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Master Drawings

Master Drawings is the leading international periodical for the study of drawings from the fourteent Master Drawings Association, Inc.

is a not-for-profit organization incorporated in the State of New York on March 16, 1962, for the purpose of disseminating knowledge in the field of Western draftsmanship since the Renaissance. Its mission is fulfilled mainly through the publication of the subscription-based, academic quarterly Master Drawings, which was launched in 1963. The founding Editor was the late Felice Stampfle, Curator o

f Drawings and Prints at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the first Associate Editors were the late Jacob Bean, Curator of Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, who is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Master Drawings aspires to be the leading international periodical for the study of drawings from the fourteenth century to the present day in Europe and the Americas. Edited to the highest academic standards, it seeks to present the best and most important new research in a clear, elegant, and accessible format. The journal is primarily concerned with the publication of newly discovered material, significant reattributions, and fresh interpretations. Each issue, extensively illustrated with high-quality color and black-and-white images, consists of approximately 144 pages of articles, notes, exhibition and book reviews, as well as trade advertising. Other features, such as interviews with living artists and essays about historical collectors or collections, are intended to foster a sense of continuity between the pre-modern and modern eras. The journal’s target readership is a diverse and interrelated constituency of international curators, academics, students, collectors, and dealers. The language of the quarterly is English, but submissions are encouraged from a broad range of specialists throughout the world, mainly Europe and the Americas. may hold events that advance its mission and promote contact and collaboration within all sectors of the international drawings community. In light of changing research patterns in a digital age, the Board of Directors is committed to maintaining an online presence for the journal in order to increase its accessibility by making past content available through internet archiving programs.

10/17/2025

Read in the current issue of MASTER DRAWINGS (Vol. 63, no.3) how three drawings attributed the eighteenth-century vedutista Giuseppe Valeriani are preparatory for an important series of etched views of Venice that was first published in the 1710s, Domenico Lovisa’s “Il gran teatro di Venezia.”

Author Andrew Robinson, former Senior Curator for Prints & Drawings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., asserts that Valeriani’s designs provide a crucial transition from “an old-fashioned approach centered on small frontal views of famous buildings, toward the new eighteenth-century sense of a broader urban (and suburban!) scene in more active compositions.”

Subscribe now (https://masterdrawings.org/subscribe/) and you can peruse online before receiving your mailed issue. Access to our digital platform is FREE with your individual subscription.

(Image: Giuseppe Valeriani, “Veduta del Campo dei Frari,” Private Collection, Paris)

10/15/2025

“Lost and Found: The Life and Art of Samson Schames,” from the Leo Baeck Institute, and at the Center for Jewish History in New York, is the first comprehensive presentation of the artist’s works in the U.S. His native Frankfurt am Main, and his exiles in London and New York are represented through works on paper such as seven self-portraits; art made in an internment camp with improvised materials, like broom bristles for brushes; and vivid mosaics out of rubble gathered from the bombed streets of London. The exhibition is on view until December 21.

(Image: Samson Schames, “Self-Portrait: Moody,” pen, ink washes on paper, Leo Baeck Institute, New York /Berlin)

10/12/2025

“Blake,” recently published by our institutional partner the Yale Center for British Art, examines the art and methods of William Blake through the lens of the museum’s collection, comprising more than nine hundred works. Released in conjunction with the exhibition “William Blake: Burning Bright,” the new publication is written by Elizabeth Wyckoff, the YCBA’s Curator of Prints and Drawings and curator of Burning Bright, on view until November 30. The book features reproductions of Blake’s watercolors, paintings, prints, and illustrated books, including the only hand-colored copy of his epic poem Jerusalem.

(Image: William Blake, “The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins,” watercolor with pen and black ink, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT)

10/10/2025

Research into a watercolor rendering of three insects, including an iridescent Rhinoceros beetle native to Brazil, is presented by Olivia Dill in the current issue of MASTER DRAWINGS (Vol. 63, no. 3) Besides attributing the drawing to the seventeenth-century Dutch natural history artist Pieter Holsteyn II, Dr. Dill, the 2025 winner of the journal’s annual Ricciardi Prize, uses an interdisciplinary approach and technical analysis of the blue pigments to identify smalt as an important element in the artist’s efforts to capture the beetle’s natural iridescence in a drawing.

Subscribe now (https://masterdrawings.org/subscribe/) and you can peruse online before receiving your mailed issue. Access to our digital platform is FREE with your individual subscription.

(Image: Pieter Holsteyn II, “Sheet of Studies of a Dragonfly, Grasshopper, Butterflies, Moths, and Beetles,” J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles)

10/05/2025

“Allegory and Abstraction: Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, explores the ways artists embed their works with complex layers of meaning. Examples include relating stories, ideas, and feelings through symbols, as in allegory, or suggesting them through line, color, and pattern, as in abstraction. This rotation, highlighting works from the Met’s collection, features works such as Matisse’s 1947 series “Jazz” and Louise Bourgeois’s “He Disappeared into Complete Silence.”

(Image: Joseph Mallord William Turner, “The Lake of Zug,” watercolor and bodycolor (gouache) with reductive techniques over graphite, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.)

10/02/2025

Join the Drawing Foundation for “On Drawings 2025,” a two-day event taking place in New York City on November 6th and November 7th featuring conversations among curators, collectors, conservators, and artists focused on historical, modern, and contemporary drawings.

Hear exhibition curators provide unique perspectives on some of the fall’s exciting presentations of works on paper, including an exhibition tour of “Renoir Drawings” by Rebecca Pollak, Associate Paper Conservator, Thaw Conservation Center, at our partner institution, the Morgan Library & Museum.

