The Salon du Dessin 2024 is now open

As it does every year, the Salon du Dessin has reopened its doors in the Palais de la Bourse, an intimate setting that has served it so well and transformed the French capital into the undisputed leader in the world of graphic art, especially as it is now accompanied by its counterpart for prints, which we will also be talking about.

1. Niccolo Ricciolini (1687-1757)
Marcus Curtius Throwing Himself into the Abyss, c. 1750
Pen and brown ink wash, black chalk - 38 x 52 cm
Galerie Tarantino
Photo: Galerie Tarantino

See the image in its page

As usual, the sheer number of works on display means that our tour of the exhibition is necessarily brief; of course, it cannot replace an actual visit to the Salon, which we encourage all our readers to do until Monday, the last day of this fine fair.
This time it will be chronological, taking all schools together, and necessarily partial, especially as this year we have only selected sheets from the 18th-century and 19th-century, with a foray into the 20th century.
We will begin with a very fine drawing (ill. 1) by a Roman artist from the first half of the Settecento, Niccolo Ricciolini. This sheet, which depicts Marcus Curtius throwing himself into the abyss with a very lively pen, is accompanied by a second, smaller sheet by the same artist and with the same subject, showing two different stages in the preparation of a painting dating from around 1750. The artist was active in Rome and strongly influenced by Francesco Trevisani, whose niece he married.

2. Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805)
The Departure for Nursing
Sanguine, black chalk, pen and Indian ink, grey wash, white gouache highlights - 41.5 x 53 cm
Galerie Coatalem
Photo: Galerie Coatalem

See the image in its page

At Éric Coatalem, Le Départ en nourrice is a composition by Greuze for a scene for which another preparatory study is kept in the Louvre’s Department of Graphic Arts. This is a later stage in its development, since…