A Century of Grace: 19th-Century Masterworks from the Dahesh Museum of Art, New York

About the Exhibit

May 18, 2007 – August 5, 2007

Celebrating the first anniversary of its new gallery building with a Summer of Masterworks, the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin hosts its first major exhibition of nineteenth-century European masterpieces. A Century of Grace: 19th-Century Masterworks from the Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, opens May 18 and features paintings, sculpture and drawings by such beloved artists as Adolphe-William Bouguereau, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Antoine-Louis Barye, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and Frederic Leighton. The exhibition is organized by the Dahesh Museum of Art in collaboration with the Blanton Museum of Art.

The Dahesh Museum in New York City houses an acclaimed collection of nineteenth-century traditional European paintings. This exhibition of some fifty works explores nineteenth-century ideals of beauty as embodied in realistic depictions of the human figure, and the ways in which traditional artists fought to sustain these ideals in the face of the revolutionary style of impressionism and other modern styles. Grand in scale, rich in detail and highly finished, the objects on view at the Blanton provide an expanded view of nineteenth-century art, which in the minds of many art lovers has become synonymous with impressionism.Among the highlights of the exhibition are such classically inspired paintings as Gérôme’s Working in Marble (1890) and Alexandre Cabanel and Adolphe Jourdan’sThe Birth of Venus (c. 1864); Alma-Tadema’s haunting classical scene The Staircase (1870); and Bouguereau’s striking portrait of The Water Girl (1885). Powerful bronze portraiture, such as Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier’s A Sudanese in Algerian Costume (1856) and Jean-Jacques Pradier’s Standing Sappho (c. 1851) are also included in the exhibition. All of the works are selected to demonstrate the power and beauty of the human figure and its importance in nineteenth-century art.

A Century of Grace: 19th-Century Masterworks from the Dahesh Museum of Art, New York was organized by the Dahesh Museum of Art in collaboration with the Blanton Museum of Art. Presentation at the Blanton is made possible through the generosity of Blanton Museum members. Additional support provided by Stacie and David McDavid and Kit and Charlie Moncrief.

Summer of Masterworks also features Master Drawings from Yale

The Blanton’s Summer of Masterworks also includes the special exhibition Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery June 1-August 12, 2007. The exhibition features a rich array of European drawings from the late fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century by such masters as Gian Lorenzo Bernini, François Boucher, Edgar Degas, Guercino, and Jean-Antoine Watteau, among others.

Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery is organized by the Yale University Art Gallery and funded, in part, through the Florence B. Selden Fund, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce B. Dayton, and Dr. and Mrs. Edmund P. Pillsbury.

The presentation of the exhibition at the Blanton Museum of Art is made possible by the Inman Foundation.