Color, Line, Light

Eugène Delacroix, The Normandy Cliffs, 1849-1852, watercolor and graphite, Dyke Collection. 

At the National Gallery of Art, Color, Line, Light: French Drawings, Watercolors, and Pastels from Delacroix to Signac presents works that illustrate the development of modern draftsmanship during the 19th century in France, a creative period of diversity and inventiveness. 

The exhibition is organized chronologically into five stylistic movements that flourished during the 19th century: Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism, Impressionism, the Nabis and Symbolists, and Neo-Impressionism. The works encompass most types of drawings artists made--compositional sketches, figure studies and finished pieces, as well as a range of subjects--landscape, genre, portraits, and interiors. 

Romanticism in French art thrived during the first half of the 19th century, with Eugène Delacroix, above, as its leading practitioner. Color played an important role in drawings, with watercolor, pastel and colored papers used frequently to heighten the visual effect. Nature was a favorite subject. 

Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, 1901, pastel, Dyke Collection. 

Many Impressionist painters were accomplished draftsmen. Although they drew in a variety of media, pastel allowed them the same degree of freedom as oils. Claude Monet's Waterloo Bridge (1901) shows how effectively and subtly he could express the qualities of light and color with pastels. 

Pierre Bonnard, The Promenade, c. 1893, pen and black ink with black wash and watercolor on paper applied to canvas, Dyke Collection. 

In the late 1880s, a group of French artists calling themselves the "Nabis," after the Hebrew word for prophet, sought to create a new kind of art that was no longer centered on the depiction of reality. Among the founding members of the Nabi brotherhood were Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. Their aesthetic was influenced in part by the Symbolists, who transformed natural objects into dreamlike images.

Édouard Vuillard, The Dressmaker, 1891, pastel, Dyke Collection. 

Paul Signac, Eucalyptus Trees at Antibes, 1910, black ink with watercolor and gouache, Dyke Collection. 

Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac produced brilliantly colored canvases with individualistic results. Relocating to a small town in Provence, his subject matter became focused on the Mediterranean coast. 

Although the tradition of drawing in France was well established by the early 1800s, increasingly in the 19th century drawings became widely valued and exhibited. Their new status was officially recognized when they were given a separate category at the official Paris Salon exhibition. 

On view through May 26 at the National Gallery of Art, on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue N.W.