The Art of History: European Drawings and Narrative (Cancelled)

NOTE: The Crocker Art Museum is temporarily closed to the public, and all programs, tours, classes, and events through April 30 have been postponed or cancelled.

For centuries, the highest form of art was history painting, the telling of instructive stories from religion, mythology or ancient history in multi-figured compositions. In this course, the class will explore drawings relating these episodes visually, from early studies through compositional works and beyond. A variety of European traditions, whether classicizing or naturalistic, northern or southern, will be the focus of this course.

Trained at the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum Curator William Breazeale is the organizer of many exhibitions including “The Language of the Nude: Four Centuries of Drawing the Human Body”, “A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum”, and “Reuniting the Masters: European Drawings from West Coast Collections”. With a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and a dissertation on Italian sketchbooks, he is the author of articles for Master Drawings including “Old Masters in Old California: the Origins of the Drawings Collection at the Crocker Art Museum,” “Nature and a new drawing by Otto Marseus van Schrieck,” and “Two Small Heads by Giulio Romano in the collection of the Crocker Art Museum.”