PREMIERE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF GERMAN DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLORS FROM THE AGE OF GOETHE TO BE EXHIBITED AT THE SACKLER

Cambridge, Massachusetts-The traveling exhibition Fuseli to Menzel: Drawings and Watercolors in the Age of Goethe will be on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum from April 4 through June 7, 1998. Organized by the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fuseli to Menzel consists of eighty German drawings from the years 1750-1850. The works have been selected from one of the world's premiere private collections of drawings from this period, assembled by the Munich lawyer Alfred Winterstein (1898-1976). Exceedingly rare in the private and public collections of the United States, these drawings and watercolors will afford the viewer an opportunity to study major works from one of the greatest periods of German art. The exhibition curator and author of the accompanying catalogue is Hinrich Sieveking, curator of the Winterstein Collection. The organizers of the exhibition at the Harvard University Art Museums are William W. Robinson, curator of drawings, and Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator, Busch-Reisinger Museum. The Sackler Museum is located at 485 Broadway.

Goethe's life (1749-1832) spanned an era of intellectual, social, economic, and political transformation. The turn of the century marked the transition from a fragmented political landscape composed of innumerable princely courts to a world in which the middle class bid for its share of power and Prussia emerged as the state that would eventually take the lead in German unification. Goethe lived through the Enlightenment and secularization, absolutism and constitutional monarchy, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic occupation and the Wars of Liberation, Restoration, Sturm und Drang, romanticism, and Biedermeier. The changes in the lives and consciousness of the people of his time found expression in a multitude of artistic trends that narrow stylistic terms such as rococo, neoclassicism, and realism cannot begin to define.

The period's outstanding cultural achievements came in the areas of music, philosophy, and literature. The affinity between the visual and literary arts in Germany around 1800 has often been noted. That historians refer to the entire era as the Age of Goethe, after its preeminent writer, attests to the literary foundation of its culture, and a literary iconography and sensibility inform much of the visual art of the period. Drawing was the essential medium of artistic expression in Germany in the Age of Goethe. Many artists are known primarily as draftsmen. To an unprecedented degree, drawing assumed an autonomous role, as an end in itself, and many sheets in the exhibition were produced and collected as independent works of art.

Goethe's artist contemporaries belonged to several different generations, from Daniel Chodowiecki (born 1726) to Adolph Menzel (died 1905). They stand, respectively, at the beginning and the end of this epoch in the German-speaking lands, and are included in this exhibition with representative works. Consummate draftsmen like Caspar David Friedrich, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and Johann Georg von Dillis, will also be represented, as will scissor cut-outs by Philipp Otto Runge and architectural studies by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Leo von Klenze.

In his finished drawings, tightly executed in wash or watercolor, Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), the greatest landscapist of the period, conveyed a profound melancholy or spiritual mood. His watercolor The Source of the Elbe in the Riesengebirge, c. 1830, depicts the desolate mountain meadow where the source of the Elbe River emerges from the ground. The image invites quiet contemplation of the wild beauty of the spot as well as reflection upon its significance as the origin of a mighty river. His sepia wash drawing Entrance to a Chamber in the Convent Church of the Holy Cross near Meissen, c. 1835-37, depicts a doorway leading from a dark room to sunlit churchyard. Like many of Friedrich's works, it conveys more or less explicit allusions to transience, death and rebirth.

Adolph Menzel's (1815-1905) watercolor drawing, Choir of the Former Abbey Church in Berlin, c. 1838, is one of many by the artist on this subject done in the 1830s. In numerous pencil sketches he recorded the remnants of old furnishings, such as choir stalls, baroque epitaphs set into the walls, and medieval booty. In the sheet to be exhibited, he used watercolors in a kind of mixed technique with a pastel effect, a prelude to his later fondness for gouache. Painted when Menzel was only 22, Choir of the Former Abbey Church already shows an original, willful, and totally effortless handling of a technique he tried and tested on his own. The approach would remain characteristic of Menzel, with his love of experimentation and his unconventional, technically innovative working process.

Découpage, or silhouette, in its essential characteristics-reduction to a single color and the pure outline-overlaps with basic artistic trends of the period around 1800, the era of neoclassicism and romanticism. The découpage signified a fundamental creative principle in Philipp Otto Runge's (1777-1810) work. In his individual plant cut-outs, such as Rose, Thistle, Pear, Runge was able to capture the natural and living image of a flower. He also combined its structure and disposition with a nearly heraldic abstraction, which seems to impart to the individual plant the primeval character of its genus.

Fuseli to Menzel has been well received in Germany where it has been on display in three locations: Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, Weimar, Germany; Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany; and Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, Gemany. The exhibition will travel to The Frick Collection, New York, New York, and The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California.

Fuseli to Menzel has been made possible by the generous support of Merck, Finck & Co., Privatbankiers, a member of the Barclays group, with additional support 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 UniversityThe 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
with Hinrich Sieveking, curator of the Winterstein Collection, Munich.

Thursday, April 9, 3:00 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
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.

Catalogue
Fuseli to Menzel: Drawings and Watercolors in the Age of Goethe
Hinrich Sieveking
The catalogue features 80 drawings and watercolors by 49 artists, including Henry Fuseli, Friedrich, Menzel, Runge, and Schinkel. Each work is reproduced in color and interpreted in its art historical context. Essays survey aspects of German drawing during the period, and trace the development of the collection formed by the Winterstein family in Munich. This volume is the most comprehensive publication on this subject available in English. 9 7/8 x 12", 169 illustrations, 93 in color, (April)
ISBN 0-916724-97-2 (paper) $35, retail, wholesale cloth distribution by Prestel.

Complementary Exhibition at the Busch-Reisinger Museum

Classicism-Romanticism-Realism: German Drawings from Mengs to Menzel in the Harvard University Art Museums
April 4 through June 28, 1998
Organized to coincide with 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. German drawings from this period have not been comprehensively collected by the large public museums in the United States, and Harvard's holdings rank among the finest in this country. The foundation of the collection was laid exactly 100 years ago with the gift in 1898 of the collection formed by John Witt Randall, which included important works by Franz Horny, Adrian Ludwig Richter, and Adrian Zingg. Although German drawings were a minor interest of the great collector and Harvard benefactor Grenville L. Winthrop, the Winthrop bequest, received in 1943, included a work by Henry Fuseli and several outstanding drawings and gouaches by Adolph Menzel. Additional works, including fine examples by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Philipp Otto Runge, and Joseph Anton Koch were purchased in 1985, largely through the generosity of Melvin R. Seiden. The bequest in 1997 of a Menzel drawing from the collection of Rudolf and Lore Heinemann completes a century of collecting in this area. The exhibition includes works by Anton Raphael Mengs, Caspar David Friedrich, Ferdinand Kobell and Franz Kobell, as well as by Fuseli, Koch, Runge, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Horny, Richter, and Menzel. Classicism-Romanticism-Realism is organized by William W. Robinson, curator of drawings.

Major Paintings by Caspar David Friedrich and Adolph Menzel on Loan
In conjunction with the drawings exhibitions, Fuseli to Menzel: Drawings and Watercolors in the Age of Goethe and Classicism-Romanticism-Realism: German Drawings from Mengs to Menzel in the Harvard University Art Museums, outstanding paintings by the two most important German artists of the nineteenth century will be displayed in the gallery of the Busch-Reisinger Museum.

Caspar David Friedrich's 1822 masterpiece Moonrise on the Sea has been loaned by the Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
Adolph Menzel's The Petition (1849) has been loaned by Galerie Arnoldi-Livie in Munich.

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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