Pink Paper – European Drawings – 1400-1900

Pisanello
Allegory of Luxuria
ca. 1426
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Filippino Lippi
Head of Elderly Man
ca. 1495
drawing
Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig

Girolamo Romanino
Standing Soldier with Plumed Hat
ca. 1519-35
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Parmigianino
Winged Victories
ca. 1531-35
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Hans Holbein
Portrait of William Parr, later Marquess of Northampton
ca. 1538-42
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Peter Candid
Two Studies of a Standing Man with a Sword (Alexander the Great)
ca. 1601
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Peter Paul Rubens
Portrait of the Artist's Daughter, Clara Serena
ca. 1623
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Palma il Giovane
Portrait Head of a Man
before 1628
drawing
Harvard Art Museums

Guercino
Apollo
ca. 1637
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Pietro Testa
Study for Allegorical Figures of Virtues
ca. 1642-44
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

attributed to Giovanni Lanfranco
Study of Foreshortened Figure
before 1647
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Giacinto Gimignani
Figure Study
before 1681
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Carlo Maratti
Portrait of Faustina Maratti
1686
drawing
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta
Portrait of a Boy pointing upward
ca. 1740-45
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Edgar Degas
Dancer Seated
1873-74
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Blue Paper – Northern European Drawings – 1800-1900

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
Study of Drapery
ca. 1813
drawing on blue paper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
Seated Model
ca. 1800
drawing on blue paper
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
Standing Model
ca. 1810-20
drawing on blue paper
British Museum

Benjamin Robert Haydon
Study of Antique Sculpture
early 19th century
drawing on blue paper
British Museum

William Hilton
Study of the Belvedere Torso
ca. 1801-1839
drawing on blue paper
British Museum

Chrétien Dubois
Académie
ca. 1805
drawing on blue paper
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan Willem Pieneman
Académie
ca. 1810
drawing on blue paper
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Académie
early 19th century
drawing on blue paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Académie
early 19th century
drawing on blue paper
Tate Gallery

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Jason encountering the Dragon guarding the Golden Fleece
(study for painting)
early 19th century
drawing on blue paper
Tate Gallery

Victor-François-Eloi Biennourry
Figure of a Roman Soldier
(study for mural)
ca. 1851-52
drawing on blue paper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

August Allebé
Study of a Cast of the Dancing Faun
ca. 1855-60
drawing on blue paper
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Edward Burne-Jones
Cassandra
ca. 1866-70
drawing on blue paper
Victoria & Albert Museum

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Andromeda1868
drawing on blue paper
Victoria & Albert Museum

Edgar Degas
Two Dancers
ca. 1879
drawing on blue paper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Modern Personalities on Film (1905-1977)

Gertrude Käsebier
Miss Dix
ca. 1905
platinum print
Art Institute of Chicago

August Sander
The Painter Otto Dix and his wife Martha
1925-26
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Brassaï
Crosswalk on the Rue de Rivoli
1937
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Irving Penn
Ballet Theatre, New York
1948
platinum palladium print
Art Institute of Chicago

Bruce Davidson
Boy and Girl at Cigarette Vending Machine
1959
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Bruce Davidson
Slumber Party
1959
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

from Upon being Asked by a Reader 
whether the Verses contained in this Book were True

And is it True? It is not True.
And if it were it wouldn't do,
For people such as me and you
Who pretty nearly all day long
Are doing something rather wrong.
Because if things were really so,
You would have perished long ago,
And I would not have lived to write
The noble lines that meet your sight . . .

– Hilaire Belloc (1923)

Irving Penn
Frederick Kiesler & Willem de Kooning
1960
platinum palladium print
Art Institute of Chicago

Duane Michals
Two Circus Performers, Paris
1962
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Duane Michals
Ray Barry
1963 and 1977
gelatin silver prints
Art Institute of Chicago

Duane Michals
René Magritte
1965
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Duane Michals
Kim Novak
1967
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Duane Michals
Warren Beatty
1967
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Duane Michals
Death comes to the Old Lady
1969
gelatin silver prints
Art Institute of Chicago

On a Sleeping Friend

Lady, when your lovely head
Droops to sink among the Dead,
And the quiet places keep
You that so divinely sleep;
Then the dead shall blessèd be
With a new solemnity,
For such Beauty, so descending,
Pledges them that Death is ending.
Sleep your fill – but when you wake
Dawn shall over Lethe break.

