A Discourse on Drawings

This study looks at a group of art collectors whose interests in the graphic arts contributed to the status of drawings in Paris in the first half of the eighteenth century. The collection of 19,000 drawings formed by Pierre Crozat (1665 – 1740) provided the locus for a discourse on the graphic arts that developed outside of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. The print-making initiatives of the members of this circle and their writings helped to elevate the status of drawings from a secondary art form in service to the noble arts of painting or sculpture to one wherein drawings were appreciated in their own right. Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694 – 1775) and Anne-Claude-Philippe de Tubières, le comte de Caylus (1692 – 1765) and Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville (1680 – 1765) among others brought a focus and attention to the graphic arts which had a profound effect on the developing connoisseurship and critical discourse on prints and drawings in the first half of the eighteenth century.