Doings at the Morgan...
The Morgan Library & Museum is pleased to present Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection, on view June 28 through September 22, 2024, and Liberty to the Imagination: Drawings from the Eveillard Gift, on view June 7 through October 6, 2024. These two exhibitions, tied to promised gifts, celebrate the Morgan’s one hundredth year as a public institution.
Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection presents a selection of over eighty drawings from the promised gift of Clement C. (Chips) and Elizabeth Y. Moore; Liberty to the Imagination: Drawings from the Eveillard Gift, celebrates the promised gift of twenty-eight exemplary drawings from the collection of Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard. The works span from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.
Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection showcases a selection from one of the pre-eminent private collections of Dutch drawings in America. The exhibition is grouped thematically to highlight the principal themes of Dutch art, the various functions and techniques of Dutch Jan Siberechts (1627–1703), drawings, and the connections between the Dutch and other European artistic traditions. Works by Hendrick Goltzius, Jacob de Gheyn, Jan Brueghel, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Peter Lely, Claude Lorrain, Thomas Gainsborough, and John Constable are among those featured.
The works in Liberty to the Imagination: Drawings from the Eveillard Gift exemplify the sense of wonder that underlies the Eveillards’ collecting practice. Describing it, Betty Eveillard has quoted the eighteenth-century French philosopher, Denis Diderot: “Perhaps we find sketches so attractive only because, being somewhat indeterminate, they allow more liberty to our imagination.” The installation includes significant sheets by Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean- Antoine Watteau, Jean Baptiste Greuze, John Constable, Eugène Delacroix, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard and more, including many rarely seen drawings.
Highlights from Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection include Goltzius’s Callisto’s Pregnancy Revealed to Diana (ca. 1600), a rare and important chalk drawing by the artist, a study by Rembrandt for the Hundred Guilder Print, and Thomas Gainsborough’s Wooded Landscape with Shepherds, Sheep, and Cottages (ca. 1760–63).
Highlights from Liberty to the Imagination: Drawings from the Eveillard Gift include a compositional study for Rembrandt’s first masterpiece, Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver, Greuze’s virtuoso depiction of a young cook made for his friend, the engraver Johann Georg Wille, and Delacroix’s intimate portrait of Jenny, his confidante and caretaker.
“This summer, the Morgan is delighted to present two exhibitions in celebration of extraordinary promised gifts given in honor of our centennial year,” said Colin B. Bailey, the Katharine J. Rayner Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “We are immensely grateful to Chips and Liz Moore and to Jean-Marie and Betty Eveillard for their longstanding support of our institution and honored that they chose the Morgan as the future home of their remarkable collections of drawings, which range from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. The Morgan’s holdings are in many ways a collection of collections, shaped by individuals beginning with J. Pierpont Morgan himself and continuing through these new promised gifts.”
Sarah Mallory, Annette and Oscar de la Renta Assistant Curator of Drawings and Prints, will discuss details central to our understanding of these works and the seventeenth-century context in which they were created. Insights into environmental and colonial histories, ongoing wars of religion and state, and life for women in the Dutch Republic provide a lens for close looking and may resonate with modern viewers today. This lecture takes place in Gilder Lehrman Hall on the Ground Floor. Doors to the Hall open 30 minutes before the program begins, and seating is on a first come, first served basis. Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection can be viewed before the program. Free admission begins at 5 PM.
For more information contact Noreen Khalid Ahmad at (917) 805-4128 or nkahmad@themorgan.org.
