ART MUSEUMS TO CELEBRATE 100 YEARS OF COLLECTING CENTRAL EUROPEAN DRAWINGS WITH EXHIBITION

Released: March 19, 1998

Cambridge, Massachusetts-The special exhibition Classicism-Romanticism-Realism: German Drawings from Mengs to Menzel in the Harvard University Art Museums will be on display at the Busch-Reisinger Museum from April 4 through June 28, 1998. Organized to coincide with the loan exhibition Fuseli to Menzel: Drawings and Watercolors in the Age of Goethe, this exhibition will present forty-three drawings from German-speaking Central Europe, dating between 1770 to 1880, from the permanent collection of the Art Museums. While modest by the standards of German museums or private collections like the one from which Fuseli to Menzel has been selected, Harvard's holdings of drawings from this period rank among the most comprehensive in North America. The works to be exhibited illustrate the major stylistic changes in German art from the neoclassicism of the later eighteenth century to the romantic revolution and early realism of the nineteenth, and they include drawings by some of principal exponents of these trends, such as Anton Raphael Mengs, Henry Fuseli, Joseph Anton Koch, Franz Horny, and Adolph Menzel. In addition to complementing Fuseli to Menzel, the exhibition celebrates a century of collecting Central European drawings at Harvard. Classicism-Romanticism-Realism is organized by William W. Robinson, curator of drawings.

In 1892 Belinda L. Randall (1816-1897) donated to Harvard College the art collection formed by her brother, John Witt Randall (1813-1892) of the Harvard class of 1834. Along with his fifteen thousand prints, Randall had assembled some six hundred drawings. In 1898, when it was transferred from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to the new Fogg Art Museum, the Randall gift effectively established Harvard's drawing collection. About 245 of the Randall drawings belong to the German school, and most of these date from the period 1750-1850. While in terms of artistic quality many of the Randall drawings are decidedly mediocre, the collection does include several eighteenth- and early-nineteent-century German works that are of more than passing interest.

One of the outstanding German drawings from the collection is Adrian Zingg's topographical masterpiece View of Dresden, c. 1788, in which the veduta-precisely rendered, but removed to the middle ground and distance-is seamlessly combined with a richly detailed foreground landscape and a huge expanse of sky. Zingg later served as professor of landscape at the academy in Dresden, one of the major capitals of German art and culture during the period, and his pen and wash drawings exercised a decisive influence on Caspar David Friedrich and other romantic artists working there.

Franz Horny's (1797-1824) View of Olevano, exemplifies German romantic art at its highest level. Arriving in Rome in 1817, Horny studied with Joseph Anton Koch and joined the circle of German artists around Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Horny eventually settled in Olevano, in the hills east of Rome, and many of his works depict the scenery around the dramatically situated hill town. The site inspired other landscapists, including Koch, who first discovered its artistic possibilities, and Schnorr, and it remained a favorite subject for German artists throughout the nineteenth century. The Fogg's splendid double-sided sheet, originally in the collection of Horny's patron Baron Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, is a characteristic example of his mature pen and wash technique, which is indebted to that of Schnorr's landscape drawings.

German works comprise a mere fraction of the great collection of nineteenth-century drawings bequeathed to the Fogg Art Museum in 1943 by Grenville L. Winthrop. Despite his limited interest in German art, Winthrop owned nine drawings by Adolph Menzel, which likely makes him one of the first American collectors to appreciate the peerless draftsmanship of the great Berlin realist.

Four of Winthrop's Menzel drawings will be exhibited. They range from a satirical rendering of Johann Gottfried Schadow's statue of the eighteenth-century Prussian General Leopold von Anhalt-Dessau, made in 1852 as a gift for the author Theodor Fontane, to the exquisite gouache, In the Park, 1875, to a rare pen drawing, intended for illustration in the 1878 Gazette des Beaux-Arts, in which Menzel copied the head of a worker from his masterpiece, the painting The Iron Rolling Mill, 1878. A conversation piece depicting an imaginary gathering of four great German intellectuals-Jean Paul, Schiller, Goethe, and Herder, who all lived in Weimar between 1798 and 1800-epitomizes Menzel's abiding passion for eighteenth-century culture and history. Winthrop also bequeathed to the Fogg the dramatic composition Agamemnon Pursuing a Trojan near the Tomb of Ilos by Henry Fuseli, a drawing datable to ca. 1768-70, before the Swiss artist settled in Britain.

