profile, Eyes Raised”), Giulio Cesare
Prosaccini (with his lovely “Female Figure Seen from Behind with Two Putti”),
Théodore Chasseriau (who could not fall in love with the eyes in his “Portrait
of Berthe de Prailly as a Child, Bust in Three-Quarter View”?), and, finally,
Baccio della Porta (Fra Bartolommeo) (especially his exquisitely detailed
villagescape, “Landscape: Farm Buildings on a Ridge, a Haystack, and a
Flock of Birds Circling Above”).
 Vittore Carpaccio (Venice, 1455/65–Capo d’Istria, 1525/26) Kneeling Figure in Prayer |
Strong
stuff, this! It is difficult — at least for this viewer —
to comprehend why good draftsmanship has so fallen out of favor with moderns…ironically
the beginning of its deterioration writ large in this very exhibition
when we come to the more “modern” works of, say, Manet, Cézanne, Renoir,
Gauguin and their fellows.
My
hat is off to George R. Goldner and Carmen C. Bambach for ‘bearding the
lions’ and the Gail and Parker Filbert Fund for helping to make this exhibition
possible.
*“Raphael
to Renoir: Drawings from the Collection of Jean Bonna” (thru Apr 26):
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave., NYC (212) 535-7710. A
fully-illustrated catalogue is available (see New Art Book Listing this
Issue).