Paper, Color, Line

This handsome catalogue will shine a spotlight on the Wadsworth Atheneum’simpressive collection of European drawings, watercolors and pastels. It featuresrenowned artists, including Courbet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Schiele, Klee, Miró andPicasso, and includes fresh scholarship.The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art’s rich collection of European drawings,watercolors and pastels is little-known and rarely seen. Since the mid-nineteenthcentury, the museum has acquired by purchase and gift a diverse group ofnearly 1,250 European drawings of impressive quality. Paper, Color, Line: European MasterDrawings from the Wadsworth Atheneum showcases some sixty highlights on view for thefirst time in decades.This long-overdue exhibition is a unique survey of artists working in drawing mediaover a span of more than five hundred years. The museum’s holdings are particularlystrong in works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Renowned drawingsby Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec are included in thisexhibition, as well as highlights by Egon Schiele, Paul Klee and Joan Miró. The collectionis distinguished by its theatrical designs, particularly those linked with the BalletsRusses, with contributions by Pablo Picasso, Léon Bakst and Natalia Goncharova.Significant works from the Renaissance to the Rococo by artists such as Giorgio Vasari,Carlo Maratti and Jean-Baptiste Greuze emphasize the timeless appeal of drawing andwill complement the overview.The catalogue of the exhibition will be the first catalog devoted to Europeandrawings at the Wadsworth Atheneum. It will present fresh research on the objects aswell as on the history of collecting European drawings at the museum. The catalogueis written by Oliver Tostmann, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art at theWadsworth Atheneum.