Getty Adds a Victor Hugo Mindscape

Victor Hugo, Landscape at the Castle, 1857. J. Paul Getty Museum

La Tribune de l'Art reports that the Getty Museum has bought a drawing by Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Though a prolific draftsman, Hugo didn't exhibit his drawings. Often based on chance effects of ink, Hugo's murky, moody near-abstractions would have puzzled 19th-century audiences. The drawings were nonetheless admired by Delacroix, van Gogh, and Picasso. In this century scholars and exhibitions—including a 2018 show at the Hammer—have positioned Hugo as a precursor to today's experimental drawing practices. 

The Getty sheet, Landscape at the Castle, was sold by Ambrose Duchemin gallery, Paris. Executed in ink wash, charcoal, and white gouache, it's 6.7 by 11 inches. Like many of Hugo's drawings, it was made on the Isle of Guernsey during Hugo's self-imposed exile from Napoleon III's France.

The Hammer Museum owns a heliograph print by Hugo. As far as I can tell, Landscape at the Castle becomes the only Hugo drawing in an L.A. collection. At the Getty, it joins a watercolor by the Hugo's literary contemporary, George Sand.