Ashmolean Handbooks S.
1 primary work • 2 total works
Book 19
The Print Room of the Ashmolean Museum is known throughout the world for its Italian and English drawings but it also holds outstanding collections of Netherlandish and French drawings. There are over two thousand drawings by French artists in the Ashmolean. Based on the drawings bequeathed by Francis Douce in 1834, the collection has grown by gifts and purchases to include most of the familiar French draughtsmen from the early 1600s to the end of the nineteenth century. Some artists are represented by dozens of works and there are many rarities. The fifty-two drawings by fifty-one artists in this book have been selected to suggest the quality of the works and to indicate the range and variety of the collection. The choice includes landscapes, figure drawings, portraits and studies for prints and paintings. Most of these are by famous artists - Poussin, Claude, Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Ingres, Degas, Manet and Cezanne are all here - but there are a few equally interesting drawings by artists who are less well known.
Oxford is exceptionally rich in Pre-Raphaelite associations. At various times nearly all the Pre-Raphaelite artists lived and worked in the city. The Ashmolean has one of the finest collections of paintings, drawings and sculpture from this movement. Reprinted 2004.