From 21 March to 29 June 2025, the Royal Academy presents the exhibition “Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo”
Supply: Royal Academy · Picture: Victor Hugo, “The Cheerful Castle”, c. 1847. Pen, brush, pencil, stencil, ink and cardboard on paper, 15.8 x 22.2 cm. Maisons de Victor Hugo, Paris / Guernsey
Victor Hugo was a number one public determine in nineteenth century France. His books Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame had been printed worldwide. As each a poet and a politician, and through his close to twenty-year exile within the Channel Islands, he got here to symbolise the beliefs of the French Republic: equality and freedom. In personal, his refuge was drawing. Hugo’s ink and wash visions of imaginary castles, monsters and seascapes are as poetic as his writing. His works impressed Romantic and Symbolist poets, and plenty of artists together with the Surrealists. Vincent van Gogh in contrast them to “astonishing things”.
In March 2024, the Royal Academy of Arts will current a complete survey of Hugo’s not often seen works on paper, which had been final exhibited within the UK over 50 years in the past. The exhibition will observe Hugo’s preoccupation with drawing, from his early caricatures and journey drawings to his dramatic landscapes and his experiments with abstraction.
Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in collaboration with Paris Musées – Maison de Victor Hugo and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
