Master Drawings, 225 Madison Avenue, New York, NY (2021)

09/01/2021

Kick off the Fall with our spectacular compilation of articles on Italian Renaissance drawings in MASTER DRAWINGS latest issue (Volume 59, issue 3). Some of the most celebrated draftsmen of all time are featured, including Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo, among others.

The cover article is by Ricciardi Prize finalist Konstantinos Gravanis. He offers, through the evidence of a previously misunderstood drawing in the Ashmolean Museum, fresh insights into Raphael’s lost fresco of Countess Matilda in the Stanza dell'Incendio of the Vatican.
A technical study of a Michelangelo sheet reveals profound new applications of how and when certain media was utilized, critically impacting the date of the drawing within the artist’s oeuvre.

Another provides a compelling reinterpretation of Leonardo’s “Deluge” drawings offers thoughtful insights into how these drawings are inspired by the visions of the prophet Ezekiel.

Other fascinating essays examine sheets by Baccio Bandinelli, Giovanni da Udine, and Federico Zuccaro.
Subscribe today (https://masterdrawings.org/subscribe/) for paper and digital access to MASTER DRAWINGS. You won’t want to miss having a personal copy of this beautiful and exceptional issue.

(Cover image: Raphael, “Study for Countess Matilda of Canossa with a Dog,” Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England)

08/30/2021

The graphic arts collection at the Musee Louvre is one of the largest in the world and is the focus of this week’s MONDAY WITH MASTER DRAWINGS.

The collection comprises almost 250,000 works including drawings, pastels, prints and miniatures dating from the eleventh to the nineteenth century. Artists represented include Italians Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Titian. French artists Nicolas Poussin, Charles Le Brun, Watteau, Delacroix, Géricault, Ingres, and Northern European draftsmen such as Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein, Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens.

You can explore the collection at https://www.louvre.fr/en/explore/the-palace/drawings-prints-and-pastels

(Image: Eugène Delacroix, “Etudes de têtes (Study of heads),” brown ink and pen, The
Louvre, Paris)

08/25/2021

Collectors’ marks contain a wealth of information about print and drawing collectors and their collections. A great reference work on Collection Marks is now available online courtesy of our partner institution, Fondation Custodia (https://www.fondationcustodia.fr/Collectors-Marks).

Organized by collector Frits Lugt, it was originally published in 1921 as the reference work entitled: Les marques de collections de dessins & d’estampes. It is the most important manual for specialists of drawings and prints to trace the provenance of works on paper, by means of recorded collectors’ marks, written or stamped.

Read in the next issue of MASTER DRAWINGS (Vol 59, Issue 3), an article revealing the intriguing identity of a mysterious Collector’s Mark that appears often at auctions of Old Master’s drawings.

08/23/2021

Today we are spotlighting the drawing collection of the New-York Historical Society. With over 8,000 sheets, the collection’s strength resides in its unparalleled late 18th- and early 19th-century art. We are highlighting the collection today as part of MONDAYS WITH MASTER DRAWINGS.

The NYHS collection includes around 640 drawings by James Carroll Beckwith, ten of which are the earliest known portraits of John Singer Sargent; six sheets by Sargent; watercolors by Louis Comfort Tiffany; and 500 watercolors by John James Audubon, including all 435 preparatory for The Birds of America. Learn more about the collection at https://emuseum.nyhistory.org/collections/5467/drawing-highlights/objects

Look for the next MONDAYS WITH MASTER DRAWINGS as we highlight another amazing drawing collection.

(Image: Louis Comfort Tiffany, “Design for a stained-glass window, Bunnell Studio, Carnegie Hall, Cleveland, Ohio,” watercolor, gouache, and Conté crayon on paper laid on board, overmatted in original presentation mount, New York Historical Society)

08/20/2021

“Paper Stories, Layered Dreams, The Art of Ekua Holmes,” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, features original illustrations from Holmes’s published book projects. Holmes works primarily in collage and painted paper, exploring themes of childhood, family bonds, memory, and resilience. Books featured include: “Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer,” “Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement,” by Carole Boston Weatherford, “Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets,” by Kwame Alexander, and “Black Is a Rainbow Color,” by Angela Joy. The exhibition also features a selection of Holmes’s illustrations for the recently released book “Saving American Beach,” by Heidi Tyline King. The exhibit is on view until January 23, 2022.

