Introduction

Master Drawings in New York January 2008

On Drawing

The origin of our desire to visually communicate our observations of the world that we inhabit, and to render using line and tone our shared experience and the flights of our imagination, has been lost in time. But the primordial urge to draw—manifest on the walls of caves, in Egyptian papyri, and on pottery from the ancient world—would, no later than the early Renaissance, come to be regarded as the foundation of all Western art.

The use of drawing as a tool—to train and exercise the eye and hand, to study nature and the human body, and to facilitate the invention of expressive and dynamic compositions—endows the medium with an unselfconscious intimacy that accounts, in part, for the extraordinary appeal of sketches and studies of all kinds and every period. There is no other medium in which the eye, hand, and imagination of the artist are so inextricably linked, and arguably no more immediate reflection of artistic genius.

These attributes of drawings would eventually lead to such widespread admiration for original works on paper that, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onward, many were conceived as independent works of art, intended from the outset for the delectation of collectors. Yet such comparatively finished drawings also have a directness and vivacity that betray the hand and mind of their creators. And it is this quality—the inimitable touch of the artist that permits the attribution of even unsigned drawings to a specific individual—that is so rewarding to the student and collector. Although this formal language has often been compared to handwriting, it is in fact more subtle, more personal, and more expressive—largely freed, as it is, from the conventions of communicating meaning through a single set of signs.

The variety of artists’ drawings is astonishing. They range from the incomparably delicate, highly experimental, yet miraculously assured sketches of Leonardo da Vinci, to the bravura calligraphy of pen studies by the Baroque painter Guercino, to the economy of Rembrandt’s landscapes drawn in pen and ink, in which the artist conveys light, form, atmosphere, and texture with remarkably few and magically versatile strokes. One might compare the suave idealization of form, elegance of line, and intensely luminous contrast of golden wash with the dazzling whiteness of the paper typical of Giambattista Tiepolo’s studies of cloud-borne deities with the tremulous line and densely composed narrative compositions of his son and pupil Giandomenico. There are the virtuosic delicacy and unsurpassed refinement of the carefully finished portrait drawings made throughout his life by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and the boldness, vigor, and frenzied imagination of sheets by his contemporary Eugène Delacroix. And, in the twentieth century, there are the almost violent spontaneity of drawings by Max Beckmann, the exuberant fantasy of sheets by Joan Miró, the explosive expressionism of Willem de Koonig’s Women, and the transcendent simplicity of Agnes Martin’s intensely contemplative small sketches.

The study of drawings—of the distinctive marks with which a draftsman evokes form and texture, and of his or her characteristic figure types, personal vocabulary of gesture and expression, and singular approach to composition—affords an unparalleled glimpse of the creative process. Such intimate familiarity with an artist’s touch—the ability almost to share in the creative process—is but one source of the enjoyment we derive from works on paper. There are many others, not least their sheer beauty and infinite diversity of style. We are indebted to the early collectors who saw greatness in an artist’s jottings on mere scraps of paper. And we are fortunate that, as enthusiasts, collectors, scholars, or museum professionals, we, too, have the opportunity to appreciate, learn from, and safeguard for future generations these fragile but uniquely personal and expressive works of art.

William M. Griswold