The extraordinary quality and range of the drawings held by the Cleveland Museum of Art place it among the top collections in the United States. In 19th-century France, drawing expanded from a means of artistic training to an independent medium with rich potential for experimentation. A variety of new materials became available to artists, encouraging figures ranging from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres to Paul Cezanne to reconsider drawing's place within their work. Public and private exhibition venues increasingly began to display their works, building an audience attracted by the intimacy of drawings and their unique techniques and subjects. In France and abroad, museums and individuals alike started to actively acquire these works while they were still contemporary. Nineteenth Century French Drawings explores the history of this medium, chronicling the remarkable role that drawings have played within the institution's history. Entries illuminate the place of drawing within nearly 50 artists' works and five essays by leading scholars shed new light on the making and collecting of drawings in France during this extraordinary period. Following landmark acquisitions, across a number of decades, by iconic artists such as Honoré Daumier, Berthe Morisot, and Auguste Renoir, the CMA has continued to enhance and deepen its collection of drawings.

The numerous recently acquired works in this volume include a luminous colored pencil study by symbolist artist Alexandre Séon and a group of "noir" drawings--named for their use of varied black drawing media--by Henri Fantin-Latour, Albert-Charles Lebourg, and Adolphe Appian, among others.