Saturday, December 14, 2019

Studies of Drapery – Artistic Drawings (1600-1900)

Charles West Cope
Drapery Study
before 1890
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Charles West Cope
Drapery Study
before 1890
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Drapery Study
17th century
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Drapery Study
17th century
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Elihu Vedder
Drapery Study
ca. 1890
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Francis Augustus Lathrop
Drapery Study
ca. 1895
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Drapery Study
17th century
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Fairy-Land

Dim vales – and shadowy floods –
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over:
Huge moons there wax and wane –
Again – again – again –
Every moment of the night –
Forever changing places –
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down – still down – and down
With its centre on the crown
Of a mountain's eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be –
O'er the strange woods – o'er the sea –
Over spirits on the wing –
Over every drowsy thing –
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light –
And then, how, deep! – O, deep,
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like – almost any thing –
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end, as before,
Videlicet, a tent –
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

– Edgar Allan Poe (1831)

Anonymous Italian Artist
Drapery Study
ca. 1675
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Drapery Study
ca. 1675
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Drapery Study
ca. 1650-75
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

François Lemoyne
Drapery Study
ca. 1720
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Kenyon Cox
Drapery Study
ca. 1900
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Drapery Study of Sleeve
17th century
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Drapery Study of Sleeve and Studies of Hands
17th century
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum