| The European and American prints and drawings collection, which comprises more than 1,700 drawings and 9,500 prints, is the most substantial in Canada and among the finest in North America. Notable both for its excellence and diversity, the collection represents all the major schools from the fifteenth century to the present day.
The National Gallery collects prints above all for their artistic merit, but it also endeavours to assemble a representative selection of a particular printmaker's work. It is only through an analysis of a significant part of an artist's production that we are able to follow his personal and stylistic evolution and to appreciate the full range of his graphic expression. For example, the Gallery now owns over one hundred works by M.C. Escher, which were donated by his son, George A. Escher. The Gallery has also acquired a large number of nineteenth-century French prints with the specific intention of illustrating the development of such print techniques as lithography.
For its somewhat smaller drawing collection, the Gallery is fortunate to acquire from time to time the preparatory sketches for works of art already in its possession. Among the most remarkable is a pen-and-ink drawing entitled Nude Woman with a Staff (c.1501-03) by Albrecht Dürer(1471-1528), which was a preliminary study for the figure of Eve in the engraving The Fall of Man (1504). Also part of the collection is a final study (discovered in 1984 and acquired by means of a Canadian government grant) for the celebrated painting The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West (1738-1820). This famous historical subject inspired the drawing by Louis-Joseph Watteau (1731-1798) entitled The Death of Montcalm (c.1783), which forms a fascinating pendant to Wolfe's work.
In addition to these well-known works are a number of large sets or suites of prints, as well as important individual drawings. One of the highlights from the Italian School is the complete set of Carceri (Prisons) in both states by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778). By comparing the first state (c.1745) to the second (c.1760), one can see the evolution of the etchings in the added detail and in the dramatic reworking of light and shade. Another outstanding work is the important Italian Renaissance print by Antonio Pollaiuolo (1432-1498), Battle of Naked Men (c.1470). A delightful drawing by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), An Encounter during a Country Walk (c.1791), which was a gift of Mrs. Samuel Bronfman in honour of her late husband, represents the wit and charm of the eighteenth century.
The Spanish collection is notable for its print series by Francisco Goya (1746-1828), including the complete Caprichos (1797-99), the Disasters of War (1810-20), and the Tauromaquia (1815-16). Another highlight is the Vollard Suite (1930-37) by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), one hundred prints of classical and mythological subjects featuring the sculptor, his model, and the minotaur, where the artist illustrates a favourite theme, the human body, in particular the female body. Picasso's deeply moving Weeping Woman (1937) reveals yet another, expressionistic aspect of his printmaking.
Among the most important prints from the Flemish School is the Iconography (c.1625-41) by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), a series of 292 portraits, some of them etched by the artist himself, representing contemporary humanists as well as artistic and political celebrities. From the Dutch School, some thirty works by Rembrandt (1606-1669) reveal this great master of graphic art at his finest, including the pen-and-ink drawing The Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch (c.1652-55), the well-known print The Three Trees (1643), and the etched portrait Jan Lutma, Goldsmith (1656).
The collection is particularly strong in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century English drawings and in French nineteenth-century prints. Memorable selections from these schools include Oak Trees, Shoreham, Kent (c.1828) by English watercolourist Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) and the Large Bathers (1896-c.1898), a lithograph with watercolour by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906).
The modern Russian School has taken on a new importance in the collection with the acquisition of the suite of colour lithographs Daphnis et Chloé (1957-61) by Marc Chagall (1887-1985), part of a collection of over 550 Chagall prints donated by Félix Quinet in memory of Joseph and Marguerite Liverant.
The United States is represented principally by artists who have been at the heart of the major movements of modern art, among them Pop artists Jim Dine (b.1935) with his portfolio of collages and silk-screens A Tool Box (1966), and Andy Warhol (1928-1987) with his silkscreen series Flash - November 22, 1963 (1968) and Mao Tse-tung (1972). The Gallery also owns Study for "Woman I" (c.1952) by Willem de Kooning (1904-1988), a drawing of considerable importance in the history of Abstract Expressionism.
The fine reputation that the collection enjoys today is due in large measure to Kathleen Fenwick, its first curator. Throughout a long career at the Gallery, she encouraged the development of the prints and drawings department and by her judicious and discriminating acquisitions endowed it with a core of master works. Succeeding curators have successfully built on and expanded her legacy. Specific works from the collection may be viewed by appointment in the Prints, Drawings, and Photographs study room in the curatorial wing. |
