there were many independent dealers and book shops in Paris, London, Berlin, and elsewhere that sold such prints as well as drawings and small sculptures by artists of various schools.

Through the medium of prints, artists such as Mary Cassatt, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Victor Hugo, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Adolph Menzel, Charles Meryon, Edvard Munch, Odilon Redon, James McNeill Whistler, and Anders Zorn became more widely known, and the often radical and exploratory aspects of their art found a public.

This exhibition focuses on works of art that were not recommended for display in the parlor, sometimes because they were unsuitable, but mainly because they were meant for private contemplation much as one would approach a book of verse or a novel. The desire for private aesthetic experienceand the art made to satisfy it constitute an important chapter in a long history of collecting as a secluded endeavor.

The ExhibitionThrough eight themespossession, nature, the city, creatures, reverie, obsession, abjection, violence, and death The Darker Side of Light reveals highly engaging, often mysterious and beautiful works, mainly from France and Germany, but also Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, the United States, Sweden and Norway. A few examples include:

Possession: Sagots Lithography Gallery (1898) is Georges Bottini's witty depiction of a well-dressed woman looking disapprovingly at a lithograph of a prostitute displayed in a window of the renowned publisher's shop.

Nature: An accomplished painter, Adolph Appian devoted his life's work to often darkly moody landscapes, from the forest of Fontainebleau to the area near his home in Crémieu in southeastern France, seen