Other opportunities include Study Center visits to:
• See the drawings of Claes Oldenburg and an exhibition Tour of the Whitney Museum’s “Claes Oldenburg: Drawn from Life.”
• View highlights of the Brooklyn Museum’s European drawings collection.
• Learn more about surrealist drawings by female artists from the collection at MoMA.
• Tour the Met Museum’s “Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson.”

Registration is required for all events, and you must be a member of the Drawing Foundation to attend. For more information go to https://thedrawingfoundation.org/event/on-drawings-2025/

(Auguste Renoir, Study for “The Judgment of Paris,” black, red, and white chalk, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.)

10/01/2025

“In Vino Veritas (In Wine, Truth),” at the Cleveland Museum of Art, celebrates the presence and meaning of wine in drawings, prints, textiles, and objects made in between 1450 and 1800. The exhibition, on view until January 11, 2026, features more than 70 works from the museum’s collection by artists, including Andrea Mantegna, Raphael, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Lucas van Leyden, and Albrecht Dürer.

(Image: Luzio Romano, “Design for a Chalice (recto),” pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over black chalk, Cleveland Museum of Art)

09/30/2025

“Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black,” at our partner institution, the Harvard Art Museums, showcases around 120 works, spanning from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, alongside artists’ materials from the museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. The exhibit, on view until January 18, 2026, features drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, John Singer Sargent, and Odilon Redon, alongside Piet Mondrian, Lyonel Feininger, Diego Rivera, Richard Serra, John Wilson, Isabella Quintanilla, and Toyin Ojih Odutola.

(Image: Georges Seurat, “Woman Seated by an Easel,” Conté crayon on beige wove paper. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum)

09/29/2025

A new addition to Pietro Perugino’s corpus of drawings is thoughtfully presented by Cristiana Romalli in the current issue of MASTER DRAWINGS (Vol. 63, no. 3). In her insightful essay Romalli, Senior Specialist of Old Master Drawings at Sotheby’s, expertly demonstrates how a partially pricked and pounced drawing served as a preparatory study for two figures in the middle section of the Baptism of Christ, one of the artist’s three remaining frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. The drawing is the only one of Perugino’s few surviving drawings that is certainly related to his works in the Vatican; it is also a rare ‘intermediary drawing’ used by Perugino to transfer a figure study from one sheet to another in order to work it up for use in another painting.

Subscribe now (https://masterdrawings.org/subscribe/) and peruse online before receiving your mailed issue. Access to our digital platform is FREE with your individual subscription.

(Image: Pietro Perugino, “Head of a Man to the Left Wearing a Knotted Headscarf,” British Museum, London)

09/25/2025

“Deconstructing Nature: Environmental Transformation in the Lucas Collection,” at the Baltimore Museum of Art, explores how artists working in 19th-century Europe and French-occupied northern Africa reflected and participated in society’s changing views and relationships to the environment. Featuring more than 50 works on paper drawn from the BMA’s George A. Lucas Collection, the exhibition, on view until January 4, 2026, is organized thematically. It focuses on five specific environments and the ways artists explored them in their work: The Desert, The Forest, The Field, The City, and The Studio.

Among the artists represented are Jean-François Millet, Eugène Delacroix, James McNeill Whistler, and Mary Cassatt. The exhibit is part of the BMA’s “Turn Again to the Earth” environmental initiative in celebration of the museum’s 110th anniversary.

(Image: Jean-François Millet, “The Gleaners,” black conté crayon with traces of red chalk on paper, Baltimore Museum of Art)

09/21/2025

Join Dr. Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director of our institutional partner, the Morgan Library & Museum, for a stimulating lecture titled “Renoir’s Creative Process.” The talk is in connection with the Morgan’s exhibition, “Renoir Drawings,” and takes place Friday, October 17, from 6–7 PM in Gilder Lehrman Hall on the Ground Floor.

“Renoir Drawings,” the first exhibition at the Morgan to be curated by Dr. Bailey, coincides with his tenth anniversary as its director. While Renoir’s paintings remain instantly recognizable, his drawings, watercolors, and pastels are less widely known. In fact, drawing was central to his artistic practice over the course of a long and varied career. In this lecture, Dr. Bailey will explore the ways in which the artist used paper to test ideas, plan compositions, and interpret landscapes and the human figure.

While registration is encouraged, seating is on a first come, first served basis. The exhibition will be open to visitors before and after the lecture. For more information go to:
https://www.themorgan.org/programs/lecture-colin-b-bailey-renoirs-creative-process

(Image: Auguste Renoir, “Boating Couple,” pastel on paper, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

09/19/2025

“Focus on the Peck Collection: Dutch Castles,” at the Ackland Museum of Art, Chapel Hill, NC, features “castle portraits” shown both intact and in picturesque ruin. This installment of works from the Peck Collection includes Abraham de Haen’s 1733 drawing of Beverweerd Castle, a seventeenth-century print of Berkenrode Castle, and three views of Spangen Castle. From medieval strongholds to elegant estates, Dutch castles and their ruins could symbolize status, regional identity, and national pride. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, artists responded to growing interest in history and topography by depicting these structures with increasing accuracy. The works, on view until November 11, reveal the artists’ skill in capturing architectural detail, shifting light, and the passage of time while offering documentation of the nation’s past for historians and contemporary viewers alike.
(Image: Abraham de Haen, “A View of Castle Beverweerd,” pen and gray ink, gray wash, over graphite on paper, The Peck Collection, Ackland Museum of Art, NC)

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