Meant to Be Shared: European Prints

Meant to Be Shared will feature 18th- to 20th-century Italian, French and Spanish prints. These works were avidly collected by philanthropist Arthur Ross (1910 – 2007), given to Yale University Art Gallery in 2012 and subsequently organized for this exhibition. Ross frequently lent to museums, especially those on academic campuses. In the spirit of the collector, “Meant to Be Shared” travels to the Harn Museum and Syracuse University Art Gallery.

Highlights of the exhibition include entire series of works by Francisco Goya, the Spanish artist with whom Ross began his collection; views of 18th-century and ancient Rome by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, which reflect Ross’s love of classicism and the “eternal City”; Eugène Delacroix’s illustrations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; and Édouard Manet’s illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s masterpiece “The Raven.” Other artists represented in the exhibition include Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Cézanne. The exhibition illustrates both the lasting beauty and historical value of the works Ross acquired, as well as the expansive and visionary nature of his generosity.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether you go or not, Meant to Be Shared: The Arthur Ross Collection of European Prints, offers a comprehensive look at the Arthur Ross Collection—more than 1,200 17th- to 20th-century Italian, French, and Spanish prints. Highlights include superb etchings by Canaletto and Tiepolo; the four volumes of Piranesi’s Antiquities of Rome, as well as his famous Vedute (Views) and Carceri (Prisons); Goya’s Tauromaquia in its first edition of 1816; an extremely rare etching by Edgar Degas; and numerous other 19th-century French prints, by Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Daumier, Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, and others. The accompanying essays discuss the life of Arthur Ross, a significant philanthropist who funded several arts institutions; the formation of the collection and the art-historical significance of the works; and several thematic approaches to studying the collection, reinforcing its legacy as an important teaching resource.

Meant to Be Shared: The Arthur Ross Collection of European Prints