Imagine that you are a curator who has been asked to put together an exhibition of Matisse’s drawings—a delightful project and one that you might think would be hard to carry out badly. A show made up entirely of Matisse’s canonical masterpieces in pen and ink or charcoal would not only be easy to select, but virtually foolproof—if you could get the loans, which is another matter. Even if you were forced to rely on only the most readily available of this master draughtsman’s efforts, it would be difficult to organize a Matisse drawing show that didn’t include at least some perfectly wonderful things.

Then imagine another kind of exhibition, one made up of a few deservedly celebrated, textbook examples, mixed with unfamiliar versions of typical motifs, little-known studies for well-known paintings, and more or less unknown drawings, all of equal or even higher quality than the famous ones. You might reject this th ...

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