Portraits from the École Des Beaux-Arts Paris

This publication explores 400 years of portrait drawings from live models. Forty-four portraits have been chosen from the collection of Paris' École des Beaux-Arts based on criteria such as the social class and profession of the model, male and female gestures, caricature and frontal gaze. The goal of this project is to explore the notion of drawn portraiture and to provide alternative readings of this genre of art-making within a contemporary context. The selection of works is extensive, ranging from never-before-exhibited drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Jacques-Louis David and Charles Garnier, to the work of modern and contemporary masters Henri Matisse and Georg Baselitz, to portraits by recent graduates of the École des Beaux-Arts.