Transformative works on paper by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist innovators Best known for their superlative oils on canvas, Degas, Cézanne, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and their contemporaries also regularly used paper as a base for their works. They experimented with materials including watercolor, gouache, pencil, ink and the temperamental pastel. The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists often found working on paper to be a better conveyance of the fluctuating surroundings they sought to capture. Their practices transformed the status of these works from preparatory studies left in the studio to works of art in their own right. Indeed, prints and drawings were hung alongside oil paintings in all eight canonical Impressionist exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886. At the last of these, Degas exclusively exhibited pastels on paper. This sumptuous collection of some 70 works on paper, exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, includes sketches for well-known masterpieces such as George Seurat's figure of a youth for The Bathers at Asnières (1883) to scenes with no known painted counterpart such as Van Gogh's Entrance to the Pawn Bank, The Hague (1882). Insightful texts by Royal Academy curators and experts in 19th-century European art explore three topics: the artistic development of the Impressionists through their works on paper; the role of drawing in arts education; and commercial innovations to artist's materials that made paper a more popular option. The catalog is arranged chronologically from the 1860s to the 1900s, charting the rapid progress of techniques and subject matter. The bold innovations of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists challenged traditional attitudes and radically transformed the future direction of art, ultimately paving the way for later movements such as Abstract Expressionism.

The Burrell Collection in Glasgow houses more than twenty paintings, pastels, and drawings by Edgar Degas (1834-1917) that include his most recognisable motifs: ballet dancers, bathers, jockeys, and women at work. Together with a selection of the National Gallery's oils and pastels, they represent every stage of Degas's career. The authors show how the immediacy of these works is enhanced by the artist's energetic technique. These are not so much spontaneous sketches as daring experiments in form and color. Essays explore Degas's innovative use of pastels; his career and the ongoing critical assessment of his art; and the life and milieu of his contemporary Sir William Burrell, the wealthy Scottish shipping magnate and philanthropist, for whom forming this impressive collection of Degas's works was an unusual foray into contemporary art. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery, London (09/20/17-April 2018)

This volume is a survey of the remarkable quality and range of the Cleveland Museum of Art's collection of French drawings, one of the best such collections in the United States Nineteenth-Century French Drawings explores the history of this medium, and chronicles the remarkable part it has played throughout the past decades at the Cleveland Museum of Art. There are works by such iconic artists as Honoré Daumier, Berthe Morisot and Auguste Renoir, a luminous coloured pencil study by symbolist artist Alexandre Séon and a group of "noir" drawings--named for their use of varied black drawing media--by Henri Fantin-Latour, Albert-Charles Lebourg and Adolphe Appian, among others. Entries illuminate the role of drawing within 41 artists' works and five essays by leading scholars shed new light on the making and collecting of drawings in France during this extraordinary period. In nineteenth-century France, drawing expanded from a means of artistic training to an independent medium with rich potential for experimentation. A variety of new materials became available to artists, encouraging figures ranging from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres to Paul Cezanne to reconsider drawing's place within their practice. Public and private exhibition venues increasingly began to display their works, building an audience attracted by the intimacy of drawings and their unique techniques and subjects.