ARTISTS
Pure Drawing: Seven Centuries Of Art From The Gray Collection
One of America’s foremost art dealers, Richard Gray, along with his wife, the art historian Mary L. Gray, amassed over the course of nearly 50 years a remarkable collection of drawings representing 700 years of Western art.
Focusing on key periods and places—15th- to 18th-century Italy, 17th- to 20th-century France, 17th-century Holland, and 20th- and 21st-century America—the Grays sought out works of the highest quality, defined by beauty, visual power, and boldness of execution.
For the Grays, the endless and myriad attempts by artists across centuries to render the human form, and by doing so to comment upon the human condition, were of profound importance, indeed a kind of humanistic endeavor. This endeavor was that much more effective, the Grays believed, when expressed through the probing medium of drawing, the most immediate, exploratory, and intimate of art forms.
Recommended for you
One of America’s foremost art dealers, Richard Gray, along with his wife, the art historian Mary L. Gray, amassed over the course of nearly 50 years a remarkable collection of drawings representing 700 years of Western art.
Focusing on key periods and places—15th- to 18th-century Italy, 17th- to 20th-century France, 17th-century Holland, and 20th- and 21st-century America—the Grays sought out works of the highest quality, defined by beauty, visual power, and boldness of execution.
For the Grays, the endless and myriad attempts by artists across centuries to render the human form, and by doing so to comment upon the human condition, were of profound importance, indeed a kind of humanistic endeavor. This endeavor was that much more effective, the Grays believed, when expressed through the probing medium of drawing, the most immediate, exploratory, and intimate of art forms.
Artists on show
- Annibale Carracci
- Canaletto
- Charles Le Brun
- David Hockney
- Edgar Degas
- François Boucher
- François Lemoyne
- Georges Seurat
- Giorgio Vasari
- Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
- Henri Matisse
- Jackson Pollock
- Lelio Orsi
- Nicolas Poussin
- Pablo Picasso
- Paul Cézanne
- Peter Paul Rubens
- Vincent van Gogh
- Wassily Kandinsky
- Willem de Kooning
Contact details
Related articles
Highlighting one of the most important gifts in the history of the Prints and Drawings department, Pure Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection brings together more than 100 works from celebrated art dealer Richard Gray and art historian Mary L. Gray.
A glittering Kandinsky and a splashy Pollock. A handful of Tiepolos. A Jacques-Louis David of Roman soldiers.
As part of the reopening celebration, Illinois residents can enjoy free admission through August 3.
There’s a whole lot of local entertainment options to enjoy online and in person in the week ahead.
What's on nearby
