Prints from the Petit Palais, from Dürer to Toulouse-Lautrec

Five years after The Art of the Pastel from Degas to Redon, the Petit Palais is unveiling a new section of its exceptional graphic arts collection, with two hundred carefully selected from its reserves, which include almost twenty thousand dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau, Clara Roca and Joëlle Raineau-Lehuédé, curators and scientific collaborator in charge of the museum’s titanic graphic arts collection, whose prints make up two-thirds of the sheets in the collection, have put together a fascinating anthology. While a number of specific bodies of work have been presented in recent years - including modern prints from the Vollard and Petiet collections (see article) and gypsographs by Pierre Roche [1] - Never before has the print collection as a whole been given a dedicated exhibition. The all-too-succinct catalogue published for the occasion is a pitiful reference on the subject. Apart from the reproduction of only a third of the works exhibited - many of which are accompanied by notes - the discoveries mentioned in the preface are not explained in the essays.

1. Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669)
The Hundred Guilder Coin, 1649
Etching, drypoint and burin -
34.5 x 46 cm
Paris, Petit Palais
Photo: Paris Musées/Petit
Palais

See the image in its page

2. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)
Nemesis or Great Fortune, c. 1501-1502
Burin - 33.3 x 22.9 cm
Paris, Petit Palais
Photo: Paris Musées/Petit
Palais

See the image in its page

Necessarily drastic, the panel chosen by the three curators is nonetheless perfectly representative of the entire collection. The six centuries of prints conserved, from Dürer to Toulouse-Lautrec, are covered, as the subtitle of the exhibition states, as are the different techniques - etching, drypoint and burin - these "treasures in black and white" to which aquatints and coloured lithographs are added, as the misleading title fails to announce. Two main sections have been defined in terms of the history of the print collection, two main sections for two major players and two founding events. Firstly, the collector Eugène Dutuit and the bequest made by his brother Auguste Dutuit when the Petit Palais opened in 1902, and secondly, Henry Lapauze, the first curator and director of the Petit Palais, who created the "Musée de l’estampe moderne" (Museum of Modern Prints) in 1908. The current graphic arts cabinet owes twelve thousand of its old prints to the former, and three thousand of its modern prints to the latter, brought together through numerous donations. As Annick Lemoine, head of the Petit Palais, points out in the preface to the catalogue, Trésors en noir et blanc should be the first in a series of exhibitions adopting the same historiographical approach for other areas of the collections. It would thus continue the pioneering work undertaken as part of the "Choisir Paris. Les grandes donations aux musées de la Ville de Paris" organised…