Dahesh Museum of Art580 Madison AvenueTel (212) 759-0606
The Dahesh Museum of Art is proud to present Charles Bargue the Art of Drawing, the first exhibition ever devoted to the gifted artist who revolutionized the teaching of draftsmanship. Generations of late 19th-century art students, including Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, made active use of a series of 197 lithographs created by a little-known French artist, Charles Bargue (1826/27–1883). Bargue, hugely talented and probably self-taught, first published the exquisite collection of plates called the Cours de Dessin in Paris with Goupil & Cie between 1868 and ca. 1871. Goupil connected Bargue with one of their best-selling artists, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and together they published and sold thousands of these teaching manuals. Young artists copied plates in sequence in order to perfect their drawing skills. Charles Bargue: The Art of Drawing, features a magnificent selection of lithographs from the Cours de Dessin on loan from the Musée Goupil, Bordeaux; a selection of Bargue’s extremely rare oil paintings, jewel-like works that were highly prized by major collectors in both Europe and the United States; and a selection of his most significant drawings.