The Morgan Library & Museum

The Latin munera (or mvnera, as the Romans spelled it) refers to the gladiatorial contests that took place in ancient Rome, often involving wild animals that were eventually slaughtered. In this drawing, in contrast with earlier depictions that emphasize lions’ ferocity, Walton Ford shows the animal recoiling in fear in the elevator shaft that brings him to the arena.

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Walton Ford (b. 1960)
Study for “Mvnera,” 2018
Graphite and white pencil on light brown paper
The Morgan Library & Museum, gift of the artist, 2019.231. © 2024 Walton Ford. Photography by Janny Chiu.

It’s giving drama! Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, even if you accidentally imitate the wrong artist – as in the case of this drawing from 1830. In the nineteenth century, Jacob’s Dream, a painting at the Dulwich Art Gallery, was among the most beloved “Rembrandts” in England—although the work is now considered the work of his pupil Aert de Gelder.

In 1830–31 Constable helped select works from Dulwich to be sent to the Royal Academy for study, and it was probably then that he executed this copy. The dramatic use of tone, bold brushwork, and an abstract approach to landscape also connect this sheet to a small group of brooding wash drawings from the 1830s. The thick ink has damaged the paper, but the sheet is a powerful testament to the lasting importance of Dutch models for English art.

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John Constable (1776–1837), after Aert de Gelder (1645–1727) Jacob’s Dream, ca. 1830. Pen and brown ink and wash. The Morgan Library & Museum, Promised gift of Clement C. and Elizabeth Y. Moore. Photography by Janny Chiu.

This work by Auguste Renoir, "Bathers" is a preparatory drawing for The Great Bathers (1884-87, Philadelphia Museum of Art), one of the most ambitious and labor-intensive paintings Renoir produced and item 63 of our 100 Centennial Collection Highlights.

In the early 1880s, Renoir became dissatisfied with the approach of his fellow Impressionist artists both to creating paintings and to exhibiting and marketing their work in independent exhibitions. In the same period, he first visited Italy and was struck by the techniques of the fresco paintings he saw in Pompeii and Rome. As a result, he began to seek greater rigor and structure in his own work, often emulating the sharp outlines and dry surface of fresco, and turned increasingly to drawing to develop his compositions.

After initially producing a full-scale drawing and an oil sketch of the Great Bathers composition with three figures, probably in the fall of 1886, Renoir then focused on just the left-hand and central bathers. The Morgan's drawing is likely the first of two large studies in red and white chalk, in which he has drawn a more robust figure in the center than that in the initial sketch and tested different placements of her left arm, showing it either at her side or bent at the elbow and partially raised. In fact, the area of white chalk above this figure's shoulder, which Renoir seems to have added sometime in 1908, also covers traces of her arm reaching upward for a tree branch, as in his initial sketch. For the final painting the artist changed this figure's pose yet again, showing her drying herself with a towel.

A gift from the estate of prominent philanthropist and long-time Morgan Trustee Drue Heinz (1915–2018), Bathers is the first major compositional study by the artist to enter the Morgan’s collection, enriching the holdings of drawings by artists associated with the Impressionist movement.

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Auguste Renoir, 1841-1919, Bathers, 1884-1885. 2018.71 (after treatment 2018), recto. The Morgan Library & Museum, Bequest of Drue Heinz. 2018.71. Photography by Graham S. Haber.

Have you been keeping up with the Morgan Blog? This summer, learn about Rev. John Pierpont, who has been called the poet of the abolition movement. He was also a staunch defender of the temperance movement and a believer in Spiritualism. Erica Ciallela, Exhibition Project Curator for "Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian's Legacy," digs into his progressive and forward-thinking work by analyzing his papers held here at the Morgan. The Morgan archives are home to the papers of Rev. Pierpont, who was J.P. Morgan's maternal grandfather.

