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Newsletter - Spring 2000
Acquisitions

New Acquisitions of Old Master Drawings

Nearly half a century has passed since the college acquired its first Old Master drawing through the perspicacious vision of Marian Hayes, professor of art history and part-time director of the Art Museum. Only decades later would the drawing's baroque style come into fashion and its author, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (known as Il Guercino), be recognized as a key figure in the history of 17th-century Italian art. In 1974, the first exhibition of Guercino drawings outside Italy was organized at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Among the many lenders were Dr. and Mrs. Malcolm Bick of Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Avid collectors of Italian Renaissance and Baroque drawings, the Bicks came to take an interest in Mount Holyoke as a consequence of that show, favoring the museum over the years with numerous gifts, extensive loans (see Master Drawings Rediscovered, exhibition and catalogue by E. James Mundy, 1981), and devoted service on the museum's Art Advisory Board.

When Dr. and Mrs. Bick decided in 1998 to move from Massachusetts to more salubrious climes, they also made the decision to part with their exceptional collection of drawings. As a result, Mount Holyoke was able to acquire eight splendid sheets spanning the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries. One is illustrated here, an as-yet-unidentified Head of a Man, probably Florentine from the mid-16th century. This and the other drawings acquired from the Bick Collection comprise the nucleus of the college's holdings in the Old Master field, now consisting of some 40 drawings representing the stylistic history of the medium from the High Renaissance to the Rococo.

All of the recent acquisitions will be on view in the Rodney L. White Print Room during April and May where they will provide object lessons for my seminar "The Stroke of Genius: Drawings of the Old Masters." Students in the seminar, the first in many years to be taught exclusively within the walls of the museum, will prepare wall labels and catalogue copy for a more selective exhibition of drawings that will culminate the semester's study.

—John Varriano
Idella Plimpton Kendall
Professor of Art