HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Illustrating the Ancien Régime

Exhibitions and symposia celebrate 17th- and 18th-century French drawings, prints, and book illustrations

By Kate Tuttle
Special to the Gazette

Three related exhibitions of French book illustrations, drawings, and prints are being held in the area this fall, two on-campus and one at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston.

"Lines of Inquiry: Ancien Régime Book Illustration from the Department of Printing & Graphic Arts," guest-curated by Graham Larkin, is on display at the Houghton Library through Dec. 11. "Mastery and Elegance: Two Centuries of French Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz," which opens at the Sackler Museum Dec. 5, is curated by Alvin Clark Jr., the Jeffrey E. Horvitz Research Curator in the Department of Drawings at the Fogg Art Museum. And another show, "French Prints from the Age of the Musketeers," curated by Sue Welsh Reed, is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston through Jan. 10. According to Clark, the three exhibitions not only allow scholars and the public to see the unfolding, over 200 years, of the French school of drawing and graphic arts, but also support two symposia on French typography and the graphic arts in the 17th and 18th centuries.

"Lines of Inquiry" at the Houghton attempts something different from a catalogue of the era's greatest hits in illustration. Says Graham Larkin, "This is not really a show about artists," but one that attempts to take a fresh look at both the problematic label of Baroque and at what Larkin describes as "the virtues of illustration." A doctoral candidate in the department of history of art and architecture, Larkin chose the exhibition's 60 works while spending a summer internship exploring the holdings of the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts.

The first of the 11 display cases focuses on military images, but also makes the larger point that the Baroque period - often misunderstood, and, until recently, faulted for ornamental excess -- encompassed art that is early modern in its stark simplicity. An illustration from Le cavalerice françois, for instance, a horsemanship manual published in 1602, shows life-sized designs for horse bits; the elegant decorative flourishes of the bits themselves are rendered in a straightforward, explicitly utilitarian style.

"A lot of these books," Larkin says, "deal with both nitty-gritty practical aspects of image-making and also theoretical aspects, whether optics or geometry" -- a statement borne out by works in another display case, which contains books reflecting the era's scientific preoccupation with visual technology. One of the earliest examples of multi-colored printing processes can be found here, in a work illustrating the visible spectrum.

Narrative illustration, maps, scientific drawings, portraiture, and works of heraldry also appear in "Lines of Inquiry," many of whose images come from the collection of Philip Hofer '21. According to Anne Anninger, the Philip Hofer Curator of Printing and Graphic Arts at the Houghton, "Hofer gathered early on, at a time when few people were paying much attention to the period, a remarkably rich collection of 17th-century illustrated books. The 'Lines of Inquiry' show gives a real sense of the scope and depth of the collection in both 17th- and 18th-century French holdings."

In addition to showcasing the rich artistic legacy of that time and place -- an era in which, Larkin notes, visual images played a different, more important role than they often do now -- the exhibitions also highlight the benefits of collaboration. "I particularly enjoyed working with Graham, and am grateful to Jeffrey Horvitz for making his internship possible," says Anninger. "I think there can be no better way for graduate students and curators to work together and explore a collection than to prepare a show."

"Mastery and Elegance" represents the first exhibition of French works from the collection of Jeffrey Horvitz, a Boston-area collector whose long association with the Fogg stems in part from the museum's well-known commitment to drawings. With 115 images by 70 draftsmen, the show features work by celebrated artists such as Jacques-Louis David, Nicolas Poussin, and Jean-Honore Fragonard, as well as drawings by their lesser-known contemporaries. Curator Clark explains that "the show is one in a series of efforts to fill a gap" by covering a full range of artists in a field that has only recently garnered the attention of scholars. Clark adds that this situation is changing -- in part due to the influence of collectors like Horvitz, who has also initiated a foundation to support the study and exhibition of French drawings. "This is the first in what we hope will be a number of projects the foundation will support," Clark says.

After the show leaves the Sackler on Jan. 31, 1999, it will travel to Toronto, Paris, Edinburgh, New York, and Los Angeles, giving viewers elsewhere a chance to see what is, according to Clark, the most comprehensive private collection of French drawings in this country -- and one of the two or three biggest in the world.

Two symposia, both free and open to the public, are associated with these exhibitions: the first, scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 14, and Sunday, Nov. 15, and titled "Printing Matters: The Materiality of Print in Early Modern Europe," invites participants to reflect on the materiality of printed objects. It will cover such issues as transitions between hand production and mechanical production, the ways in which typographic and layout conventions are invested with meaning, and the synthesis of visual and textual context.

The M. Victor Leventritt symposium, to be held Saturday, Dec. 5, at the Sackler Museum is entitled "French Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Drawings, Prints and Book Illustration." International in scope, it will include speakers and curators from the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery, as well as Clark, and MFA curator Sue Welsh Reed.

-- "Lines of Inquiry," at the Houghton Library runs through Dec. 11

-- "Mastery and Elegance" opens at the Sackler Museum on Dec. 5

-- The Victor Leventritt Symposium on "French Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Drawings, Prints, and Book Illustration" will be held Saturday, Dec. 5 at the Sackler, and another symposium explores "Printing Matters: The Materiality of Print in Early Modern Europe" and will take place Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 14 and 15, at the Fogg. For information, visit the symposium's Website

-- "French Prints from the Age of Musketeers" runs until Jan. 10 at the Museum Fine Arts (Click here for a related Website).