Check out Erica's series of blog posts on Rev. Pierpont at the link in our bio!
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1. The Reverend John Pierpont [photograph], ca 1857–1866. Photographic print; 4 x 2 1/2 in. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; ARC 1197.21
2. This Fratricidal War by Rev. John Pierpont. November 1, 1861. The Morgan Library & Museum; Arc 726 Box 13 Folder 7.
3. Undated Spiritual Communication, John Pierpont Papers, Morgan Library & Archives; ARC 726

The assemblage of the Read Persian album was begun by Husain Khān Shāmlū, governor of Herat, Afghanistan (r. 1598–1618), and possibly continued by his son and successor, Hasān Shāmlū (d. 1646). The album’s twenty-seven sheets, many of whose paintings were made in Herat itself, were originally bound in accordion style; today the sheets are preserved individually and are #62 of our 100 Centennial Collection Highlights.

In 1911 Pierpont Morgan purchased two albums -- one Persian, the other Mughal -- from Sir Charles Hercules Read, a collector-curator who was then Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities at the British Museum in London. The acquisition of these two albums proved to be an important turning point in the history of the Morgan Islamic collection.

Belle da Costa Greene, Morgan’s librarian at the time, accompanied by art historian and collector Bernard Berenson, first saw paintings from the albums at the great exhibition of Islamic art in Munich the previous year. The huge exhibition “Meisterwerken muhammedanischer Kunst” (Masterpieces of Muhammedan Art) consisted of hundreds of objects in all media lent by scores of institutional and private owners. Quite taken by the images from Read’s collection, Greene wrote to him that they were among the finest works included in the Munich show. Deciding that these important schools of painting should be represented in her employer’s collection, Greene asked Read, should he be willing to part with the albums, to give Morgan the right of first refusal.

The Persian album includes paintings of noble youths attending their falcons (a popular subject during the late sixteenth century), young men flexing bows (one of the exercises practiced by Persian athletes at the time), foppishly dressed young dandies, lovers, and numerous examples of fine calligraphy.

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Qurʾanic leaf from the Read Persian album, Probably from the Deccan region (Golconda), India, Late 16th cent. MS M.458.34. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.458.34. Photography by Graham S. Haber.

In the words of artist Walton Ford, Antoine-Louis Barye's "drawings and watercolors are exquisite tours de force. The bold, stylized, graphic landscapes that appear to be completely from his imagination seem more contemporary than they are. This tiger looks as if he’s sitting in the set of the Ballets Russes’ Afternoon of a Faun (1912). Though Barye painted this watercolor sometime around 1840, it fits in comfortably with Léon Bakst’s much later set and costume designs for the famed ballet company."

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Antoine-Louis Barye
French, 1796 –1875
Lion in Repose in a Landscape, 1850s
Watercolor over black chalk
The Morgan Library & Museum, Bequest of John S. Thacher; 1985.32. Photography by Steven H. Crossot.

Tears of a clown... Vaslav Nijinsky’s portrayal of the doomed puppet in Petrouchka was one of his most striking and beloved roles. Igor Stravinsky wrote, “to call [Nijinsky] a dancer would only be half of the truth, because to an even greater degree he was a dramatic actor. His face, not classically beautiful but fine and expressive, could turn into a mask, a mask which impressed me more than any other actor’s mask I have ever seen. In the part of Petrouchka he has created the most pathetic image that has ever appeared before me on the stage.”
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Dover Street Studios (London, active ca. 1906–12) Vaslav Nijinsky as Petrouchka, [1911], no. 2054 Library of Congress, Ida Rubinstein Collection

Man or shadow? Seurat drew the solid volumes of his subjects with layered, scumbled strokes of crayon on rough paper. Although somewhat painstaking in their distinctive ex*****on, these drawings feel almost voyeuristic—cursory views of bodies in public places that capture the anonymity of urban life. In this early example, Seurat conjured the pathos of a figure through the rounded stoop of his back, suggesting age or exhaustion. Clad in worker’s clothes, the man was perhaps a laborer at the factories in the industrial area northwest of Paris around Asnières and Courbevoie, where Seurat was based around 1884.

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Georges Seurat (French, 1859–1891) A Man Walking Seen from Behind, ca. 1884. Black Conté crayon on Michallet paper. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, promised gift of Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard. Photography by Janny Chiu.

