Fogg Museum

Woman Seated by an Easel, c. 1884-1888, Georges Pierre Seurat, Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum. More.

In addition to their monumental works, many Renaissance artists designed interior furnishings and decorative objects. Michelangelo's Goldsmith's Designs in the Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum Department of Drawings is a superb example of a drawing for such a purpose — a group of studies for oil lamps, created using black chalk on beige paper. Until 20 years ago the drawing was mounted to another sheet and its back (verso) was not visible. At the request of a Michelangelo scholar, who noticed the faint trace of a sketch through the mount, the drawing was lifted from the mount to reveal a study for the planned, but never built, Magnifici Tomb for the Medici Chapel. The drawing, whose context had always been something of a puzzle, could now be dated to 1520–21 through its connection to the well-documented Magnifici Tomb plans.

While such art historical discoveries do not occur every day, the inquiry and engagement inspired by drawings like the Michelangelo are typical in the museum's Department of Drawings, whose holdings are unmatched in depth and quality among university art museums in the United States. The collection includes 12,000 works from the 14th century to the present, and offers students, scholars, and visitors a comprehensive survey of the history of Western art. The drawings range from hasty sketches to carefully finished studies, executed in traditional materials such as chalk, graphite, ink, watercolor, and pastel, as well as unconventional media like wax, mud, tape, and soap bubbles.

Highlights of the Collection

— American drawings: These comprise nearly half the collection, which is particularly rich in works by Washington Allston, Winslow Homer, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and John Singer Sargent. Early 20th-century modernists are represented by Charles Demuth, John Marin, and Charles Sheeler, among others. The department has extensive holdings of drawings by Morris Louis, drawings by Christopher Wilmarth, along with his archive, and the papers (many illustrated) of Stuart Davis.

— Italian drawings: 15th- and 16th-century works include drawings by Pietro Perugino, Michelangelo, and Jacopo Pontormo.

— Northern drawings: Highlights include sheets by Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Pieter Bruegel, Jacques de Gheyn II, and Rembrandt.

— French drawings: The Fogg's collection of 17th-century French drawings is the most comprehensive in North America, and includes works by Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, and Simon Vouet and his circle. The 18th century is represented by Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and large groups of works by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Jacques-Louis David.

— 19th-century French and British drawings: Thanks to the bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, the Fogg is well known for its 19th-century French and British paintings and drawings. The museum's holdings of drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres are unrivaled outside of France. Other French drawings of the 19th century include works by Théodore Gericault, Eugène Delacroix, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The museum's collection of drawings by William Blake, John Ruskin, and Aubrey Beardsley is among the best in the world. The Fogg is one of only two American museums where one can view an outstanding group of works by the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones.

— Other collection strengths: Notable groups of works in the collection include watercolors, metalpoint drawings, sculptors' drawings, 18th-century French pastels, sketchbooks, and works by contemporary American minimalists.

Department of Drawings

William W. Robinson, Maida and George Abrams Curator of Drawings
Miriam Stewart, assistant curator
Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Jeffrey E. Horvitz Research Curator
Susan Anderson, curatorial research associate for Dutch and Flemish Drawings
Michael Dumas, staff assistant