Featuring approximately seventy drawings, Poussin, Claude, and Their World: Seventeenth-Century French Drawings from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, included outstanding masterpieces by Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, as well as lesser-known masters such as Sébastien Bourdon, Simon Vouet, Noël Coypel, Charles Le Brun, Eustache Le Sueur, and others. Selected by Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Curator of Drawings at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and Colin B. Bailey, Chief Curator, The Frick Collection, this exhibition provided an in-depth survey of French drawing of the period.
This body of drawings included a wide variety of artistic genres, among them allegory, religion, portraiture, and landscape. Included were preparatory studies for paintings, painted décors, tapestries, decorative ornaments, and engravings. The selection was also reflective of the École's own collecting patterns; most of its works come from the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and from donations made by private collectors in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Frick Collection was the exhibition's only North American venue.
This exhibition was made possible through a generous grant from the Robert Lehman Foundation and through the support of the Fellows of The Frick Collection.