Resources & Recommendations #21
Sunday, 1 June 2025. Newsletter 21.
to listen
Art of The Deal – Sir Joseph Duveen
Jo McLaughlin provides an introduction to the life and times of Sir Joseph Duveen, the legendary art dealer who, at the turn of the 20th century, brought British aristocratic taste to America and introduced the concept of branding into the art world.
to watch
‘MDNY 2024 Inaugural Lecture: Botticelli Drawings’ with Furio Rinaldi
The Drawing Foundation offers an excellent archive of recorded events from across the calendar year. In January 2024, Furio Rinaldi, Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, delivered a talk on the drawings of the Florentine artist Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445–1510), held in conjunction with the opening of his landmark exhibition on the subject. The exhibition was the first and most extensive to examine the central role that drawing played in Botticelli’s art and workshop practice.
to read
The pastel frenzy: the history of a medium that is both painting and drawing by Kirsten Tambling
Is it a painting or a drawing? Pastel has long occupied an in-between status, typically worked on paper or vellum and sometimes mounted on canvas like a painting. In this short history, Kirsten Tambling traces the medium’s rise, fall, and revival - from its 18th-century heyday with Rosalba Carriera in Italy, Maurice Quentin de La Tour and Jean-Étienne Liotard in France, and John Russell in Britain, to its decline after the French Revolution and resurgence with Edgar Degas. The article concludes with its continued relevance today in the hands of artists such as Paula Rego and Claudette Johnson.
Image credit: The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
