June 2024
Tuesday, June 4
Trois Crayons (French, "three crayons") The technique of drawing with black, white and red chalks (à trois crayons) on a paper of middle tone, for example mid-blue or buff. It was particularly popular in early and mid-18th century France with artists such as Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. (Clarke, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms)
Coming Up
Dear all,
Greetings from Trois Crayons HQ, where we have been busy making arrangements for our inaugural exhibition at No. 9 Cork Street during London Art Week (28 June – 5 July). This issue will cover the details of the exhibition and its supporting events programme which is now open for registration, in addition to the usual monthly features, including Amy Lim’s ‘Drawing of the Month’, Nigel Ip’s review of ‘Michelangelo: the last decades’. As ever, you can scroll to the bottom of the newsletter to test your inner connoisseur with the real or fake section.
For next month’s edition, please direct any recommendations, news stories, feedback or event listings to tom@troiscrayons.art.
500 years of Drawing
This Summer, we are delighted to be collaborating with London Art Week for the Summer 2024 event to present an exciting venture dedicated to Works on Paper within the broader London Art Week programme. We are hosting a drawings hub at No. 9 Cork Street, Frieze’s permanent exhibition space in London, with a group exhibition dedicated to works on paper presented by acclaimed international drawing dealers. The drawings hub will also feature highlights from other London Art Week participants.
Open to the public from 28 June to 5 July (10 am to 6 pm), the hub offers a rich programme of events and dedicated talks with curators and experts. 17 galleries from 6 countries will exhibit over 150 drawings, ranging from Old Master through to modern and contemporary, including works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Pierre Bonnard, Simon Bussy, Battista Franco, Thomas Gainsborough, Domenico Gnoli, Guercino, Gwen John, G.B. Tiepolo, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Andy Warhol, Jean-Antoine Watteau & many more.
The events programme includes two on-site lectures, a panel discussion and an off-site visit to the Courtauld Gallery’s prints & drawings study room. All events are free, but advanced registration is required. Event descriptions and details are available below and registration is now open via the links provided.
Exhibitors:
Didier Aaron / Paris
Abbott and Holder / London
Galerie De Bayser / Paris
Christopher Bishop Fine Art / New York
Galerie Chaptal / Paris
Ambroise Duchemin / Paris
Day & Faber / London
Enrico Frascione / Florence
Galerie Lowet De Wotrenge / Antwerp
Nathalie Motte Masselink / Paris
Stephen Ongpin Fine Art / London
Den Otter Fine Art / Rotterdam
Sabrier & Paunet / Paris
Benjamin Peronnet Fine Art / Paris
Galerie Ratton-Ladrière / Paris
Nicolas Schwed / Paris
John Swarbrooke Fine Art / London
Events:
Monday, 1st July, 16:00
Grant Lewis, Milein Cosman project curator at the British Museum and co-curator of the ongoing exhibition ‘Michelangelo: the last decades’, explores the Renaissance master’s late drawings.
Tuesday, 2nd July, 16:00
ArtTactic, industry leaders in art market research, will be hosting a panel featuring a range of voices from the world of drawing to discuss the market of drawings within the broader collecting landscape, including changing collecting habits, influence of the digital landscape and other trends we are seeing. Using ArtTactic’s latest report on the Old Masters Market, with a special focus on Old Master Drawings as the jumping off point, Megan Locke (ArtTactic) will moderate a lively panel discussion between esteemed members of the community
Wednesday 3rd July, 16:00
Towards a new catalogue of Raphael’s drawings at the Ashmolean Museum: challenges and discoveries
Angelamaria Aceto, researcher in Italian drawings at the Ashmolean Museum, delves into the exciting new discoveries made in the production of the Ashmolean’s first comprehensive catalogue of the Raphael drawings in its collection.