Thanks primarily to the generosity of Melvin R. Seiden, in 1985 the Fogg's drawing curator Konrad Oberhuber purchased a group of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Central European drawings, adding several notable works to those in the Randall collection. Among the earlier sheets in this group, the red-chalk likeness of Guillaume Wieling by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein exemplifies the type of sober, classicizing profile portrait preferred by many bourgeois sitters during the Zopfzeit (pig-tail period) of the 1770s and 1780s. The neoclassical history painter Anton Raphael Mengs is

represented by a pen-and-ink composition sketch for one of his most prominent commissions, the Lamentation of Christ, 1765-68, ordered by the Spanish king Charles III to hang in his bedroom in the Royal Palace in Madrid.

Two large, finished pen and wash compositions by Joseph Anton Koch, St. Martin Offering His Cloak and Umbrian Landscape, rank with Horny's View of Olevano as the Art Museums' outstanding German drawings of the early nineteenth century. Both represent Koch's mature style of circa 1820, in which he accommodated the classical landscape tradition of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin to the depiction of a more rugged, mountainous, and specifically characterized scenery.

The 1985 purchase also brought to the Art Museums the pen drawing Ruth and Naomi Traveling to Bethlehem by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. One of the most brilliant draftsmen of the nineteenth century, Schnorr belonged to the Brotherhood of St. Luke, also known as the Nazarenes, the association of German and Austrian artists who settled in Rome and aspired to renew religious painting by returning to early Renaissance models. One of the Nazarenes' cherished projects, initiated as a collective enterprise, but completed single-handedly by Schnorr over a period of thirty-five years, was the production of a comprehensive cycle of Bible illustrations. Ruth and Naomi of 1825 is an early drawing for this project. It was reproduced, with some changes in details, as one of the 240 wood-engraved plates in Die Bibel in Bildern (The Bible in Pictures), published in Leipzig between 1852 and 1860, the culmination of Schnorr's life-long effort.

Finally, works by the two leading masters of the romantic movement in Germany also entered the Museums with the 1985 purchase: a sheet of sketches by Caspar David Friedrich, Landscape Studies, and two of Philipp Otto Runge's exquisitely refined cut-outs, one of oak leaves and one of lily of the valley.

The acquisition of large groups of drawings in 1898, 1943, and 1985 has been supplemented by individual gifts and purchases. In 1979 Kurt Meissner presented the characteristic landscape with a picturesque tree study by the Swiss artist Friedrich Salathé, and the 1997 bequest of Lore Heinemann enriched the department's Menzel holdings with a study of a woman in seventeenth-century Dutch costume that was preparatory for an illustration in a commemorative edition of Heinrich von Kleist's play Der zerbrochene Krug.

During the last decade, a few drawings from this period have been acquired with the Department of Drawing's modest purchase funds. They include a charming study of plants by Zingg, the serene View of Sorrento by Carl Wilhelm Götzloff, and The Kidnapping of the Saxon Princes by Theobald Reinhold Freiherr von Oër, a work that exemplifies the historicist trend in romantic art.

Classicism-Romanticism-Realism: German Drawings from Mengs to Menzel in the Harvard University Art Museums will be accompanied by a gallery guide, published with a generous grant from The Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum.

RELATED EVENTS

M. Victor Leventritt Lecture and Symposium
German Art and Culture in the Nineteenth Century

Saturday, April 4, 9:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Arthur M. Sackler Museum lecture hall, 485 Broadway, Cambridge
Free, Complimentary parking at the Broadway Garage on the corner of Felton Street and Broadway

The symposium will present a group of internationally-renowned art historians who will address aspects of nineteenth-century German art and culture. Caspar David Friedrich, the leading figure in the development of German romanticism; the Nazarenes, German history painters in Rome; the pastoral tradition in the nineteenth century; and the establishment of Munich and Berlin as artistic capitals in Germany will all be examined in this one-day symposium.

