PHILADELPHIA -- "Master Drawings (1800-1914) from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford," will be on display April 16 through June 27 at the Arthur Ross Gallery, 220 S. 34th St., Philadelphia.

The Arthur Ross Gallery is open Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Saturday-Sunday, noon-5 p.m.  Exhibitions are free and open to the public.

"Master Drawings (1800-1914) from the Ashmolean Museum" features 51 drawings and watercolors from many of the 19th century's most prominent artists, including Degas, Cezanne, Pissaro, Rodin, Tissot and Ruskin.

The collection of 19th century drawings in the Ashmolean began in the lifetime of many of the artists who made them.  By the 1860s, the Museum was already famous for its wealth of drawings by past and contemporary artists. The exhibition gives visitors a sense of the aesthetic values held by those who assembled the collections.

"None of us can ever escape the taste of our times entirely," said Jon Whiteley, of the Ashmolean Museum Department of Western Art and curator of the exhibition.  "This exhibition shows that great things can be achieved within the constraints of fashion by a curator or collector driven by conviction and passion.  It celebrates a view of the 19th century, which will seem increasingly selective as time goes by, but is based upon a profound belief in the over-riding importance of quality."

"Master Drawings (1800-1914) from the Ashmolean Museum" was made possible by Friends of the Arthur Ross Gallery, the Arthur Ross Foundation and the Offices of Oxford University, North America, New York City.

Additional information about the exhibition is available at 215-898-2083 or www.upenn.edu/ARG.