Description
The aim is to establish a dialogue between the drawings in the Louvre, from the collection of Charles-Paul-Jean-Baptiste de Bourgevin Vialart de Saint-Morys, and the paintings in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, from the collection of Pierre-Louis Eveillard de Livois. The tour begins by evoking the personalities of the collectors, the Parisian Saint-Morys and the Angevin Livois.
The highlight of the exhibition is the comparison of seventy drawings from the Musée du Louvre with twenty paintings from the Musée des Beaux-Arts. This confrontation is organized around themes that reflect the collectors' tastes: a love of the old French masters (Parrocel, Coypel, de Troy, Lemoyne), an interest in everything from history painting to exoticism (Van Loo, Le Prince), a reunion of the subjects of the time (Watteau, Lancret, Pater, Lallemand, Wille, Chardin) and admiration for contemporaries (Greuze, Deshays, Fragonard, Robert).
The final space features a drawing workshop for visitors and a display of some 50 18th-century drawings from the Musée des Beaux-Arts. Collected by artists and amateurs in the 19th century, these graphic creations reveal the spirit and art of the period, from great painters and lesser masters to sculptors, architects and landscape artists.
