Title Wall for exhibition.
Past exhibition

Exhibition: The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860

The first major collaborative exhibition between the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, The Critique of Reason offers an unprecedented opportunity to display together treasured works from both museums’ collections. The show comprises paintings, sculptures, medals, watercolors, drawings, prints, and photographs by such iconic artists as William Blake, Théodore Géricault, Francisco de Goya, and Joseph Mallord William Turner. The broad range of work selected challenges the traditional notion of the Romantic artist as a brooding genius given to introversion and fantasy. Instead, the exhibition’s eight thematic sections juxtapose arresting works that reveal the Romantics as attentive explorers of their natural and cultural worlds. The Critique of Reason celebrates the richness and range of Yale’s Romantic holdings, presenting them afresh for a new generation of museumgoers.

George Stubbs, A Lion Attacking a Horse, 1770. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of the Yale University Art Gallery Associates

John Constable, Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames—Morning after a Stormy Night, 1829. Oil on canvas. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

William Blake, Frontpiece to America. A Prophecy, 1793. Color‑printed relief etching in green‑black with pen and black ink and watercolor. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Exhibition organized by Elisabeth (Lisa) Hodermarsky, the Sutphin Family Senior Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale University Art Gallery; Paola D’Agostino, the Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator of European Art, Yale University Art Gallery; A. Cassandra Albinson, Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Yale Center for British Art; Nina Amstutz, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Yale Center for British Art; and Izabel Gass, Graduate Research Assistant, Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art. Made possible by the Art Gallery Exhibition and Publication Fund and the Robert Lehman, B.A. 1913, Endowment Fund, as well as by funds from the Yale Center for British Art Program Endowment.