Enfilade

Claude-Joseph Vernet, After the Storm, 1788.
(Wilmington: Horvitz Collection)

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Now on view at the AIC:

French Neoclassical Paintings from the Horvitz Collection
Art Institute of Chicago, 19 October 2024 — 6 January 2025

Curated by Emerson Bowyer and Andrea Morgan

This exhibition showcases 25 paintings from the preeminent private collection of French 18th-century art in the United States: the Horvitz Collection. The selection of works focuses on Neoclassicism, an artistic style that emerged in the later 1700s and flourished through the 1820s, a period of tremendous political and social upheaval in France. This time was also the heyday of ‘history painting’, a genre of painting characterized by large-scale compositions portraying scenes from history, mythology, and religion. Neoclassical painters looked to the art, architecture, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration, often as a lens through which to depict and comment upon contemporary events, and several works included in the exhibition were displayed to a broad public at the annual Paris Salons.

While these works were created more than 200 years ago and often depict ancient or mythological events, they also reference social and political challenges that remain relevant today, from the overthrow of an absolutist government during the French Revolution—which saw the groundwork laid for modern democracies—through to Napoleon’s Empire and the eventual restoration of Bourbon monarchy. This period also coincided with the rise of Enlightenment ideals, the democratization of knowledge, the spread of printed materials, and the origins of industrialization and increased urbanization.

French Neoclassical Paintings from The Horvitz Collection is curated by Emerson Bowyer, Searle Curator, Painting and Sculpture of Europe and Andrea Morgan, research associate. The exhibition complements a major survey of drawings from the same period, Revolution to Restoration: French Drawings from The Horvitz Collection.

Étienne Barthélémy Garnier, Banquet of Tereus
(Wilmington: Horvitz Collection)

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Opening soon at the AIC:

Revolution to Restoration: French Drawings from the Horvitz Collection
Art Institute of Chicago, 26 October 2024 — 6 January 2025

Curated by Kevin Salatino and Emily Ziemba

The exhibition features approximately 90 drawings made from the 1770s through the 1850s, one of the most turbulent periods in French history. During this time, France abolished the monarchy, established a republic, terrorized perceived political enemies, waged war across the continent, imposed an empire, and eventually reinstated the monarchy—and these are only a handful of the tumultuous episodes that occurred across this 80-year period. Despite this profound instability, the country’s cultural environment flourished, spurring a significant stylistic shift in artistic production. Influenced by the rationalist ideas and moral seriousness of such Enlightenment thinkers as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and inspired by important archaeological discoveries that radically altered contemporary ideas about the ancient Greco-Roman past, artists turned away from the playful, decadent Rococo style of the mid-18th century. In its place they adopted a more restrained and disciplined style, now known as Neoclassicism, a term invented only in the 19th century.

Henriette Lorimier, Female Nude, 1796, Black chalk, charcoal, and white crayon (Wilmington: Horvitz Collection).

Featuring works by the most accomplished and influential artists of the time, including Jacques-Louis David, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, and Théodore Géricault, the exhibition explores the impact of ancient Greek and Roman art, history, and mythology on artistic production, as well as the role of the Academy, changing social norms, and convulsive contemporary events.

The selected drawings showcase a variety of media—pen and ink, watercolor, chalk, and pastel—and highlight how artists of the period demonstrated a surprisingly modern combination of intellectual curiosity, political commitment, and graphic virtuosity. The presentation demonstrates the expressive versatility and powerful immediacy of drawing as a medium of persuasion, propaganda, and, above all, aesthetic stimulation.

Revolution to Restoration: French Drawings from The Horvitz Collection is curated by Kevin Salatino, Chair and Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Curator, Prints and Drawings, and Emily Ziemba, director of curatorial administration and research curator, Prints and Drawings. The exhibition complements French Neoclassical Paintings from The Horvitz Collection in Gallery 223.