Friday 5th July, 15:00
Courtauld Gallery’s Prints & Drawings Study Room Visit
A guided visit to the Courtauld Gallery's Prints & Drawings Study Room with Ketty Gottardo, Martin Halusa Senior Curator of Drawings. A rare opportunity to go behind the scenes at the Courtauld Gallery and examine up-close a range of known and lesser-known drawings from the Italian, French and Northern drawings from the 16th to 18th centuries from the Courtauld’s extensive graphic collection.
Please email tom@troiscrayons.art to sign up to the visit. Attendance is limited to 15 spaces.
Image Credits:
1895,0915.509 Michelangelo, ‘Christ on the Cross between the Virgin and St John’. Image © The Trustees of the British Museum.
© ArtTactic
WA1846.201 Raphael, ‘Recumbent Figure of a Soldier’. Image © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
D.1978.PG.92 Jacopo Pontormo, ‘Seated youth’ (recto). Photo © The Courtauld, London.
NEWS
In London, the British Museum’s new Rembrandt drawing is currently the focus of a small free display in Room 90a. Over in Derbyshire, a preparatory oil study for an engraving by Erasmus Quellinus, stolen from the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne in 1979, has been returned to Chatsworth House, having been spotted at auction in Toulon in 2021. As part of London Art Week, a number of drawings-focused exhibitions have also been announced for June including: Stephen Ongpin Fine Art’s show on Guercino; Karen Taylor Fine Art’s two exhibitions on British women artists and Edward Lear; Guy Peppiatt Fine Art’s exhibition of British drawings and watercolours; Clase Fine Art’s exhibition on Ivar Arosenius; James Mackinnon’s exhibition on R.P. Bonnington and his circle; Nonesuch Gallery’s exhibition ‘To Italy and Beyond’ and Elliott Fine Art’s exhibition on self-portraits and studio interiors, by or of women artists. Day & Faber will also be exhibiting a group of 16th and 17th century Italian drawings from a private collection.
In Antwerp, Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge debuts a collaborative exhibition with the contemporary painter Nils Verkaeren, exploring the painted landscape from the baroque period to today. In Rome at the Istituto per la Grafica, Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò has recently presented her new catalogue of Carlo Maratti drawings in the collection of the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, which is available now. In Pompeii, a series of early charcoal drawings of gladiators and hunters, thought to have been made by children, have been unearthed. In Kazakhstan, La Bella Principessa, the controversial drawing attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, goes on display at the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Astana for only its fifth public appearance since its emergence on the market in 1998.
Guercino, Spectators Hiding behind a Barricade, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2024.13.1
In acquisition news, the Getty has announced the arrival of 17 drawings, including works by Eva Gonzalès, Degas, Guercino, Joseph Wright of Derby. The Louvre has also announced the acquisition of a design by Rosso Fiorentino for a cantorial staff of Notre-Dame in Paris. As ever, La Tribune de l’Art has kept us abreast of further acquisition news in France, including a Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres drawing which has gone to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, and a drawing by Toussaint Dubreuil which has been acquired by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
In conference news, the symposium ‘Pose, Power, Practice: New Perspectives on Life Drawing’ takes place at the Courtauld's Vernon Square campus on Thursday, June 20. Attendance is free but registration is required. The symposium is preceded by two free online panels hosted by The Drawing Foundation, ‘Life Drawing After Death’, on June 17th and ‘Life Models as Laborers and Artists’, on June 18th. In Lyon, the 36th Congrès du Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art takes place from June 23rd – 28th and includes drawings-focused talks from Sarah Catala and Jeroen Stumpel, Peter Bokody and Jan Blanc, and Gabriel Batalla-Lagleyre, Camilla Pietrabissa, as highlighted in the latest Bella Maniera newsletter. Edina Adam, Michelle Sullivan and Leila Sauvage have issued a call for 20-minute papers that address the history of European blue paper from the fourteenth century until 1800. Co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the University of Amsterdam, the interdisciplinary online symposium, ‘Drawn to Blue’, will take place November 12–13, 2024. Submissions should be sent to drawings@getty.edu by July 31, 2024.
EVENTS
This month we have picked out a selection of new and previously unhighlighted events from the UK and from further afield. For a more complete overview of ongoing exhibitions and talks, please visit our Events page.
