THRILL OF THE CHASE Exhibit Opens 3/15 at Art Institute of Chicago

In June of 2013, the Art Institute of Chicago received a monumental gift from Massachusetts collector Dorothy Braude Edinburg: nearly 1,000 works, including approximately 800 prints and drawings spanning 500 years. Now the Art Institute will be exhibiting 96 of these drawings in The Thrill of the Chase: Drawings for the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Collection, on view in the museum's Jean and Steven Goldman Prints and Drawing Galleries in the Richard and Mary Gray Wing from March 15 through June 15.

The exhibition features drawings that Edinburg has personally purchased for the museum since 1991. This impressive body of works on paper spans the 16th through the mid-20th century and is the cornerstone of the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, which Edinburg gave to the Art Institute in honor of her parents. This gift, announced in July 2013, was one of the largest gifts of works of art ever made to the Art Institute by an individual.

Highlights include a rare and moving wash drawing, Sleeping Christ Child (1670/75), by the popular Baroque artist Bartolomé Murillo, as well as Jacob Jordaens's eloquent Jacob and Esau (c. 1660). Works by Constable and Karl Friedrich Schinkel crown the assortment of British and German 19th-century works, while the 19th-century French collection is represented by prints and drawings by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet.

The 20th-century masters represented include Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Giorgio Morandi, Jean Metzinger, Pablo Picasso, and several German Expressionists. Visitors to the exhibition will recognize the parallels and complementary nature of the works on paper with the museum's permanent collection, a consideration Edinburg sustained throughout the process of building the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection.

The Thrill of the Chase reflects Edinburg's personal passion for art, which was instilled in her by her parents at an early age. In 1991, to honor their legacy, Edinburg contacted the Art Institute of Chicago to express her interest in working with the curatorial staff in the Department of Prints and Drawings to loan or acquire works that would one day become part of the museum's permanent collection. That was the point at which the chase began, a journey that Mrs. Edinburg has described as "intellectually stimulating and mutually rewarding."

"We have had tremendous fun together, enjoying the thrill of the chase and the entire process of determining the authenticity, condition, attribution, and importance of a drawing," said Edinburg.

"We are tremendously grateful for Dorothy Braude Edinburg's now legendary generosity to the museum and for the enormous enthusiasm and knowledge she brings to our collaborative adventure. She has a highly refined eye, as the extraordinary works in the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection eloquently attest. The prints and drawings collections at the Art Institute have been deeply enriched thanks to her many gifts which we are thrilled to share with a broad public," said Douglas Druick, President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the museum.

In total, the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection includes over 900 works on paper, primarily European prints and drawings from Old Master to Modern, as well as 170 works from China, Japan and Korea that include stonewares, porcelains, and printed works. These complement Mrs. Edinburg's prior gifts to the Art Institute that included more than 100 prints and drawings by such artists as Jean Francois Millet, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh, El Lissitzky, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse.

Images: Piet Mondrian. Amsterdam Skyline Viewed from the West, c. 1899. Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection; Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Saint Joseph and the Sleeping Christ Child, 1670/75. Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection.