Acquisition of Four Drawings

Provenance is essential to building a collection, and this is particularly true at the Musée d’Orléans, which, as early as 1824, successfully enlisted the support of art lovers to establish and then expand its collection. Four drawings from the collection of Paul and Florence Vercier, prominent art lovers from Le Havre, acquired at a public auction at Rossini, are joining the prestigious collection of Romantic drawings, along with three preparatory drawings by Léon Bénouville and a very rare pen-and-ink wash by Achille Deveria, in which he uses his drawing to instruct the engraver on how to transcribe his *Amours d’Henri IV* onto the copper plate. The Museum of Fine Arts’ drawing collection currently comprises 11,802 works dating from the^15th century to the present day.