Hill-Stead Museum is offering, for the first time, a comprehensive show of prints in it collection. “Wonders Revealed: Rarely Seen Original Prints by Degas, Goya and Others from Hill-Stead’s Collection” opens to the public on Friday, January 8, and continues through March 31. The exhibition offers visitors the opportunity not only to see works of art rarely shown to the public, but also to experience the prints on permanent view in a much more in-depth way than is afforded on the standard tour.
Spanning 400 years, Hill-Stead’s print collection represents styles ranging from Italian Renaissance to the American etching revival, and inspires an even greater appreciation for the eye of Alfred Pope, the man responsible for amassing the famed Impressionist works for which Hill-Stead is best known.
Among the stars of this print exhibition are selections from “The Disasters of War” by Francisco Goya, “Vingt Dessins” by Edgar Degas, “An Alphabet” and “London Types” by William Nicholson and original woodblock prints by Harunobu, Utamaro, Hokusai and others. As a bonus, five Degas bronzes, on loan from an anonymous donor, will be displayed with the drawings on which they were based.
In making selections for “Wonders Revealed,” curator Melanie Anderson Bourbeau was immediately inspired by the limited edition portfolio “Vingt Dessins (Twenty Drawings)” by Edgar Degas, an album that has never been shown at Hill-Stead except by special appointment in the archives, where it is kept. Degas hand selected the drawings to be reproduced by color heliograph for the portfolio, and signed all 100 albums in the edition, published in 1898 by art dealer Michel Manzi.
Pieces from “Vingt Dessins,” as well as from the Nicholson portfolios and from the collection of Japanese woodblock prints, will be rotated each month throughout the three-month exhibition, so art enthusiasts should be sure to visit the show multiple times throughout its duration, said Anderson Bourbeau
Hill-Stead Museum is at 35 Mountain Road. For information, www.hillstead.org or 860-677-4787.
