Becoming a Woman...@ the Harn Museum

There are only a few days remaining to see the excellent exhibition Becoming a Woman in the Age of the Enlightenment at the Harn Museum of Art and I strongly recommend that you go.  It closes on December 31. This is an outstanding exhibition of work selected from the Horvitz Collection, some of the work was recently exhibited at the Petit Palais exhibition From Watteau to David earlier this year.  Becoming Woman.., curated by UF Professor Melissa Hyde Center and the late Mary D. Sheriff, UNC Chapel-Hill, centers around issues pertinent to women's lives of the 18th century including how women's lives are defined, the standards by which they're measured as well as their social and family rituals.  The exhibition features sketches, finished drawings including some amazing pastel drawings and paintings by 18th and 19th century artists including Antoine Watteau, Nicolas Lancret, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Anne Vallayer-Coster, Gabrielle Capet, François-André Vincent and Philibert-Louis Debucourt and more.

I have a couple of images to share but trust me the photographs of the drawings do not due them justice.  The touch in these drawings are just exceptional, fresh as they day they were made and they warrant sustained looking.

Don't miss this show. 

Antoine Vestier, Allegory of the Arts, 1788,  Oil on canvas,  © The Horvitz Collection

Marie-Gabrielle Capter, Self-portrait , circa 1790 © The Horvitz Collection

Installation shot

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Conversation in a Park, Oil on canvas,  © The Horvitz Collection