The Morgan Library & Museum is now accepting applications for current students to participate in our College Ambassador program. As an ambassador, students will promote the Morgan not only as a museum and library, but also as a place for research, education and entertainment. Students will promote and spread awareness of the Morgan on their respective campuses and social media platforms. This is a paid opportunity with a stipend available, and the duration is from September 2024 to May 2025.

This opportunity is open to undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled at Columbia University/Barnard, New York University, Fordham University, The Fashion Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute, Pace University, Sarah Lawrence, CUNY Graduate School, Baruch, Brooklyn College, City College, Guttman, Grad Center, Hunter College, Lehman College, Macaulay Honors College, and Queens College with interest in a relevant area of study or background.

To apply: submit by August 23rd your linkedin profile (or current resume), a letter of interest and links to your social media presence to [email protected].

The Morgan's lavishly illustrated Livre de la chasse, our next Centennial Collection highlight, was made in Paris about 1407, as was a sister manuscript today in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Of the 46 surviving Phoebus manuscripts, these two are the most magnificent.

Hunting was an important part of medieval life. Kings and noblemen were expected to excel and take pleasure in the pursuit. Some famous hunters wrote books on the subject, whereas others collected and commissioned them. Gaston III, Count of Foix (1331–1391), called Phoebus because of his golden hair or handsome features, wrote his hunting book late in life (between 1387 and ‘89), sharing his knowledge in a field in which he claimed supremacy, unlike in his two other pleasures in life, arms and love. The work, dedicated to his fellow hunter and warrior Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy (1342–1404), comprises 4 books: On Gentle and Wild Beasts; On the Nature and Care of Dogs; On Instructions for Hunting with Dogs; and On Hunting with Traps, Snares, and Crossbow.

This manuscript may have been commissioned by Philip the Bold's son, John the Fearless (1371–1419), as a gift for Louis d'Orléans (1372–1407). If so, it would date before 23 November 1407, when Louis was assassinated in Paris. Years later it fell into the hands of a duke of Brittany, probably Francis II (r. 1458–1488), who added his arms on folio 4. Before 1492 it was acquired by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who added their magnificent full-page arms to the book (folio 1v).

In 1928 Dr. Rosenbach of Philadelphia bought the book from Thomas Fenwick, heir of Sir Thomas Phillipps, the "vellomaniac," for £10,000, and offered it to J. P. Morgan, Jr. There is no evidence that Fenwick ever offered it to Pierpont Morgan, but Morgan might well have been interested. Morgan was a breeder of collies, and in 1893 he entered ten collies in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden, winning the silver cup for the best collie, Sefton Hero.
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The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.1044, fol. 38v and 41r. Image courtesy of Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz/Austria.

Although going to the Morgan’s historic library and study may feel like stepping back in time, the books housed inside are certainly not gathering dust! While beautiful on display, these rare books and manuscripts are actively consulted by readers conducting research in the Sherman Fairchild Reading Room. One of our Reading Room librarians, Katie Graves, regularly pages materials from the East, West, and North Room’s shelves by ascending secret staircases hidden behind them and unlocking their ornate cabinet doors.

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1: One of our Reading Room librarians, Katie Graves, on the third level of the East Room. Photography by Katelyn Landry
2: Hidden staircase in the East Room. © The Morgan Library & Museum, Photography by Graham S. Haber, 2017
3: Hidden bookshelf doors in the West Room. © The Morgan Library & Museum, Photography by Janny Chiu, 2024
4: One of our Reading Room librarians, Katie Graves, paging materials from the second level of the East Room. Photography by Katelyn Landry

The incredible Prayer Book of Anne de Bretagne has a compelling story behind the beautiful craftsmanship. The manuscript was commissioned by Anne de Bretagne to teach the dauphin, Charles-Orland, his catechism. Inherited by her daughter Claude de France and used as a model ca. 1515 for the Primer of Renée de France, Claude's younger sister (Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, MS Lat 614=a.U.2.28). This special Prayer Book is #60 of our 100 Centennial Collection Highlights.

Details of folio 31r shows a youth, probably representing Charles-Orland, kneeling, his hands joined and raised in prayer towards God the Father; behind the youth is a throne.

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1: Prayer book of Anne de Bretagne, 15th century. Illuminated manuscript on vellum, MS M.50, fol. 10v. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.50, fol. 10v. Photography by Graham S. Haber.

