Art.view: The mighty pen
A feast of drawings in New York“Old Master drawings offer a special and intimate relationship with artists and their thoughts that paintings cannot provide,” says George Abrams, a prominent Boston-based lawyer. His celebrated collection of 17th-century Dutch drawings began modestly in the early 1960s. (Although he and his late wife gave 110 of their works to Harvard’s Fogg Museum, his walls were not left bare and he continues to buy.) In late January, Mr Abrams was among a band of passionate and astute drawing collectors, curators and dealers in New York. They were lured to the city by a cluster of important events: specialist auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s; selling shows at the 22 galleries participating in “Master Drawings New York” (from January 23rd to the 30th), and the opening of two outstanding exhibitions, “The Drawings of Bronzino” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and “Rome After Raphael” at the Morgan Library. At the Bronzino show, nearly all of his 61 surviving drawings are on view. Amazingly this is the first ever exhibition devoted to the 16th-century Florentine. It was arranged in collaboration with the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which loaned many works including the strong but sombre “Study for a Portrait of a Seated Man” (see slideshow below). At the Morgan Library, the exhibition features works on paper chosen almost entirely from its own world-famous collection, including drawings by Raphael, Michelangelo, Parmigianino and Palma Giovane. ...
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