Exquises esquisses

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Exquises Esquisses at the Musée Magnin, Dijon from November 18, 2017 to March 18, 2018.

The painted sketch takes off from Rubens and testifies to the necessary division of labour within the studio: formulating the artist's project, the painted sketch - and no longer just drawn - anticipates what the finished work will be, both in terms of its composition and its chromatic range.

Witness to the painter's gesture, little constrained by the usual codes of representation, it exalts the verve of its creator and exerts - especially in the 18th century - a power of seduction... controversial when it ends up shaking the hierarchy of the creative process.

This context forms the backdrop to an exhibition devoted to Jeanne and Maurice Magnin's passion for painted sketching. For the first time, almost their entire collection has been brought together, allowing us to measure its importance and diversity.

The heart of this project - and its originality - does not, however, lie in the quantity of paintings presented, but in the ambition to bring together, most often for the first time since their creation, the first thought or completed sketch of a work and its final execution. The viewer and the reader are thus invited to an exciting confrontation between beginning and end, between idea and realization.