VICTOR HUGO: Selections from the Schlossberg Collection

September 8 – December 21, 2013

In the Center Gallery are drawings, prints and sculpture by a number of artists celebrating the life and work of literary and political figure Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo: Selections from the Schlossberg Collection presents 17 works by 15 nineteenth century artists including Jean Francois Raffaelli and Frederick Hendrik Kaemmerer both students of Jean-Leon Gerôme. A bronze sculpture study of 1903 by Jean Boucher for his monumental Hugo sculpture completed in 1913 will be on view.  The larger work was presented by the French government to the island of Guernsey where Hugo was exiled and where he wrote his most famous works, Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and Les Miserables.”

This selection of seventeen works of art from the Schlossberg Collection includes numerous depictions of the great writer spanning over fifty years. These include Pierre Jean David d’Angers’ portrait medallion illustrating Hugo’s early fame of the 1820s to the incredibly rare and sympathetic final portrayal of the literary icon on his deathbed by Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer.

The Oglethorpe University Museum of Art is sincerely grateful for the kind loan of these works from Dr. and Mrs. Michael Schlossberg. Such generosity is of great benefit to our students, as well as the greater Atlanta community.