Becoming Modern celebrates the remarkable holdings of nineteenth-century French drawings at The Morgan Library & Museum and the Menil Collection, institutions with an ongoing collaboration to foster meaningful conversation about drawing. The show includes works on paper by five artists who had an important impact on the development of drawing at the beginnings of modernism: Eugène Delacroix, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, and Odilon Redon. Moving beyond the traditional limitations of preparatory studies, these and other artists of the period began to regard drawing as a crucible for new ways of thinking. In the words of Delacroix, “I believe that a simple drawing is sufficient to allow one to brood over an idea, so to speak, and at the same time to bring it to birth.”

Image: Georges Seurat; Coin d'Usine (Corner of a Factory), ca. 1883; Conté crayon on paper; The Menil Collection, Houston; Photo: Hickey-Robertson, Houston.