BUILDING ON THE SUCCESS OF LAST YEAR

MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK

18-26 JANUARY 2008

Sixteen of the world’s leading drawings dealers are to hold co-ordinated exhibitions from 18-26 January at this years Master Drawings New York, which again will enable collectors and curators to see superb works dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Based on the highly successful Master Drawings London, launched in 2001, the second Master Drawings New York will provide connoisseurs with the chance to buy works at prices ranging from the eminently affordable to the highly covetable at shows within walking distance of one another on the city’s Upper East Side.

Master Drawings is a generic term that encompasses many artistic disciplines: watercolours on paper; charcoal and oil sketches; pencil or pen and ink drawings- examples of which will be on show at Master Drawings New York. Drawings often provide an excellent way to start collecting, and that so many have survived in such good order is proof of the value that has always been placed on them by collectors. Although a collector may not be able to afford a Landseer or a Romney painting, a drawing by the same old master may very well be within his or her reach.

Margot Gordon, the New York based dealer who organises the event with Crispian Riley-Smith, will be exhibiting Italian drawings of the sixteenth to late twentieth centuries. Her particular highlights include a red chalk preparatory study from the mid 1590s by Cavalier D’Arpino for one of his frescos in the Sala Maggiore del Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome, and an oil sketch by Bernardo Strozzi for his painting Allegory of Charity which has been dated to the 1620s.

Crispian Riley-Smith, the events co-organiser, will be exhibiting 18th and 19th century Dutch School drawings and watercolours which make up his special focus exhibition this year. A particularly lovely example of in this genre is ‘A Winter Landscape with Skaters’, which is sure to provoke much interest.

David Tunick is presenting a rare, classic Cubist drawing by Gris; the Spanish painter and draftsman, which has not been on the market for at least the last half century. Gris was a Cubist, but chose not to take those methods to the extreme conclusions of his contemporaries. He achieved a novel combination of flattened Cubist structure and a lucid depiction of the still life subjects he drew, of which Nature Morte: Vino... (Still Life: Wine...) from 1916 is a beautiful example.

Marianne Elrick-Manley is presenting further 20th century works. Highlights include Wilfredo Lam’s 1946 work ‘Cor de Pêche’, and one of a series of strongly geometrical mask studies that Julio Gonzalez based on an abstracted rearrangement of the proportions of his own facial features. Gonzalez often referred to mathematical proportional systems, and many late drawings such as this work made explicit use of such numerical ratios.

Dickinson will display Portrait of the Infant Daughter of Admiral Walker, Commander of the Turkish Fleet by Sir David Wilkie, RA. The child wears traditional Turkish dress, and is described by Nash in his book Sir David Wilkie’s Sketches in Turkey, Syria and Egypt 1840 — 1841 as being "of remarkable beauty, and one on which the accomplished artist has bestowed much care. It is not to be surpassed by any similar sketches of the greatest masters". In 1840 Wilkie had decided to study the inhabitants of the Holy Land, and it was not long after he produced this work that he died, on board the Orient on 1 June 1841 on his return to England from this visit to the Holy Cities. His burial was paid tribute to by his friend Turner in his work Peace: Burial at Sea.

Andrew Wyld, who will be crossing the Atlantic from London to take part in Master Drawings New York for the first time, will exhibit a stunning Romney sketch, priced at around £15,000. It shows a man in a classic Van Dyck ‘hand on hip’ pose, glancing to one side. Romney was the most productive and imaginative draughtsman of the second half of the eighteenth century, and this light pencil sketch has been expanded and enlivened through the use of a brush and brown ink. The drawing may have been made in the presence of the sitter to suggest possible compositions for their portrait, or perhaps made privately for his own reference.

Master Drawings London has already proved a magnet for lovers of drawings, with the summer 2007 event proving the most successful ever. Master Drawings New York looks set to repeat this success and further strengthen a sector of the market that has won new converts among collectors.

October 2007

For further information, contact:

US
Joanne Creveling
T: + 1 (212) 755 8500
F: + 1 (212) 755 8503
E: jcreveling@worldnet.att.net

United Kingdom
Abi Gold/Diana Cawdell
Cawdell Douglas
T: +44 (0)20 7439 2822
F: +44 (0)20 7287 5488
E: press@cawdelldouglas.co.uk