Daniels Collection

THE FOGG EXHIBIT of "Drawings from the Daniels Collection" leaves an observer oddly disappointed. Many pieces in the selection are excellent and they are diverse, but, as the Italian chef said about the ingredients in his spaghetti sauce, they never got married. They stay separate and leave the customer dissatisfied and unmoved.

The drawings are taken from a very impressive private art collection of David Daniels and selected by Mary Lee Bennett and Agnes Mongan, Curator of Drawings at the Fogg. The exhibit has already made a circuit of three midwestern cities, and Cambridge is its final stop. The catalogue is very complete, including a full page photograph of every work in the exhibit and a provenance and bibliographical sketch on most items.

There are wonderful drawings of all kinds in this show. The Degas chalk landscapes are very unusual--ephemeral, misty, and soft. Six Boucher studies are included, among them a wonderful study of hands, and a head by Bernini and one by Watteau. Contemporary drawings by Giacomo Porzano ("Man with a Cigarette") and Walt Kuhn ("Study for the painting 'Roberto'") are very stark and striking.

Yet there are too many drawings of too many different styles, periods, and uses of the media to come together as a whole. One gets accustomed to the romantic, flourishing stroke of the Italian Renaissance only to be led on to the fleshy, finished modeling of a Prud'hon study for an oil, then to a gnarled rapid Daumier sketch, and from there to the modern works.

The drawings are hard to look at in heavy wooden frames, and wearisome in their great succession. The enormous diversity of this collection deals it its death blow.

It is hard to explain why. Drawings are intimate and unimposing art objects--more so than any other genre. The viewer must come to them, bring them out of themselves to get them to speak. But too many different things happen to allow one to really relax with any part of them. One leaves the exhibit overextended and vaguely annoyed.

Daniels certainly had a varied and outstanding collection. The exhibit testifies to his excellence of connoisseurship and offers a great deal to the students of any or all of the individual artists. The problems it faces are unfortunately intrinsic to the variety in a private collection and the delicacy of exhibiting drawings.