Welcome!
Trois Crayons is a celebration of the art of drawing in all its forms, with a particular, but not exclusive, focus on European artists of the 15th to 20th centuries.
newsletter of the month
See inside for Our February Round UP
For this month’s newsletter, we have an all American special, featuring an interview with The Drawing Foundation, a look at the Master Drawings New York event calendar, and not one but two ‘Drawing(s) of the Month’: the first, selected by Dr Oliver Tostmann from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; and the second, selected by Martin Clayton from the Royal Collection. As ever, there are current events, literary, visual and audio highlights, and lastly, the ‘Real or Fake’ section.
newsletter
An introduction to ‘The Drawing Foundation’ with Allison Wucher, Simon Levenson and Daniella Berman.
Dr Oliver Tostmann, Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, has kindly chosen our seventeenth drawing of the month.
Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings at the Royal Collection Trust, has kindly chosen our UK drawing of the month.
Dr Rachel Hapoienu, Assistant Curator of Works on Paper at the Courtauld Gallery, London, has kindly chosen our sixteenth drawing of the month.
Nigel Ip (Print Quarterly), reviews ‘Drawing the Italian Renaissance’ at The King’s Gallery, London.
‘The Italian Baroque Drawings of the Städel Museum’ with Drs Astrid Reuter and Stefania Girometti.
Juliet Carey, Senior Curator at Senior Curator at Waddesdon Manor (National Trust / Rothschild Foundation), has kindly chosen our fifteenth drawing of the month.
Nigel Ip (Print Quarterly), reviews ‘Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504’ at The Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Elania Pieragostini, Senior Curator of the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth, Derbyshire, has kindly chosen our fourteenth drawing of the month.
J. Cabelle Ahn, PhD, reviews ‘Paris through the Eyes of Saint-Aubin’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
This month's entry is extracted taken from Nicholas Turner’s 'Florentine Drawings of the sixteenth century'.
About us
Trois Crayons was founded in 2023 by Alesa Boyle, Tom Nevile and Sebastien Paraskevas with the aim of increasing the awareness, accessibility, and visibility of drawings in all their forms.
Trois Crayons offers a centralising space for all drawing-related activity worldwide, to facilitate and encourage engagement with the historic “father” of the arts. Gathering events into a calendar, hosting interviews with professionals and enthusiasts and reviewing ongoing exhibitions. We are working to demystify preconceived barriers to entry, compile useful resources, all of which and more will be disseminated via the Trois Crayons newsletter and podcast.
The name, Trois Crayons, derives from the French term meaning “three crayons”, a drawing technique using black, white and red chalks which rose to prominence in mid-18th century France and has a particular aesthetic appeal when used in combination.
The art of drawing has a rich and fascinating history which is ever relevant to the present moment. In the words of Vincent van Gogh, “drawing is the root of everything”. To Giorgio Vasari, the 16th century biographer, artist and art historian, drawing (disegno) was both an intellectual and practical process, it was the father to the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture and fundamental to all creative processes.
Trois Crayons champions this primacy of drawing and simplifies access for the digital generation to all the disparate elements that make up today’s world of drawing.
Follow us on Instagram