Thaw Delivers Masterful Drawing Collection to The Morgan

Degas 1877 litho of outdoor café scene reworked in pastel in 1875.

So many drawings by masters are on the walls in the exhibition galleries at The Morgan that you’ll think that someone shrunk The Metropolitan or The Louvre.

Through January 7, the museum is showcasing some of the top works that benefactor Gene Thaw collected and gave to the Morgan over his lifetime, and it’s astonishing – Rembrandts, Turners, Watteaus, Constables, Tiepolos, Daumiers, Cezannes, Picassos, and even an early Mondrian thrown in for good measure. Modernism on one side, Renaissance and Romantics on the other.

Gene Thaw was an art dealer/collector with a passion for old masters and new. As an example, in the hallway to the show, there’s a charming Hockney 1993 double portrait of dogs that’s as pleasurable as 1830s Delecroix’s sleeping tiger.

Samuel Palmer’s 1828 multimedia drawing with ink, graphite, watercolor, and gum glaze

At the curator walk-through Friday night, people were jammed into the mini-spaces created in each gallery, absorbing every detail of the watercolors, crayon drawings, and pastels from the greatest artists of the Western world. Take a look at our Flickr album at some of our favorites and check out The Morgan’s selected works here.

Gallery goers could not get enough of the English landscape room with the surprising 1828 multimedia drawing by the under-the-radar, Blake-inspired Samuel Palmer that brings an abstracted Kent beech tree and oak to mystical life. Nearby, there’s an 1842 abstracted Turner landscape that drove Ruskin nuts with admiration and excitement.

Turner’s 1842 studio watercolor, The Pass at St. Gotthard, near Faido that Ruskin had to have

The curator told the crowd that when the Morgan enlarged Turner’s little watercolor masterpiece for a ginormous exhibition sign for the wing’s foyer, the team discovered Turner’s thumbprint. The wonders of digitization applied to Romantic visionaries!

In the same gallery, another innovation was on display – Casper David Friedrich’s 1808 experiment in illusion and installation art. Apparently, Friedrich’s mysterious nightscape had its full Moon cut out so a candle could be lit behind the drawing for drawing-room audiences. When the candle flickered, it illuminated the mini-flecks of gold paint on the trees so they appeared bathed in moonlight.

Sketch by Vincent Van Gogh in 1888 letter to Paul Gaugin

Across the foyer, there’s another jam-packed area dedicated to 19th and 20th century works, with a revealing and slightly sinister series by Redon. And it’s a highlight to (again) see Thaw’s collection of Van Gogh’s letters to Bernard and Gaugin – personal diaries and drawings of his approach to his colorful masterworks.

Some visitors said they had come back several times because the profusion of work was too great to be absorbed in one visit. Sort of like the Met’s concurrent show of Michelangelo drawings.

Take a look at The Morgan’s tribute to this amazing collector in the video below. If you can’t get to the show before January 7, you can click through and listen to the Morgan’s audio tour here.