UK
Wordlwide
DRAWING OF THE MONTH
Sarah Stone (British, 1762-1844)
Standing male nude, c. 1772-3
Chalk on paper, 320 x 200 mm, Karen Taylor Fine Art
Amy Lim, Curator of the Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, has kindly chosen our ninth drawing of the month. She was a researcher and catalogue contributor for the current Tate Britain exhibitions ‘Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920’.
It is something of a surprise to encounter this study of a male nude in an album of early drawings by Sarah Stone (1762–1844), on display in the Tate Britain exhibition ‘Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920’. Along with three more nude studies, it is bound among juvenile sketches of hands and feet, vegetables, spiders, and facial features, showing Stone’s systematic efforts to develop her drawing skills. The presence of a nude study (and of a man, to boot) among these drawings challenges our expectations of Stone – principally known for her ornithological watercolours – and pre-modern women artists in general.
Life drawing was the cornerstone of artistic training. It was particularly championed by the Royal Academy of Arts, founded in 1768, just a few years before Stone made these drawings. In the Academy’s Life School, students learned anatomy and honed their drawing skills in preparation for creating the dynamic, multi-figure compositions required by history painting, considered to be the highest genre. Women, however, were excluded from the Academy Schools until 1860, and for reasons of ‘modesty’, from its Life School until 1893.
As Stone’s study shows us, aspiring women artists took matters into their own hands. Whilst some arranged private, extra-curricular life-drawing classes, Stone’s study is more likely to have been copied from a drawing manual. Her source has not yet been identified, but Gérard de Lairesse’s Principles of Drawing (London, 1764) contains three plates of similar male nudes, each seated or leaning on a stone plinth, after Natoire, van Loo, and Boucher. Yet Stone’s drawing is remarkably lifelike, achieved through her skilful shading and imaginative use of red and black chalk, in contrast to the monochrome print.
The study also suggests that the young Sarah Stone may have nursed ambitions to enter the field of history painting. Women artists were frequently told to confine themselves to landscape, still-life or flower painting, which were considered suitable subjects, and within their capabilities. Nevertheless, many women were determined to paint histories, with Angelica Kauffman achieving notable success in this field. Kauffman’s study of a semi-nude male figure, also on display in the exhibition, shows that she too found a way to study life-drawing.
We do not know whether Stone ever attempted to create figure compositions. When she was still in her mid-teens, she was commissioned to draw the natural specimens and ethnographic collections of the Leverian Museum, a task that would occupy her for three decades. Thanks to her highly-esteemed watercolours, she became the first female British painter of birds and animals to achieve professional recognition. The rare survival of this nude study indicates the resourcefulness and ambition of the teenage Stone, as she embarked on her career.
‘Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520-1920’, is at Tate Britain until 13 October 2024.
REVIEW
Michelangelo:
the last decades (2 May 2024 – 28 Jul 2024)
The British Museum, London
Reviewed by Nigel Ip (Print Quarterly)
Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475–1564), the fall of Phaeton. Black chalk, over stylus underdrawing, on paper, about 1533. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475–1564), the punishment of Tityus. Black chalk on paper, 1532. Royal Collection Trust © His Majesty King Charles III 2024.
Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475–1564), Epifania. Black chalk on paper, about 1550-53. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
The first object to greet visitors in the British Museum’s Michelangelo: The Last Decades exhibition is Daniele da Volterra’s pricked portrait of the ‘divine Michelangelo’, a piece of ephemera that would not normally have survived past its sole function as a preparatory transfer drawing for the Assumption of the Virgin (about 1555) in Santissima Trinità dei Monti, Rome. As a tangible record of a meticulously laborious process, this face-to-face encounter symbolically touches on the realities of the elderly artist’s lifetime fame as he reckoned with the inevitable possibility of his own mortality. He would go on to live another nine years, eventually passing at the age of 88 in 1564.
