The famous Louvre Museum in Paris will open on the 9th of March 2007 a rich exhibition dedicated to French drawings, presenting a careful selection from the rich collection assembled by Philippe de Chennevieres (1820 - 1899), a former curator at the Louvre. The exhibition "The Chennevieres Collection - Four Centuries of French Drawings" will be a splendid history of the French art of drawing, starting in the 1500's and ending in 1860.
Philippe de Chennevieres was a true art expert, and carefully gathered almost four thousand drawings, made by French masters and little known artists, trying to build a complete image of how this art developed and grew in his country. Unfortunately, despite his best effort to donate this collection to the French governement, after the death of Chennevieres the collection was dispersed. It was a great chance that the collector had carefully catalogued these works in more than three hundred pages, written shortly before his death. Based on this impressive and detailed catalogue, researchers and art dealers have managed to recover most of the drawings, over the course of more than three decades. Now the Louvre Museum is presenting many of these drawings in a carefully designed exhibition. In addition to the exhibition, the three hundred pages are printed in a beautifully illustrated catalogue, in order to present how Chennevieres chose and understood his pieces.
This unique and interesting exhibition will stay open until 7th of June 2007.
February 2007
