Resources & recommendations

to listen

Mark Gatiss: in search of John Minton

In 2018 Thomas Marks sat down with Mark Gatiss, star of stage and screen, to discuss the life and reception of the modern British artist John Minton. Minton was one of the leading figures of postwar British art, a haunter of Soho pubs along with his friends Bacon and Freud, and one of the most highly gifted illustrators of the 20th century.

to watch

Almost Invisible: The Cartoon Transfer Process

Curators at the Getty dive into the deep end of the 15th and 16th centuries, explaining the ingenious practice of using cartoons (large scale preparatory drawings) to transfer the drawn image from paper onto canvas or wool. Drawing allowed for greater experimentation and refinement of a design than painting and thus formed a key creative stage in the artistic process.

to read

Drawings by Elisabetta Sirani and Properzia de’ Rossi

Jacqueline Thalmann examines four drawings in the collection of Christ Church, Oxford, attributed to Bolognese women artists. Old Master drawings by women artists are rarer than those of their male counterparts, not least because women artists were less numerous than men, but also, as Thalmann observes, because they were often omitted from literary sources, and the term disegno (literally – ‘drawing’) was commonly associated with the male brain.