The Morgan Library & Museum will 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 preeminent 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 drawings, and the connections between the Dutch and other European artistic traditions.
Jan Siberechts (1627–1703), River Landscape with a View of Oxford in the Distance, ca. 1672–90. Pen and brown ink, watercolor, and opaque watercolor over black chalk. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, promised gift of Clement C. and Elizabeth Y. Moore.
Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), A Kitchen Cook, Reading, 1759. Black, white, and red chalk, with smudging, on light brown paper. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, promised gift of Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard.
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, JeanAntoine 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.
Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), Callisto’s Pregnancy Revealed to Diana, ca. 1600. Black and white chalk, with traces of blue and pink chalks. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, promised gift of Clement C. and Elizabeth Y. Moore. Photography by Janny Chiu.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606–1669) Study for “Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver,” ca. 1628–29. Pen and brown ink and gray wash over black chalk. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, promised gift of Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard. Photography by Janny Chiu.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606–1669) SJudas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver,”
“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.”
Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection is organized by John Marciari, Charles W. Engelhard Curator, Department Head of Drawings and Prints, and Curatorial Chair, with the assistance of Sarah W. Mallory, Annette and Oscar de la Renta Assistant Curator, Drawings and Prints.
Liberty to the Imagination: Drawings from the Eveillard Gift is organized by John Marciari and Jennifer Tonkovich, Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of Drawings and Prints. Each exhibition is accompanied by fully illustrated catalogs with new scholarship from a variety of specialists.