DRAWING NOTEBOOK
by N.F. Karlins



Drawings by masters old and new -- French, Spanish, and German-American -- can be found within walking distance on the Upper East Side of New York this summer. Many have never been seen in New York or even this country before.

The Frick Collection offers another winning show with about 70 French 17th- and 18th-century drawings in its special exhibition galleries. "From Callot to Greuze: French Drawings from Weimar" draws on the collections assembled by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the famous German poet, playwright, novelist, and privy councilor to the Grand Duke Carl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. The drawings that Goethe encouraged the crown to assemble as a study collection and eventually his own collection formed two institutions. Since 2003, they have been combined into the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik and Kunstsammlunger in Weimar, Germany, which provided these little-seen works.

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