Charting A Century of Change:
French Nineteenth-Century Drawings and Sculpture
from the Collection of Herbert and Carol Diamond
June 24 through September 24, 2006
Main Floor Gallery

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The Diamond Collection of French nineteenth-century drawings and sculpture encompasses a range of works by artists both well known and obscure. The collection includes drawings by such notables as Degas, Corot, Ingres, Cezanne, Delacroix, Gauguin and Matisse, as well as a sculpture by Rodin. The works themselves range from traditional to vanguard, exhibiting a variety of styles and techniques. The nineteenth-century, a period of social unrest in France, inaugurated a moment of change in the French art world. Nineteenth-century France saw a pull between those artists who depicted the traditional concepts of beauty and allegory and the more experimental work of the vanguard, which moved towards depictions of realism and naturalism. The struggle between the traditional and the experimental art sets became widely publicized via the French press. The central issue that was debated was whether art should depict an idealized, utopian world or whether it should be a mirror to the social disorder of France caused by revolution, class struggle and Industrialization.

The Diamond Collection incorporates works from both sides of the issue, from the traditional academic idealist images to the more experimental work from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Much of the collection is comprised of pen and pencil drawings, emphasizing the fact that masterful drawing is the most revered French artistic skill. The collection reveals that although the Realists, Impressionists and Post-Impressionists were transgressing traditional artistic subjects and themes, they still maintained drawing as the foundation of art and sculpture.

Not only does this collection show the movement from traditional to experimental themes and styles, it also illuminates the ways technology pushes the boundaries of art. In this collection we see the influence of the camera lucida in the works of the earlier nineteenth century, such as those of Ingres, while later artists such as Degas used the invention of photography to enhance the realism of their works. The bronzes in the Diamond Collection are, likewise, a product of sculptural innovation. Many bronze castings were made utilizing the machine invented by Victor-Henri Lebosse, which enabled the reproduction of sculptures of various sizes. The wide array of works in the Diamond Collection aptly reveal a century of rapid change, as French artists enacted a struggle between tradition and experimentation by maintaining some aspects of the old order through traditional formal training in drawing while simultaneously moving forward with the pace of technology and innovation.