In late October and for the first time in Spain, the Museo del Prado will be presenting more than 85 sixteenth- to nineteenth-century Spanish drawings from the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

The exhibition will be on display in Room D of the Museum until February 2015.

Following its showing in the United States at the Meadows Museum in Dallas, the Museo del Prado will be holding the largest exhibition to date of drawings from the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, which possesses one of the most important holdings of Spanish drawings outside Spain. Assembled in Seville in the early nineteenth century, sold on the London art market and acquired by the Kunsthalle in 1891, this collection comprises more than 200 examples of Spanish drawings from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries.

The core of the exhibition consists of Sevillian drawings, undoubtedly originating in the Academy founded by Murillo, Herrera el Mozo and Valdés Leal. Particularly noteworthy within this group are works by those three artists, as well as other sheets by Cano, Castillo and Schut, among others.

Goya is also represented in the exhibition with a sizeable group of drawings, including various preparatory studies for his copies of Velázquez’s portraits, which are revealing both with regard to the influence of Velázquez on Goya’s oeuve and his working methods. Also on display will be drawings from Goya’s “Madrid Album” and preparatory studies for his famous series of prints entitled The Tauromaquia. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue raisonné (published in English and Spanish editions) focus on some of the principal issues relating to the world of drawings, in particular that of the study of attributions and the way in which they change. It also analyses the importance of drawing as an independent mode of expression, its role in the creative process and its place in art teaching. Finally, the works on display are used to analyse the way in which drawings were collected in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Exhibition organised by the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Meadows Museum, SMU, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, with the collaboration of the CEEH-Center for Spain in America.

Curator: José Manuel Matilla, Head of the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Museo Nacional del Prado