Right, Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826)
He Is Free, 1798 or 1799
Pen and black ink, brown and red wash.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Departement des Estampes et de la photographie.

The exhibition was presented at the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, from 11 December 2018 to 31 March 2019. Exhibition curators were Corinne Le Bitouzé and Christophe Leribault and scientific collaborators were Laurent Baridon, Jean-Philippe Garric, and Martial Guédron. The curator of the exhibition at the Morgan is Jennifer Tonkovich, Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of Drawings and Prints.

In 1825, after struggling for nearly a decade to find a buyer for his drawings, Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826) donated 823 sheets to the Print Department of the Royal Library in Paris. Although Lequeu defined himself as an architect and began his career working on building sites, he spent the majority of his life as a government draftsman shifting between bureaucratic offices before being forced to retire on a meager pension. His gift to the Royal Library reflected a hidden dimension of Lequeu’s draftsmanship. Throughout his life, he worked on his own, producing animated self-portraits, plans for revolutionary monuments, teaching manuals, explorations of the body, and over one hundred designs for visionary architectural projects. The drawings in his portfolio evince remarkable skill and creativity, an inventiveness inspired by both classical and contemporary writings, and the artist’s own vivid imagination.

Born during the reign of Louis XV (r. 1715–74), Lequeu was a witness to the death throes of the ancien régime, the upheavals brought about by the French Revolution, and the new order established under Napoleon’s empire. His work, created in solitude and fueled by self-study, reflects the opportunities and vicissitudes of his troubled times and a vision of architecture that defied academic boundaries.

Stay connected with us from home by exploring our online exhibitions, virtual programs, and more. We have selected a few highlights for you below! Online Exhibition | Beethoven 250: Autograph Music Manuscripts by Ludwig van Beethoven While Mozart seems to have written down his compositions fully formed, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) continually examined, refined, and reworked his musical ideas. His music manuscripts often reveal many revisions—sometimes taking the form of a turbulent swirl of deletions—and his sketches document his creative process, demonstrating a continual exploration of motivic ideas that the composer would later flesh out into complete scores.   Take Tour From the Video Archive | The Nomadic Eye: Traveling through Thomas Gainsborough's Landscapes Thomas Gainsborough’s paintings and drawings grant the viewer the perspective of a traveler wandering along a winding path encountering both the familiar and the enigmatic. In this illustrated lecture (held on December 9, 2015) Professor Mark Hallett, Director of Studies at The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, takes us on a tour of Gainsborough’s pastoral views and suggests how we might best understand and appreciate the pictorial world that the artist created in and through his landscapes.   Watch Now

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