Focusing on the artist’s last 30 years in Rome, the exhibition weaves a web of invisible strings that encourage you to go look back at certain objects with a closer eye. The cross-pollination of ideas and re-using of favourite poses is a central theme which unveils itself over the course of one’s visit. As Michelangelo's health deteriorated, it not only affected the character of his draughtsmanship but also his beautiful calligraphy and ability to write his own letters. By showing us valuable correspondence with his nephew Leonardo Buonarotti, in which he describes his physical and mental state over many years, the exhibition offers an empathetic reading of his late drawings. In doing so, one can better rationalise Michelangelo’s use of creative shortcuts to manage his diverse workload, delegating further assignments to his assistants and collaborators as his health waned.
It is also worth pointing out that the exhibition features almost exclusively black-chalk drawings and none in red chalk; this is no accident. Michelangelo’s interest in red chalk dropped significantly after 1530, only briefly returning in the 1550s with some drawings related to the Bandini Pietà (about 1547-55) and Rondanini Pietà (about 1550-64).
Immediately throwing us off with a false start is a room dominated by studies for the Last Judgement (1536-41). Instead, one should draw their attention to the double-sided ‘presentation drawing’ of Tityus (1532), one of four highly finished drawings (disegni finiti) made for Tommaso de’ Cavalieri in the 1530s.
Created exclusively as gifts for close friends – despite unprecedented demand for works ‘by his hand’ (di sua mano) – the presentation drawings were extremely personal, innovative creations at a time when Michelangelo was becoming increasingly introspective and poetic. A wonderful corridor devoted to Vittoria Colonna examines this with rarely seen archival material, bookended by Colonna’s handwritten compilation of her Rime spirituali – specially made for Michelangelo – and the artist’s own copy of Colonna’s complete printed collection of poetry.
What is unique about the Tityus sheet is that it reveals the kind of working processes that Michelangelo was paranoid about safeguarding; he famously burnt many of his drawings on bonfires days before his death and sent others with letters demanding their disposal. On the sheet’s verso, Michelangelo traced Tityus’ contours and repurposed it for multiple projects. This unfolds into an extended narrative which charts the motif’s various incarnations over three separate projects in the next few years, with further appearances in the coming decades.
For its first transformation, Michelangelo saw the figure’s potential as a resurrected Christ standing above his open tomb carrying a flag. While difficult to compare in the exhibition due to their different orientations, the resurrected Christ is almost a direct mirror-image of the Tityus outline but with a modified lower arm. The figure was then cast as Zeus in the Fall of Phaeton (1533). By comparing the finished drawing with its early compositional draft, we can see how Michelangelo made drastic changes and rearrangements to the bottom figural group. The scene’s hierarchical arrangement also prefigures many aspects of the Last Judgement, where Tityus returns in the central role of Christ.
From here, we can follow Michelangelo’s journey from chaotic drawings of tumbling bodies to detailed life studies of male nudes, a mere sample of everything he would have needed to populate the ambitious fresco. Vital to this discussion is Christ’s striding pose, which would become a highly replicated design in his later output, crushing Ascanio Condivi’s claim that Michelangelo never repeated a pose in his 1553 biography of the master.
Ironically, Condivi would go on to paint the striding figure in the Casa Buonarroti’s unfinished Epifania (about 1550-53) shortly after publishing his biography. Both newly conserved for the occasion, this is the first time the British Museum cartoon and its painting have been reunited since being in Michelangelo’s studio nearly 500 years ago.
A quick comparison reveals that the composition was initially larger on the top and left sides, and that Condivi was ill-equipped to translate Michelangelo’s design into a finished product. One case in point is his misinterpretation of the master’s pentimento, where a rejected ghostly apparition of the Virgin’s head appears to the left of her final position. In the painting, Condivi interpreted the discarded head as a new hooded figure entirely. The infant St John the Baptist has also been given a proper right arm wielding a crucifix, a detail that is absent in the cartoon, perhaps for narrative clarity in a composition that remains elusive to this day.