– Hilaire Belloc (1923)

Joel Snyder
Untitled
1971
platinum print
Art Institute of Chicago

The First Monotype (1642) and Later Ones

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
Creation of Adam
ca. 1642
monotype
Art Institute of Chicago

"Considered one of the most original and innovative Italian artists of the Baroque period, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione literally separated light from darkness, creating form out of chaos in this work, his earliest known monotype.  In a perfect match of medium and message, Castiglione, the Genoese artist credited with inventing the technique, used this new method to portray the central act of Genesis: the creation of man.  He produced this electrifying image by subtracting the design from the inked surface of a copperplate with a blunt instrument, such as a stick or paintbrush handle, and then printing directly on a sheet of paper.  Broad, angular strokes of white depict God emerging from a cloud, while thin, fluid lines extract the languid body of Adam from velvety blackness.  Castiglione's monotypes employ both this dark-ground technique, which naturally lends itself to dramatic and mysterious imagery, and the light-ground manner, in which the design is drawn in ink directly on a clean plate.  Both processes yield only one fine impression.  It was not until the nineteenth century that such versatile artists as Edgar Degas explored the monotype's full potential." 

– curator's notes from the Art Institute of Chicago

Edgar Degas
Girl putting on Stockings
ca. 1876-77
monotype
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Edgar Degas
Ballet at the Paris Opéra
1877
pastel over monotype
Art Institute of Chicago

Edgar Degas
Café Concert at Les Ambassadeurs
1876
pastel over monotype
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Edgar Degas
Music Hall Singer
1875-77
pastel and gouache over monotype
private collection

"Equally inventive was Degas's attitude to printmaking in the mid-1870s when he began to put particular emphasis on monotypes.  The monotype, which is created in two ways, was for him a form of drawing.  The 'light-field' manner was produced by making a free-hand design in printer's ink directly onto a blank plate.  The 'dark-field' type was produced by inking the whole plate first and then wiping parts of it clean or partially clean in accordance with the selected design.  The point about monotypes, however, is that the number of impressions was severely limited and in most cases to a single impression, but occasionally two, with the second impression being much fainter.  Degas decided to heighten the impressions with pastel or gouache after he pulled them so that the monotype itself served as a dark background or priming for the final image."

– Christopher Lloyd, Edgar Degas: Drawings and Pastels (Getty Museum, 2014)

Edgar Degas
L'étoile
ca. 1876-78
pastel over monotype
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Edgar Degas
Singers on the Stage
ca. 1877-79
pastel over monotype
Art Institute of Chicago

Edgar Degas
Heads of a Woman and a Man
ca. 1877-80
monotype
British Museum

Edgar Degas
Le Sommeil
ca. 1883-85
monotype
British Museum

Edgar Degas
Landscape with House, Figures and Fountain
ca. 1878
monotype
British Museum

Edgar Degas
Landscape with Smokestacks
ca. 1890
pastel over monotype
Art Institute of Chicago

Edgar Degas
Landscape with Path
ca. 1890
pastel over monotype
Morgan Library, New York

"Degas was in higher spirits when he travelled with the sculptor Paul-Albert Bartholomé in 1890 to visit their friend the artist Georges Jeanniot in Burgundy.  The journey was undertaken in a tilbury (a two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage) and involved journeying south-eastwards from Paris following the river Seine to the village of Diénay, twenty miles north of Dijon.  Letters written by Degas to friends show that he treated the trip as a 'progress' through the French countryside with the gastronomic delights at first perhaps of a greater significance than the visual experiences.  The result was not only an unexpected breakthrough in Degas's printmaking techniques but also a whole new development in his art.  Over thirty colour monotypes, some heightened with pastel, record the artist's impressions of this journey into the hinterland of France."

– Christopher Lloyd, Edgar Degas: Drawings and Pastels (Getty Museum, 2014)

Edgar Degas
Le Cap Hornu près Saint Valéry-sur-Somme
ca. 1890-93
color monotype
British Museum

Edgar Degas
Lake in the Pyrenees
ca. 1890-93
color monotype
British Museum