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Mr. and Mrs. Germain Seligman
December 13, 1977 
Page 2 

Neo-classicists and will include works by the Romantic and Barbizon painters. It will culminate with Degas on the ground that Degas' vision points backward to Neo-classicism and forward to impressionism. 

The exhibition will concentrate on the freely painted work in oil made as a study for another, more finished painting. However, such a definition of the oil sketch is too narrow. Therefore, the exhibition will include other kinds of oil sketches made as part of the process artists went through before producing finished works: 1, landscape sketches, especially those made en plein air, even if not made as studies for finished pictures; 2, sketch copies of pictures by other artists; and 3, academies and paintings of parts of the body. The exhibition will also include unfinished pictures on the ground that there was a sketch stage in French Nineteenth Century painting and this sketch stage is as relevant to the development of modernist art as the oil sketch proper. It will even include some freely painted finished pictures of the Barbizon and Realist schools to show that the merging of sketch and finished work took place gradually and was not the dramatic discovery of the impressionists. 

Among the lenders will be the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kansas City will lend us Ingres' Portrait of Paul Lemoyne. Your picture, the only study I know for one of the masterpieces of the nineteenth century,would be a splendid addition to our show. If, as we hope, you are willing to lend, could you send me a photograph for reproduction in our catalogue?

With kindest regards, 

Sincerely, 

John Minor Wisdom
John Minor Wisdom 
Curator 

JMW/ih