Saturday, December 23, 2017

Eighteenth Century Drawings Preserved in London

attributed to Joseph Wright of Derby
Portrait Study of an Unknown Man
ca. 1751-57
drawing
Tate Gallery

"Previously thought to be a seventeenth-century portrait sketch, this drawing is now attributed to Joseph Wright of Derby.  Recent analysis of the paper has shown that it dates from the period c. 1747-57, making the earlier identification impossible.  It is now believed to be a studio drawing executed by Wright while a student in the London studio of the portrait painter Thomas Hudson.  It is probably a copy made after either a print or a painting by the seventeenth-century artist Sir Peter Lely.  Copying the work of past masters was a recognised student exercise, and Hudson had a large collection of paintings, drawings and prints for Wright to make use of."

Joseph Wright of Derby
Inside the Arcade of the Colosseum
ca. 1774-75
drawing
Tate Gallery

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Study of a Cast of the Bacchus of Sansovino
ca. 1791
drawing
Tate Gallery

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Study of the Lower Half of an Ascending Figure
after James Nevay's drawing
after Michelangelo's fresco of the Last Judgement

ca. 1793
drawing
Tate Gallery

"This study is copied from a drawing in black and white chalks on buff paper by the Scottish artist James Nevay after Michelangelo's Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome.  Nevay's drawing is dated 1772, and was given by him with five other drawings after figures from the Last Judgement to the Royal Academy in 1773.  The figure drawn here is to be found in the centre of the left-hand side of the composition."   

Joseph Highmore
Portrait of a Man in a Cap
before 1780
drawing
Tate Gallery

Joseph Highmore
Two studies of a Man's Head
c. 1720-30
drawing
Tate Gallery

Joseph Highmore
Two Ladies in an Interior
before 1780
drawing
Tate Gallery

"The animated gestures of the two elegant ladies, both of whom wear outdoor wraps, while one carries a muff, suggest that this may illustrate a scene from a novel or a play.  The setting seems to be a grand entrance hall with an elaborate Rococo doorway in the background."

Joseph Highmore
Académie studies
ca. 1712-15
drawing
Tate Gallery

Joseph Highmore
Académie
ca. 1745-50
drawing
Tate Gallery

Joseph Highmore
Académie
ca. 1745-50
drawing
Tate Gallery

"These two studies [directly above] are probably too highly finished to have been executed from the life at an academy of art, and are more likely to have been made as illustrations for an unexecuted theoretical treatise."  

Henry Fuseli
Self Portrait as a Faun
ca. 1770-80
drawing
Tate Gallery

"Fuseli made this portrait of himself as a sculpted faun when he was in Italy during the 1770s.  By this time he already had a reputation for studied eccentricity.  As a friend in Rome noted, 'he is everything in extremes  always an original; his look is lightning, his word a thunderstorm; his jest is death, his revenge, hell.  He cannot draw a single mean breath.  He never draws portraits, his features are all true, yet at the same time caricature . . ."

Henry Fuseli
Self Portrait and Anatomical Studies
1783
drawing
Tate Gallery

Henry Fuseli
Charis Phykomené
1791
drawing
Tate Gallery

Richard Dalton
Farnese Hercules
1742
drawing
Tate Gallery

"This drawing demonstrates the extremely fine line-work which can be achieved with red chalk.  the thinness of the line suggests that Dalton used a natural red chalk, since these tended to be harder than fabricated or synthetic red chalks.  Dalton would probably have fastened a stick of red chalk to a holder and kept the point sharp with a knife.  The darkest areas within the figure have been made by cross-hatching and drawing closely spaced narrow lines one on top of the other."

Alexander Cozens
In the Farnese Gardens, Rome
1746
drawing
Tate Gallery

"Alexander Cozens is best known for the treatises he wrote in which he attempted to categorise landscape types.  His most famous is A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape (1786), where he explained how to create imaginary landscapes by using ink blots.  Cozens spent two years in Italy in the 1740s.  Nearly sixty watercolors and drawings have survived from his stay in Rome, as well as a sketchbook.  This drawing, although depicting a specific location in the Farnese Gardens, is reminiscent of the work of the classical masters of landscape, such as Gaspard Dughet."

 quoted passages based on notes by curators at the Tate in London