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Seligman

October 1, 1956

Mr. Robert O. Parks,
Director
Smith College Museum of Art
Northampton, Massachusetts

Dear Mr. Parks:

I am extremely sorry that urgent obligations have prevented me from replying to your letter of August 31 before now. I also wish that it had been possible for me to see your most interesting exhibition of which I received the mimeographed catalogue today. Some day I intend to visit your collection and I shall be looking forward to seeing the originals of the David drawing of the women and the Girodet and Goya portraits in oil and the Ingres drawing and to making your acquaintance.

Since you specifically ask my opinion concerning a number of the drawings in the exhibition I shall try to give you as precise answers as possible concerning my impressions. However, I have always made a point of not making attributions and of abstaining so far as possible in challenging other specialists' attributions. As you know drawings are extremely revealing but, at least in David's case they exhibit a diversity of styles and treatments which make it difficult to say that such and such a drawing cannot be a David or that another is definitely his and not one of his pupils' work. Except for David's very early efforts and those from the close of his life at Brussels which can very readily be distinguished it is often difficult to date his sketches or to draw conclusions from their style. The particular stage in the evolution of a composition, the medium employed, and the artist's purpose are all at least as important as such stylistic elements as "linearism," "colorism" etc. in evaluating, dating and analyzing a given David drawing.

An illustration of this problem can be found in drawings 4 and 5 which you and Mr. Seligman quite correctly associate with David's projected but uncompleted composition, "le triompe du Peuple français." As soon as I saw them at Mr. Seligman's I suggested that they might be studies for that work and a careful study of the photographs of these and the Louvre and Carnavalet drawings confirms that suggestion in a most conclusive fashion. Since I plan to do an article soon on this subject I have some enlarged photographs of the Carnavalet sheet (which is a more advanced version of the composition) under my eyes at this moment. From this close examination I would say that drawing 4 was a preliminary sketch for the group of figures at the extreme left representing the forces of despotism. Drawing 5 is the definitive form of three figures of the same group. David has squared it as was his practice when he was reasonably satisfied that it would fit into the composition and inked it for tracing onto the drawing of the entire composition. An examination of the Carnavalet drawing shows that he did in fact trace this group from Mr. Seligman's pen and ink in pencil on the Carnavalet sheet. The Fogg Museum drawing of Bayle and Beauvais which I reproduced on page 138 (plate XVI) of Pageant-Master was not only traced but finished in ink and wash on the Carnavalet sheet in similar fashion. In other words the inclusion of a photograph of the Carnavalet drawing would have been even more valuable than the Louvre drawing which you did show in your exhibition. I am convinced that the

Transcription Notes:
added apostrophe to specialists and pupils added cedille to français