Morning session: 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Joseph Koerner, professor of fine arts, Harvard University
Beginnings and Ends: The Drawings of Caspar David Friedrich

Ernst Osterkamp, professor, Institute for German Literature, Humboldt University, Berlin From the Nibelungenlied to Goethe's Faust: Literary Themes in German Romantic Art

Henri Zerner, professor of fine arts, Harvard University
The Modern Pastoral in the Early Nineteenth Century

Afternoon session: 2:00-5:00 p.m.
Hinrich Sieveking, curator of the Winterstein Collection, Munich, and guest curator of the exhibition Fuseli to Menzel: Drawings and Watercolors in the Age of Goethe Aspects of Nazarene Draftsmanship

Michael Fried, professor of humanities and the history of art, The Johns Hopkins University
Menzel's Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Berlin

Peter-Klaus Schuster, director, Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Munich and Berlin Around 1900

The M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Fund was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard class of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and greater Boston communities.

Gallery talks
Gallery talks are free with the price of admission to the Art Museums. Hearing assists are available for gallery talks; arrangements should be made beforehand by phoning (617) 495-8286. To request a sign language interpreter, the public should call (617) 495-2397 using Massachusetts Telephone Relay Service 1-800-439-2370 three weeks in advance of the gallery talk.

Sunday, April 5, 3:00 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
Fuseli to Menzel, with Hinrich Sieveking, curator of the Winterstein Collection, Munich.

Thursday, April 9, 3:00 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
Fuseli to Menzel, with Hinrich Sieveking, curator of the Winterstein Collection, Munich.

Saturday, April 25, 11:30 a.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
Fuseli to Menzel, with Jeffrey Fontana, Lynn and Philip A. Straus Intern, Department of Drawings.

Saturday, May 2, 2:00 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
Fuseli to Menzel, with William Robinson, Curator of Drawings.

Sunday, May 3, 2:00 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
Fuseli to Menzel, with Jeffrey Fontana, Lynn and Philip A. Straus Intern, Department of Drawings.

Sunday, May 10, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
Classicism-Romanticism-Realism, with Anneliese Harding, Art Museums Docent

Sunday, May 17, 2:00 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
"German Romantic Drawings in the Time of Goethe and Beethoven," with Anneliese Harding, Art Museums Docent

Sunday, May 24, 2:00 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
Fuseli to Menzel, with Patrick Murphy, M.A. candidate in art history, Tufts University

Saturday, June 6, 11:30 a.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
"German Romantic Drawings in the Time of Goethe and Beethoven," with Anneliese Harding, Art Museums Docent

Sunday, June 14, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
Classicism-Romanticism-Realism, with Anneliese Harding, Art Museums Docent

Concert
Luise Vosgerchian, Walter M. Naumburg Professor of Music, emeritus, will present the height of romanticism as revealed in the dazzling piano music of Robert Schumann.
Sunday, April 26, 5:30 p.m.
Fogg Art Museum
Tickets will be sold at the door only. $7; $5 Harvard students and staff and senior citizens.
Doors open one half hour before concerts begins. For further information, please call (617) 495-4544.

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The Harvard University Art Museums' facilities are wheelchair accessible. For general information, please call (617) 495-9400. For press information or photographs, please contact Kate McShea Ewen at (617) 495-2397. For more information on events, please contact the Friends, Fellows, and Special Programs Office at (617) 495-4544. World Wide Web: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

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The Harvard University Art Museums comprise three museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum), all located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, MA, at the intersection of Quincy Street and Broadway, adjacent to Harvard Yard. The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and on Saturday mornings. For special tour reservations, please call (617) 496-8576. General tours are offered Monday through Friday from September through June. The Fogg tour is at 11:00 a.m.; the Busch-Reisinger tour is at 1:00 p.m.; and the Sackler is at 2:00 p.m.

The Harvard University Art Museums is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. -end