From Manet to Picasso: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Prints & Drawings

This exhibition explored the mediums and subjects used by Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. The first gallery was devoted to etchings, pure drypoints, and monotype. As an outgrowth of the etching revival of the 1860s, etching and its variants (drypoint, aquatint, etc.) and, sometimes, monotype were employed by the Impressionists and artists linked with them. They used these mediums to make prints that, in part, evoked atmospheric and momentary effects. The middle gallery was given to lithographs and woodcuts. Many modern artists sought to apply more structure to the art of the Impressionists. These Post-Impressionists included the Nabis ("prophets"), artists who evolved their modernist, flat paintings and prints from the synthetism of Gauguin and Bernard at Pont-Aven in Brittany. They were part of the symbolist movement of the 1890s, in which artists and writers suggested feelings and states of mind rather than clearly evoking or depicting the outside world. Lithography and woodcut clearly dominated these artists' prints. The last gallery exhibited drawings in a number of mediums. One sees that both Impressionists and Post-Impressionists made drawings as preliminary studies for later works, as complete, finished works, or, simply, as records of scenes caught by the "eye."

The exhibition was organized by the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center and received the generous support of the Friends of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Exhibition Endowment Fund.