(Image: Ekua Holmes, “Sufficient Grace: Ms. Ivy Beckles,” Collage of found and painted papers on canvas, From the collection of Dr. Patricia A. Fraser*© Ekua Holmes*Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

08/17/2021

In celebration of #NationalNonprofitDay, MASTER DRAWINGS recognizes the tremendous effort of nonprofits in sustaining opportunities in the arts, a field that has been heavily impacted in the last year. We salute charities around the world that are enabling the pursuit of creative expression as well as their intellectual study.

(Image: Heinrich Maria von Hess, “Allegories of Faith, Hope, and Charity,” graphite, pen and
brown ink, brush and brown wash heightened with white (partly oxidized), in an inscribed arch
on brown paper, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

08/16/2021

Today, MONDAYS WITH MASTER DRAWINGS spotlights the Rijksmuseum in in Amsterdam. The museum’s focus is on Northern Netherlandish drawings, including sixty drawings by Rembrandt. To learn about these drawings and other parts of the collection, watch an episode of the museum’s “Keys to the Rijks.” It features MASTER DRAWINGS editor, Jane Turner, former head of the Rijksmuseum’s Print Room, taking actor/model, Anna Drijver on a journey through the museum’s drawings collection. (https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/stories/keys-to-the-rijks/story/anna-drijver-and-jane-turner)

(Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, “Self-portrait with Tousled Hair,” pen and brown ink, with grey wash; framing line in brown ink, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

08/11/2021

“Dines Carlsen: In His Own Manner,” at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle, offers a rotating view of selections from the Museum's newly acquired collection of nearly 1,000 drawings by this twentieth-century American artist. Although known primarily for still life paintings, Carlsen was highly regarded for his landscapes, which he painted on vacations throughout the United States and Mexico. The exhibit is on view through October 24th.

(Image: Dines Carlsen, “Spire of Vor Freisers Kirke, Copenhagen,” conte crayon on bond paper, National Nordic Museum, Seattle WA)

08/09/2021

Today’s MONDAYS WITH MASTER DRAWINGS looks at the prints and drawings department at our partner institution, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). The collection spans the Middle Ages through the 21st century, including works by Edgar Degas, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Paul Klee, Adolphe Menzel, Pablo Picasso, and Odilon Redon. In the mid-1990s, the Museum began acquiring significant drawings by Abstract Expressionist painters, including William Baziotes, James Brooks, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Po***ck, and Richard Pousette-Dart. Another focus is drawings by 20th-century sculptors, among them Aristide Maillol and David Smith.

Dive into the MFAH collection at https://emuseum.mfah.org/groups/prints-and-drawings

(Image: Paul Klee, “Marjamshausen,” watercolor and gouache over graphite on wove paper, on artist's paper board mount with pen and ink, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX)

08/02/2021

Did you know that our partner institution, Fondation Custodia, is considered the ‘home of works on paper’ in France? It’s the focus of this week’s MONDAYS WITH MASTER DRAWINGS.
The Fondation’s Old Master drawings, collected originally by Frits Lugt, include fifteenth-to-eighteenth-century Dutch, Flemish and Italian drawings, and seventeenth-and-eighteenth century French drawings. You can view the entire Italian drawings collection online at https://collectiononline.fondationcustodia.fr

(Image: Andrea del Sarto , “Head of Leonardo di Lorenzo Morelli,” black chalk,” Fondation Custodia, Paris)

08/01/2021

“Dürer & After,” at our partner institution, the Clark Art Institute Wiiliamstown MA, offers an opportunity to assess Albrecht Dürer’s centuries-long artistic legacy.

Dürer has long attracted all manner of imitators, copyists, and interpreters. Running the gamut from strict copies to free interpretations, works credited as “after-Dürer” reflect a range of motives. While many imitators copied to pay homage to his brilliant art, others sought to deceive or profit by creating confusion about an image’s true authorship. In this exhibition, originals and copies are grouped together to reveal the complex afterlife of some of Dürer’s most celebrated images. The exhibit will be on view until October 3rd.

(Image: James McBey, “Portrait of the Poet James Thomson with Dürer's Melancholia in Background; verso: Two studies of man's head in profile,” pen and ink and black and gray wash on wove paper, Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts)