The Ashmolean Museum at Oxford has set itself something of a challenge with its latest exhibition, but rises to it magnificently. Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings draws on the museum’s own spectacular Old Masters collection, which are usually housed in the relatively humble Western Art Print Room. This is the first time it has honoured its pieces with a show of their own, to which it has added works on loan from Flanders, the Bodleian, and the Christ Church Picture Gallery.
The last major installation at the Ashmolean, which I went to see in November, was all about colour. In contrast, this one is mainly in black and white and shades of grey; it is made up almost entirely of drawings. As the curator, An van Camp, notes in her introduction to the catalogue, drawing “is indeed the first thing that an aspiring artist is taught, and it is likely that most of the other artworks created throughout an artist’s career will start with a sketch on paper”.
