thick Carpets, lights enveloping, it’s like being in the lair private collectors in both the design of the exhibition Prat renders well the atmosphere of a private apartment. The drawings are arranged in a manner much more airy than their owners, and like a garment that one would see worn by another than oneself, Louis-Antoine Prat, on the eve of the reopening of the museum, seems to be discovering his collection with a new eye. “We see them a lot better, it’s great !” with enthusiasm-he almost clapping their hands. The crisis of the Covid-19 has been separated for three months on his beloved drawings, which are exposed without visitors in a Small Palace desperately closed. But the museum opens its doors again and it is necessary, absolutely, to go and see these wonders.
“Head suspended by a string” by Odilon Redon. All the great names of French painting are there, from Nicolas Poussin to Georges Seurat, from Fantin-Latour to Manet, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, but they are there for their designs, revealing them in these studies or these sheets preparatory to future paintings, more intimate, can be more free in their creation, letting you see the sketches, the hesitations and often the engineering, already. What strength in this horse, rushing over to the brown ink signed Eugène Delacroix ! What a power in this head tilted to one side, blackened by Cézanne ! And as touching these drawings of writers, Victor Hugo, those, much rarer, of Charles Baudelaire… There could not have been more intimate and more comforting to return to the path of the museums. However, this is a charcoal drawing scary that Prat has chosen to have at the end of the central span, a human head, suspended from a chain, signed Odilon Redon, that one might interpret as an invitation to enjoy, finally, of our freedom found.
” The Strength of the design. Masterpieces of the collection Prat “, up to 4 October 2020. Petit Palais, avenue Winston-Churchill, 75008 Paris, france