Speaking of cartoons, it is a shame the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte’s cartoon fragment of two soldiers in the Pauline Chapel’s Crucifixion of St Peter (about 1546-50) could not be lent, missing an unprecedented opportunity to unite the only two surviving cartoons by Michelangelo’s hand. Nonetheless, the curators Sarah Vowles and Grant Lewis clearly tried, as indicated by the excellent catalogue. Brilliant testaments of the master’s skill in monumental drawing, it is hard to fathom that he made them when already too frail to complete his own paintings. The Pauline Chapel frescoes would be his last, and no drawings survive for the Conversion of Saul (about 1542-45). The exhibition has devised an elegant display for this section, partially reproducing the Crucifixion of St Peter on one wall, on top of which two sheets of figure studies are hung in proximity to their painted counterparts. Eagle-eyed observers will probably recognise the kneeling figure digging a hole as deriving from a figure in the Last Judgement, which was also recycled from the never-completed Battle of Cascina (about 1503-04).
To manage his professional workload, Michelangelo enlisted collaborators to work from his drawings. Marcello Venusti was the most notable and comes across as an unexpected star in the exhibition. His earliest engagement seems to be painted derivations of Michelangelo’s presentation drawings for Vittoria Colonna, whose letter describing her first reaction to Christ on the Cross (about 1543) is presented beside it. Looking at the Louvre’s figure studies of the mourning Virgin and St John the Evangelist (about 1545-50), preparatory for Venusti’s Crucifixion paintings, it becomes clear that we are witnessing a transition point in Michelangelo’s physical capacity to draw, exchanging bold, sensitive strokes for shaky lines from his trembling hand (la mano tremante). The same room also features an unusual sketch of marble blocks with measurements for a Crucifixion (about 1547-55), one of many to be digitised for the Casa Buonarroti’s new online catalogue; a similar marble drawing recently sold at Christie’s New York in April.
From around 1545, Michelangelo designed an Annunciation altarpiece for Venusti to paint, intended for Cardinal Federico Cesi’s family chapel in Santa Maria della Pace; no longer in situ since its removal in the 17th century, the composition survives in several small-scale versions. Two double-sided studies in the British Museum – once part of the same large sheet of paper – reveal that Michelangelo repeated the striding pose of the Last Judgement Christ, giving it to an Annunciate Virgin rising from her seat in response to the approaching angel Gabriel. The studies eventually spawned two alternative compositions – both realised in paint by Venusti – including the Morgan Library’s disputed cartonetto (small cartoon) ‘attributed to Michelangelo’.
Closing the Venusti saga is the Cleansing of the Temple (about 1550-55), which offers exceptional insights into the artist’s creative re-use of paper, not just visual motifs. One of the British Museum mounts contains two long, rectangular sheets of studies establishing the central composition on their rectos, featuring a front-facing, striding Christ with his proper right arm raised while traders cower on either side of him. Meanwhile, the versos reveal his earlier intentions to have Christ depicted sideways, facing left. However, the real interest is the way Michelangelo trimmed the right side of the top-mounted sheet and used it to extend the left part of the bottom one, which itself is a thrifty composite of six strips of paper.
Simultaneously, like his youthful collaboration with Sebastiano del Piombo, Michelangelo provided Daniele da Volterra with designs for projects that were not his own, such as the double-sided painting of David and Goliath (about 1550). Likely inspired by his own depiction of the scene on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a set of small sketches show Michelangelo’s development of the two wrestling figures, accommodating for their front and back views. Another sheet containing extra studies for the Cleansing of the Temple suggests David’s stance was at least partially inspired by the rampaging Christ.
Despite his relative inexperience as an architect, Michelangelo spent a considerable part of his later years working on Rome’s numerous building projects, notably the Campidoglio and the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica. The most interesting drawings, however, are those for the upper storey windows of the Palazzo Farnese courtyard, and of the Porta Pia. In these sheets, Michelangelo first laid down the general design in black chalk, before heavily reworking it with additions, rejections, and entirely new proposals; the final idea would eventually be brushed with ink wash for clarity. Such drawings offer interesting examples for how different kinds of draughtsmanship could be read informatively by varying audiences in relation to their specific functions.
