From the Renaissance onwards France produced draughtsmen of the highest calibre, whose work combined innovation with elegance and refinement.The remarkable achievements of the French artistic tradition are illuminated in a selection of four centuries of master drawings from the collection of the British Museum. The earliest sheets are rare examples of portraiture and designs for palace decoration commissioned by the French court in the sixteenth century. The British Museum also boasts a rich representation of the major masters of the Baroque, such as Jacques callot, Nicolas Poussin and claude Lorrain...

From the Renaissance onwards France produced draughtsmen of the highest calibre, whose work combined innovation with elegance and refinement.The remarkable achievements of the French artistic tradition are illuminated in a selection of four centuries of master drawings from the collection of the British Museum. The earliest sheets are rare examples of portraiture and designs for palace decoration commissioned by the French court in the sixteenth century. The British Museum also boasts a rich representation of the major masters of the Baroque, such as Jacques callot, Nicolas Poussin and claude Lorrain. The Enlightenment period is exemplified by brilliant draughtsmanship from the sparkling Rococo trois crayons sheets of Antoine Watteau to the coolly elegant Neoclassical drawings of Jacques-Louis David.Enriched by the de Hauke bequest, the nineteenth-century holdings touch upon the high points of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, from Degas to Cezanne to Seurat, in whose work rebellion and innovation often drew nourishment from the art of the past.

PERRIN STEIN is a curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,specializing in French drawings of the ancien regime. She was co-author of Eighteenth-Century Fren& Drawings in New York collections (1999). She has contributed to numerous collection and exhibition catalogues, and written articles for the Burlington Magazine, Master Drawings and other scholarly journals.

MARTIN ROYALTON-KISCH is a curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. His books include Adriaen van de Venne's Album, Drawings by Rembrandt and his Circle in the British Museum, The Light of Nature: Landscape Drawings by Van Dyck and his Contemporaries and Rembrandt the Printmaker, which he edited and co-authored.

FOREWORD

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

MARTIN ROYALTON-KISCH

CATALOGUE

PERRIN STEIN

NOTES TO THE CATALOGUE

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX OF ARTISTS

GENERAL INDEX