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Clark Art: First-Ever Exhibition of 18th Century French Drawings

Name: Clark Art: First-Ever Exhibition of 18th Century French Drawings
Start: 2023-01-28T10:00:00-05:00
End: 2023-01-28T17:00:00-05:00
Location: Clark Art Institute

Arts and Culture

January 28 | 10:00 am - 5:00 pm

|Recurring Event (See all)
An event every week that begins at 10:00 am on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, repeating until March 12

on Sundays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays

The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) is a vast and encyclopedic library collection, so extensive that some areas of its holdings have yet to be fully explored. In partnership with the BnF, the Clark Art Institute opens the first exhibition ever presented of the National Library of France’s eighteenth-century French drawings. The exhibition, Promenades on Paper: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, includes a selection of eighty-four studies, architectural plans, albums, sketchbooks, prints, and optical devices that expand our understanding of drawing as a tool of documentation and creation in the age of Enlightenment. These extraordinary works of art span the domains of natural history, current events, theater design, landscape, and portraiture. Displayed together, they immerse audiences in the world of eighteenth-century France—a world shaped by invention, erudition, and spectacle. Works by celebrated artists of the period such as François Boucher and Gabriel de Saint-Aubin are featured alongside exquisite drawings by unexpected practitioners, including female printmakers, royal children, and visionary architects.