Tales and Travels is an exhibition of master drawings acquired for the Morgan over three decades with funds provided by the family of Sunny Crawford von Bülow. On view are more than eighty sheets by French, British, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and German draftsmen from the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries.
The selection is unified by a taste largely for drawings of the eighteenth century and encompasses both Rococo and Neoclassical traditions. French masters Antoine Watteau and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and British draftsmen J. M. W. Turner and Samuel Palmer are represented. A particularly cohesive group, many of these drawings are highly finished, colorful, independent works of art. They reflect a devotion to literary and historical subjects as well as a keen interest in landscape both familiar and foreign.
Tales and Travels is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog documenting the works acquired on the fund since 1996. It was written by Kathleen Stuart, Assistant Curator, Drawings and Prints, the Morgan Library & Museum.
Francis Danby (1793–1861)
The Procession of Cristna
Watercolor and gouache, heightened with white gouache, with gum arabic, some scratching out, on vellum
The Pierpont Morgan Library, purchased on the Sunny Crawford von Bülow Fund, 2001.18.