Skip to main content
Home

Main navigation

  • Visit
  • Exhibitions & Events
  • Art & Design
  • Search

Visit Main Menu Block

  • Hours & Admission
  • Accessibility & Amenities
  • Tours & Group Visits
  • Visitor Guidelines

Exhibitions and Events Main Menu Block

  • Exhibitions
  • Events

Art and Design Main Menu Block

  • The Collection
  • Projects & Publications
  • Past Exhibitions

Footer Main

  • Become a Member
  • Give
  • Who We Are
  • Opportunities
  • Rent the Museum

Introduction

French Drawings in the Time of Degas

August 19, 2005 - January 22, 2006

This selection of 19th-century French drawings complements the exhibition Edgar Degas: Six Friends at Dieppe (September 17 through January 15). Although that show focuses on one exceptional pastel portrait, it also highlights the Museum's rich holding of other of Degas's works and points to the strong 19th-century French drawing collection as a whole.

Degas (1834-1917) was an outspoken advocate for the independent presentation of contemporary art based on modern life. He helped to organize what became known as the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and planned many of the seven shows that followed (the last of the series occurred in 1886). The artists involved did not wish to define themselves as a specific school or style, but Degas's suggestion of "independents, realists, and impressionists" probably came closest to describing the many new directions in French art beyond the academic tradition of the official Salons. Degas considered himself a realist.

In his role as a major participant in the Impressionist exhibitions, as an artist who was highly regarded by those who understood advanced art, and as an engaged collector, Degas had many opportunities to study the creations of his contemporaries. His interest in the artists whose work is on view here reflected his lifelong passion for drawing and his constant desire to reexamine and refine his own methods and results.

This exhibition is dedicated to Eliza G. [Metcalf] Radeke and her niece, Helen Metcalf Danforth, the donors of the majority of works on display here and of most of the Degas drawings on view in the Granoff Galleries. These remarkable women were not only benefactors, but also the presidents of RISD's Board of Trustees (1913-31 and 1931-47, respectively). Both contributed to many areas of the institution and to the Museum's collection, but French drawings were their passion.

The Museum is grateful for the assistance of Mario Pereira (graduate student in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University) in organizing this exhibition.

Selected Objects

Thomas Couture

Head of a Bishop, ca. 1856

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Skating Professional Beauty (Edouard Dujardin and Liane de Lancy at the Palais de Glace), 1896

Maurice Chabas

Illustration to Baudelaire, ca. 1900

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen

Géomay, 1889

James Tissot

Croquet, ca. 1878

Eugène Carrière

Landscape in the Orne, ca. 1901

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon

Study of a Nude Youth, ca. 1800-1817

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Landscape with Nymph, ca. 1856

Mary Cassatt

Mother Pulling on Baby's Stocking, ca. 1890

Henri Fantin-Latour

Rinaldo, ca. 1877-78

Léon-Augustin Lhermitte

Path in the Grain Field, ca. 1890

Mary Cassatt

Antoinette's Caress, ca. 1906

Édouard Manet

Mlle. Victorine in the Costume of an Espada (Victorine Meurent), 1862

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

At the Circus: Bareback, 1899

Honoré Daumier

Collectors at the Salle Drouot, ca. early 1860s

Camille Pissarro

Woman with a Wheelbarrow, ca. 1882

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Study for Moorish Bath, ca. 1874

Paul Gauguin

Studies of Heads and Hands, ca. 1884-1885

Gustave Doré

Tavern in Whitechapel, 1870

Jean-François Millet

Returning from Market, early 1850s

Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Géricault

The Organ Grinder, ca. 1820

Théodore Chassériau

Portrait of Léopold Burthe, 1846

Hippolyte-Jean Flandrin

Religieuse, 1837

Attributed to Berthe Morisot

Study of Mother and a Child, 1800s

Paul Cézanne

The Card Player, ca. 1890-1892

Odilon Redon

Head of the Virgin, after 1900

More objects +

Exhibition Checklist

French Drawings in the Time of Degas

August 19, 2005 - January 22, 2006
View Checklist PDF

RISD Museum

  •  Facebook
  •  Twitter
  •  Instagram
  •  Vimeo
  •  Pinterest
  •  SoundCloud

Footer Main

  • Become a Member
  • Give
  • Who We Are
  • Opportunities
  • Rent the Museum

Footer Secondary

  • Image Request
  • Press Office
  • Rent the Museum
  • Terms of Use