This exhibition was the first devoted exclusively to the drawings of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), the remarkable eighteenth-century French painter and draftsman. Organized by Edgar Munhall, Curator of The Frick Collection from 1965 to 1999, this unprecedented exhibition brought together at each of its two venues approximately sixty works on paper culled from international collections such as the Musée du Louvre, Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon; the Historisch Museum, Amsterdam; the Albertina, Vienna; the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; and others. Among Greuze's many admirers was Catherine the Great, whose agent purchased a number of works directly from the artist, which are now in the State Hermitage Museum. Munhall selected for inclusion in the exhibition twenty of these drawings, which have seldom left St. Petersburg. A fully illustrated catalogue featured a historical overview of the artist's work, and the exhibition itself conveyed to viewers what a unique and remarkably modern artist Greuze was. Greuze The Draftsman traveled to Los Angeles and was on view from September 10 through December 1, 2002 at The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Greuze the Draftsman was organized by The Frick Collection, in association with the J. Paul Getty Museum.
This exhibition was made possible through the generosity of Michel David-Weill, The Florence Gould Foundation, the Isaacson-Draper Foundation, Joseph Koerner, Melvin R. Seiden, Diane A. Nixon, Jean A. Bonna, Mrs. Russell B. Aitken, W. Mark Brady, the Strong-Cuevas Foundation, James Fairfax, The Helen Clay Frick Foundation, Stephen K. Scher, and The Honorable W. J. P. Curley with the Achelis and Bodman Foundations, with additional support from the Fellows of The Frick Collection.