100 dessins du musée du Louvre

The Louvre has such a quantity of magnificent works of art that we often neglect an important part of its patrimony, the drawings. The fund is inherited from the Cabinet du roi, then from ‘the three keyed cabinet’ –during the Revolution it was protected by three keys entrusted to three different persons – and today it has some 150 000 works of art. Arlette Sérullaz, the curator for various decades, drew up a hit-parade with numbers, very much the fashion in her time, but which reflects a true passion. Next to the eternal works of Watteau, Ingres and Géricault, one discovers names that are not as well-known by the public at large such as the mysterious Maître E.S. or the eccentric Gabriel de Saint-Aubin who spent his time drawing (they said he had caught “drawing priapism” from which he died, leaving a magnificent notebook known as the “carnet Groult”, that combined in a very modern manner, texts and drawings. In conclusion, a list of vocabulary helps to make the difference between tempera, wash drawing, stump and mounting…

• 100 dessins du musée du Louvre by Arlette Sérullaz, La Martinière, 2012, 256 p., €45