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Exhibitions

Wonderfully intimate: The Drawings of Victor Hugo, at the RA, reviewed

5 April 2025

9:00 AM

5 April 2025

9:00 AM

Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo

Royal Academy, until 29 June

You feel so close to Victor Hugo in this exhibition. It’s as if you are at his elbow while he sighs at his standing desk at the top of his house on Guernsey, where he held France constantly in view as he worked. Here, frustrated by Les Misères (working title), he has thrown down his pen and moved to his art table, sloshing great washes of sepia ink across paper to form lowering clouds.

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