Although the exhibition officially ends with a section discussing Michelangelo’s legacy, the affectionately named ‘chapel’ is the more fitting memorial to this great artist. Consisting of a dark circular room with a small wooden crucifix purporting to have been carved by Michelangelo in his final years plus six gripping Crucifixion drawings of varying levels of finish and reworking, we can feel the artist’s desperate attempts to prepare his soul for the inevitable. While the Rondanini Pietà studies demonstrate the remarkable malleability of his mind, the Resurrected Christ appearing to his Mother (about 1560-63) betrays the lack of strength in his hands, echoing a passage in Michelangelo’s letter to Leonardo on 28 December 1563: ‘my hand no longer serves me; so, from now on, I’ll get others to write for me, and I’ll sign.’ Indeed, the next letter we read is penned by Daniele da Volterra with Michelangelo’s final signature at its base.
Overall, this thought-provoking exhibition is a thrilling descent into the mind of the master, laced with anecdotes and trade secrets to better understand his extraordinary achievements. If one has enough patience to read through the archival sources, there is potential to come out feeling like you've known Michelangelo personally. Multiple visits are highly recommended.
Real or Fake
Can we fool you? The term “fake” may be slightly sensationalist when it comes to old drawings. Copying originals and prints has long formed a key part of an artist’s education and with the passing of time the distinction between the two can be innocently mistaken.
In part due to the fertility of the artist’s imagination and the extensive preparatory process undertaken for the large-scale fresco works for which he is best known, this artist has proven popular with forgers over the years. Whilst the more cunning forgers might invent a stage in the preparatory process and introduce subtle deviations in composition from the finished work, this is a straight copy with an apocryphal signature. But which drawing is the original and which the copy?
Scroll to the end of the newsletter for answers.
Resources and Recommendations
to listen
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp - with Adam Rutherford
Dr Adam Rutherford, the approachable face of British science, provides a scientist’s analysis of Rembrandt’s iconic 1632 oil painting, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. On the topic of draughtsmanship, Rutherford stops by Galen, and the birth of anatomical drawings in the Renaissance with Leonardo and Vesalius.
to watch
My National Gallery – Terry Gilliam & Bronzino; Michael Palin & Turner
Two shorter watches this month in the form of clips from interviews with Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin for Exhibition on Screen's forthcoming film "My National Gallery". One is now accustomed to seeing Bill Nighy pace the corridors of the Courtauld Gallery, but these short clips offer amusing insight into the Pythons’ relationship with the National Gallery, in celebration of its 200th year. Unsurprisingly, Palin finds a way to talk about trains through J. M. W. Turner's 'Rain, Steam, Speed'. Gilliam on the other hands talks about talk about Bronzino's painting "Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time", the source of the emblematic Monty Python foot.
The film comes to cinemas around the world on 4th June.
to read
Learning to Draw Landscape in Nineteenth-Century France by Patricia Mainardi
In 1855 the Goncourt brothers declared that “Landscape is the victory of modern art. It is the honor of the nineteenth century”. In this article Patricia Mainardi provides a good overview of the development of landscape as a genre in 19th century France, the initial apprehension of the French Academy, the prejudice of the hierarchy of subjects which placed landscape below history painting, and even genre, and the importance of drawing manuals.
answer
The original, of course, is the upper image. It is held in Morgan Library & Museum, New York
Domenico Tiepolo, Centaur and Faun in a Landscape, 184 x 267 mm, New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Lore Heinemann, in memory of her husband, Dr. Rudolf J. Heinemann, 1997.62
Anonymous faker of Domenico Tiepolo, attributed, Centaur and Faun in a Landscape, location unknown, photograph: Luca Baroni
For an interesting overview of Tiepolo fakes from which this example was drawn, see L. Baroni, ‘Tiepolo falsificato: da Bernard Berenson a Eric Hebborn’, in M. P. Frattolin, ed., Tiepolo: I disegni, Udine, 2024, pp. 138-163.