2: Prayer book of Anne de Bretagne, 15th century. Illuminated manuscript on vellum MS M.50, fol. 31r. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.50, fol. 31r. Photography by Graham S. Haber.

Moths and butterflies and bugs, oh my! Artist Herman Henstenburgh never left the Dutch harbor town of Hoorn, where he worked as a baker, draftsman, and painter, but he encountered insects from faraway places. Hoorn, the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company, was flush with flora and fauna, living and preserved, gleaned from colonial exploits around the world.

In the center of this watercolor is the green-banded urania moth (Urania leilus), from South America. To its right is the crimson-speckled footman moth (Utetheisa pulchella), native to Europe, North Africa, and Western and Central Asia. To the left of the urania is possibly a wasp moth (Euchromia folletii), found throughout Africa, and a smaller gray and brown moth.

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Herman Henstenburgh (1667–1726) Four Moths, Including a Green-banded Urania (Urania leilus), ca. 1686. Watercolor and opaque watercolor, over black chalk. The Morgan Library & Museum, Promised gift of Clement C. and Elizabeth Y. Moore. Photography by Janny Chiu.

In 1925 Marcelin Flandrin, who became a pioneer of aerial photography, produced the last visual record of a North African lion in the wild. As Ford recounts it, Flandrin “was in a plane going from Casablanca to Dakar and saw a lion walking in a canyon down below him, and he took a photograph of it, which he sold as one of his postcards.” In his imaginary depiction of the event, Ford adopts the lion’s viewpoint, showing the biplane passing overhead and Flandrin’s orientalist postcards fluttering down.
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Walton Ford (b. 1960)
Study for “La dernière image” (The last picture), 2018
Watercolor and ink over graphite
The Morgan Library & Museum, gift of the artist, 2019.226. © 2024 Walton Ford. Photography by Janny Chiu.

Feeling blue? Alexandre Benois’s contribution to Petrouchka was fundamental, and he is accurately credited as its coauthor alongside Igor Stravinsky. He merged the composer’s initial inspiration, Petrushka, with Pierrot, the sad clown with a painted face and pointed hat, from the Italian commedia dell’arte tradition—all reinterpreted through a Symbolist lens. The central character, the forlorn puppet in unrequited love with the Ballerina, becomes a Pierrot, remaining “Petrouchka” in name only. The story evokes a place and time that Benois loved: St. Peterburg’s old-fashioned “Butter Week Fair” in the 1830s, seen in this stage design for the first scene. Tamara Karsavina, who created the role of the Ballerina, wrote that Benois did not “merely [reconstitute] an epoch, but invested it with weird, irresistible power over one’s imagination.”
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Alexandre Benois (1870–1960)
Set design for the “Butter Week Fair” for Petrouchka, scene 1, 1911
Graphite, tempera, and watercolor on paper
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1933.402. Photography by Allen Phillips. © 2024. Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Beautiful by nature. Auguste Renoir began to use watercolor regularly in the mid-1880s but executed only one hundred or so examples before crippling arthritis forced him to abandon the medium. This pair of landscapes likely dates from the first half of the 1890s, when Renoir and his family traveled to several coastal sites in Brittany.

Although these watercolors bear some relationship to views seen in other works, they are focused more on effects of light and atmosphere than details of specific places. The circular stain at the lower left of Trees at the Edge of a Lake was probably left by a bottle of water, which Renoir must have rested on the edge of the paper: these were informal works, probably only signed years later when he sold the watercolors to the dealer, Ambroise Vollard.

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1. Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919) Trees at the Edge of a Lake, ca. 1890–95. Watercolor. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, promised gift of Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard. Photography by Janny Chiu.

2. Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919) Clouds over a Lake, ca. 1890–95. Watercolor. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, promised gift of Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard. Photography by Janny Chiu.

Between 1880 and 1884, Georges Seurat created about four hundred drawings, in which he developed some of the major tenets of neo-impressionism. Rejecting the emphasis on line drawing that dominated his academic training at the École des beaux-Arts, he elaborated a technique based on contrast, in which forms are not defined by contour lines but by differences in tone and value with neighboring areas. In the present work, the next item of our 100 Centennial Collection Highlights entitled "Nurse with a Child", the figure stands out against the background through a series of light and dark contrasts.

