Victor Hugo’s Sketches Go On View at the Royal Academy of Arts in London

Victor Hugo’s delicate pen-and-ink sketches radiate charm. They draw you in, demanding closer attention. It is not so much the quality of the draftsmanship, although the quality is good enough. Their appeal lies in their composition. Produced in private by this remarkably creative man, more than 4,000 precious drawings are held in archives around the world. Terrifyingly fragile, these works on paper are rarely shown and were last exhibited in London in 1974.

Hugo’s art was first revealed to the public in 1888, three years after his death, and it captured the attention of a long list of artists and writers, including Max Ernst and André Breton. Vincent van Gogh, in an 1890 letter to his brother Theo, described Hugo’s drawings as “astonishing things,” and it is those words that form the title of a show that opens next Friday at London’s Royal Academy of Arts—“Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo.”