This book is just one component of a comprehensive project which began in 1990 with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Over a period of five years, David Acton, the Museum's Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, evaluated,researched, and catalogued all of the Museum's drawings, reorganizing their storage and coordinating the conservation treatment of many works. This catalogue and exhibition reflect the exciting results of his efforts. He has been able to clarify issues of attribution and subject for many of the Museum's holdings. ...

One of the finest collections of master drawings in America is at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. To celebrate the museum's centennial,the collection's greatest masterpieces of draftsmanship are being exhibited in Worcester, followed by a tour to the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; the Davenport Museum of Art,Iowa; and the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, Atlanta. The same superb works are also published in this magnificent volume.

These one hundred works, in a broad variety of media, are reproduced in full color, each accompanied by a comprehensive essay. They range from a medieval illuminated choir book page; through old masters Rubens, Guercino, Ribera, the Tiepolos,Boucher, Copley, Prud'hon, David, and Rowlandson;nineteenth-century masters Ingres, Millet, Degas,Gauguin, van Gogh, and Homer; modernist masters Kirchner, Modigliani, Sargent, Grosz, Rivera,Marin, Noguchi, and Giacometti; to recent works by David Hockney and Sam Francis--seven centuries in all, the entire spectrum of Western draftsmanship.

In addition, every other drawing in the Worcester collection--a total of 1,400--is listed, providing a rare record of a museum's complete holdings.Master Drawings from the Worcester Art Museum includes an illustrated introductory essay titled "With Pen and Brush--Ink as a Drawing Medium,"a Glossary, References, and Index.

Foreword

Acknowledgments

With Pen andBrush--Ink as a Drawing Medium

 by David Acton and Joan Wright

Master Drawings from the Worcester Art Museum

Notes

Checklist of Further Drawings

Glossary

References

Index