The figure of the nurse, who appears frequently in Seurat's drawings (de Hauke 1961, 486-88 and 630) is recognizable by her bonnet with long ribbons in the back, the attribute of the Parisian wet nurse of the second half of the nineteenth century (the original title of this drawing was Le Bonnet à rubans, or "The Bonnet with Ribbons.") Wet nurses played a major role in Parisian social life of the time and were a common sight in the city's public parks. According to F***y Faÿ-Sallois (1980, p. 244), "Like the elevator and electric light, the services of a living wet-nurse become a decisive element in bourgeois comfort, and a visible and flattering mark of wealth."

Seurat was no doubt attracted to the geometric design and contrasting tones of their uniform, but there may also be a social dimension in his choice of the subject. These working-class women belong to the same category as the peasants, street vendors, laundresses, and other workers to whom Seurat was drawn. Inspired by the naturalist movement of the mid-nineteenth century, he expressed in his drawings his sympathy for ordinary men and women, whom he removed from the harsh realities of everyday life by endowing them with an aura of mystery and poetry.

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Georges Seurat, 1859-1891. Nurse with a Child's Carriage. Verso: Woman standing, arms extended 1882/84, 1997.89 Conté crayon on Ingres paper. Thaw Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 1997.89. Photography by Graham S. Haber

Our latest catalogue, “Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection,” offers a fine-tuned view into one of the preeminent private collections of Dutch drawings in the US.

Edited by John Marciari and Jane Shoaf Turner and copublished with Paul Holberton Publishing, this lavishly illustrated hardcover demonstrates the extraordinary breadth of the Moore Collection with a selection of around eighty works that highlight the principal themes of Dutch art, including landscapes and seascapes that feature the meeting of land and water.

In the fourth image, Hendrick Avercamp’s (Dutch, 1585–1634) rare watercolor “Shipwreck in a Storm” from circa 1630 depicts an aspect of the Netherlands’ perpetual relationship with the sea: a scene of confrontation between man and nature. Other featured artists include Jacob de Gheyn, Jan Brueghel, Peter Paul Rubens, and Rembrandt, among many others.
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Photography by Carmen Gonzàlez Fraile. Copublished by the Morgan Library & Museum and Paul Holberton Publishing, “Far and Away” is available at the Morgan Shop or through the link in our bio.

One of Degas' principal concerns as a draftsman was analyzing the movements and gestures of the female body. This work "Three Studies of a Dancer (drawing)" is just one example, and holds place #59 of our 100 Centennial Collection Highlights.

The three studies on this sheet depict the teenage dancer Marie van Goethem and were produced in preparation for the scandalous, but now celebrated, sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; 1999.80.28). Modeled in colored beeswax, the sculpture was briefly exhibited at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in the spring of 1881, where the artist's inclusion of a fabric bodice, hair ribbon, and tulle skirt caused a sensation. The realism of the figure, combination of media, and contemporary subject proved revolutionary.

Degas made numerous studies of Van Goethem between 1878 and 1880. She was one of three Belgian sisters from a working class family who were at an early age apprenticed to the ballet. Her family lived just a few streets away from Degas's Montmartre studio where Van Goethem would pose for the artist. Degas's portrayal of Van Goethem, one of the many young, working class girls patronizingly referred to as ballet “rats” and who were subject to the attentions of male balletomanes, captures her plainly and with a certain compassion.

Degas produced around ten sheets of studies related to the sculpture, studying his model from all angles, with and without her practice skirt. In this sheet the repeated chalk strokes and smudging reveal that her foreshortened left foot posed a problem when seen from behind, as did the jutting elbows of her bent arms, interlocked behind her back. For this project, drawings such as the Morgan sheet served as a forum for resolving the challenges of Von Goethem's complex pose, and reveal Degas's need to understand and accurately depict the figure before sculpting her.

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Edgar Degas, Three Studies of a Dancer, 2001.12, recto. Thaw Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2001.12. Photography by Graham S. Haber.