Exhibition | Paper Revolutions: French Drawings

Posted in exhibitions by Editor on March 18, 2019

Opening next month at NOMA:

Paper Revolutions: French Drawings from the New Orleans Museum of Art
New Orleans Museum of Art, 10 April — 14 July 2019

Nicolas Lejeune, ‘Rejoicing at the Announcement of the Abolition of Slavery, 30 Pluviôse, Year II / 18 February 1794’, 1794, India ink and gouache on paper, 14 × 11 inches (New Orleans Museum of Art).

Paper Revolutions: French Drawings from the New Orleans Museum of Art traces the politics of draftsmanship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This selection features works on paper by celebrated painters Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Eugène Delacroix, as well as lesser-known artists, such as Nicolas Lejeune.

The Age of Revolutions in France (1789–1870) was defined by political instability. In less than a century, wars and violent uprisings provoked radical changes in regime, from monarchy to republic to empire. This period also witnessed the emergence of new, hybrid styles of art: Neoclassicism, inspired by ancient Greece or Rome, mingled with Romanticism, distinguished by more fluid, expressive responses to nature. While navigating political shifts and experimenting with different forms, artists continued to draw obsessively—producing rough sketches, detailed studies, and independent works on paper.