Master Drawings New York 2025

We are delighted to welcome W.M. Brady & Co. to present an exhibition of Old Master and 19th-century Drawings: Recent Acquisitions. Featuring 36 drawings, the exhibition will be on view at our gallery from 31 January to 8 February 2025 as part of Master Drawings New York. 

Highlights include a newly discovered drawing of the Virgin and Child with the Baptist by the Sienese artist Bartolomeo Neroni (ca. 1505–1571), which counts Giovanni Matteo Marchetti, Bishop of Arezzo (1647–1704), and Lord Somers (1651–1716) among its illustrious former owners. Another work is an important sheet by the eccentric Emilian artist Lelio Orsi (1511—1587), Leda and the Swan, with dramatically foreshortened figures evocative of the sensuality of Correggio and muscular models of Michelangelo. For two centuries it belonged to the family of the Swedish physician Dr. Johan Jacob Ekman, a great friend of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844) in Rome, where the two “drew in each other’s pedigree books and assembled an art collection.” On view also is a figure study in red and white chalk by Carlo Maratti (1625–1713). Executed in Rome in 1676–78, it is a preparatory drawing for his altarpiece of the Martyrdom of Saint Blaise in the church of S. Maria in Carinano, Genoa.

A lively ensemble of animal drawings represents artists such as Claude Lorrain, Antoine-Louis Barye, Jean-Jacques de Boissieu, Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, and Simon Bussy. Into the 19th century, notable examples include Lisa Stillman’s drawing of her sister in its original pre-Raphaelite frame, John Singer Sargent’s watercolor of the Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek, and Børge Fog Stuckenberg’s portrayal of artists at work in the mellow evening light at the Danish Royal Academy. 

A fully illustrated digital catalogue will accompany the exhibition. ❖