Over the past decade one of the most important and comprehensive private American collections of early French drawings has been assembled. Mastery and Elegance presents a selection of 115 works dating from the early 17th to the early 19th century by approximatley 70 artists. In addition to remarkable drawings by well-known draftsmen such as Poussin, Lorrain, Watteau, Fragonard, and David, the book includes superb examples of the work of lesser-known figures.

These two works cover essentially the same period in distinct ways. Both catalogs were written by staff at the sponsoring institution, but the Harvard publication has fuller discussions, a better-developed critical apparatus, and a broader scope than the Met's. As the catalog of one privately formed collection, Harvard's work has a unity of vision in its contents, while the Met's combines well-known drawings held by various institutions with many less familiar sheets from private collections. Harvard's catalog is arranged by artist's birth date, the Met's chronologically and thematically. Plates in both titles are very good. Although both books would work well in most public and academic art history collections, the Met catalog would be more appropriate for the general reader at a public library. The Harvard catalog, which contains excellent indexes of former owners, artists' subjects, and the like, is better suited to the serious academic researcher in a university.AJack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Lib.

Director's Foreword

James Cuno

Homage to a Collector & a Plea for Research

Pierre Rosenberg de l'Academie francaise

Preface & Acknowledgments

Alvin L. Clark, Jr.

List of Contributors

Academicism & Anti-Academicism: Drawing in France in the

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Alain Merot & Sophie Raux-Carpentier

On Some Collectors of Eighteenth-Century French Drawings

in the United States

Marianne Roland Michel

An Interview with Jeffrey E. Horvitz

William W. Robinson & Alvin L. Clark, Jr.

CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION

Notes to the Catalogue

Biographies of Artists in the Exhibition

Alvin L. Clark, Jr., with the assistance of Anne R. Leonard

Appendix of Other Early French Drawings in the Horvitz Collection

Alvin L. Clark, Jr., with the assistance of Patrick Murphy

Index of Former Owners

Index of Subjects

Index of Cited Drawings

Index of Artists

Alvin L. Clark, Jr., with the assistance of Anne R. Leonard

Bibliography

Illustration Credits