A landmark exhibition of rarely seen works on paper by Victor Hugo – the leading 19th-century politician, author and artist – has opened at London’s Royal Academy of Arts.
Featuring around 70 artworks from important European collections, Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo follows Hugo’s preoccupation with drawing, from his early caricatures and travel drawings to his dramatic landscapes and his experiments with abstraction.
A leading public figure in 19th-century France, Victor Hugo’s books Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame were printed worldwide. As both a poet and a politician, and during his near twenty-year exile in the Channel Islands, he came to symbolise the ideals of the French Republic: equality and freedom.
In private, his refuge was drawing. Hugo’s ink and wash visions of imaginary castles, monsters and seascapes are as poetic as his writing yet were rarely seen in public during his lifetime. His art and writing went on to inspire Symbolist poets, and many artists, from Surrealists André Breton and Max Ernst, to contemporary artists such as Raymond Pettibon and Antony Gormley RA. Vincent van Gogh compared his artwork to “astonishing things”
Arranged thematically, the exhibition explores the relationship between Hugo’s artistic and literary work, his drawing process, his obsession with castles and more. Highlights include drawings relating to Les Misérables, such as Chain, 1864 (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris) and some of Hugo’s largest works, such as The Lighthouse at Casquets, Guernsey, 1866 (Maisons de Victor Hugo, Paris / Guernsey).
It’s the first time in over 50 years that these works have been shown in the UK, making this a special opportunity.
For further information: royalacademy.org.uk
Image: Victor Hugo, Chain, 1864. Pen and brown ink on paper, 19.2 x 26 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits. Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in collaboration with Paris Musées – Maison de Victor Hugo and the Bibliothèque nationale de France
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