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| Eustache Le Sueur Head of a woman ca. 1646-49 drawing Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Jean Joseph Bernard Marie Antoinette 1787 drawing British Museum |
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| Jean Joseph Bernard Louis XVI 1786 drawing British Museum |
"Jean Joseph Bernard began his career as writing-master at the court of the cultivated Stanislas, exiled King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lorraine. After Stanislas's death in 1766, Bernard moved to Paris, where he developed a form of calligraphic portraiture which rapidly brought him acclaim among the French elite. In around 1778 he was invited to make portraits of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. He produced numerous versions of these portraits during the next ten years to satisfy popular demand. The present sheets are among the later examples of these portraits. . . . Although his pen-portraits seem to have been better known than his pure calligraphy, Bernard always seems to have regarded himself as a writing-master. He was one of the founding members of the Bureau académique d'écriture in 1779, and, after the French Revolution, he found an appointment as writing-master to the pages of the Imperial Court. His pen-portraits, however, continued to be popular."
– curator's notes from the British Museum
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| Joseph Mallord William Turner Study of a ruined building (probably a demolition-site in London) ca. 1792 drawing Tate Gallery |
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| Joseph Mallord William Turner Ruined building at Albano (from an album of copies of Italian views) ca. 1794-98 drawing Tate Gallery |
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| Joseph Mallord William Turner Lecture Diagram - Ruined Amphitheatre ca. 1810 drawing Tate Gallery |
"Made by Turner for his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, this representation of a ruined amphitheatre is associated by Maurice Davies with a larger group of diagrams illustrating the production of shadows. Peter Bower writes that the sheet is Double Elephant size Whatman paper made by William Balston at Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent."
– curator's notes from the Tate Gallery
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| Thomas Rowlandson Christie's Auction-Rooms, Pall Mall ca. 1808 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Heneage Finch Ruined Classical Tomb under Trees before 1812 drawing Tate Gallery |
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| John Hayter Mrs Siddons (in old age) 1826 drawing British Museum |
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| Thomas Rowlandson Classical Figures before 1827 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Alessandro Sanquirico Coronation of the King of Lombardy-Veneto (Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria) in the Cathedral of Milan 1838 drawing National Gallery of Canada |
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| Frederick Walker The Moray Minstrels 1865 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"This design for a printed invitation was created for the well-to-do silk merchant Arthur James Lewis, who often welcomed male friends to Moray Lodge, his bachelor establishment on Campden Hill, overlooking London's Holland Park. Once a month between January and March, singers would gather on a Saturday evening at 8:30 pm to perform modern and ancient works; and an oyster supper was served at eleven. Lewis was an amateur artist who joined the Junior Etching Club and welcomed London artists, such as Whistler, to his home. The invitation captures the jolly informality of Lewis's entertaining."
– curator's notes from the Metropolitan Museum
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| Jacobus van Looy Detail of Gondolier (after a painting by Titian) before 1930 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| John Craxton Llanthony Abbey 1942 drawing Tate Gallery |
"This drawing is of the medieval Llanthony Abbey which stands in an isolated position on the bottom of a steep valley in the Black Mountains, South Wales. Craxton visited the abbey in 1942 with the graphic designer E.Q. Nicholson. Although he was surprised to find someone living there, in a house attached to the south side of the building, Craxton was pleased to see that the abbey itself "was wonderfully untouched by the ruinous and dead hand of the then Office of Works." Describing the abbey as a "living ruin," he recalled, "crows and jackdaws were nesting in the broken gothic windows, ivy everywhere." Although there are no birds or other animals in this drawing, the buildings and vegetation are given a sense of life by Craxton's anthropomorphic treatment of the uprooted tree, and the vigorous intensity of his technique. . . . The writhing, menacing vegetation that frames the ruined abbey was already a standard feature in picturesque landscapes and writing of the Romantic period around 1800. . . . The linear technique and dramatic contrasts of light and shade, foreground and background are reminiscent of Samuel Palmer's pastoral scenes. This combination of human emotion and nature lies at the heart of the British Neo-Romantic movement. The sense of an endangered earthly paradise had considerable resonance in wartime Britain. Craxton can be included among a number of artists, including Keith Vaughan, Graham Sutherland, and John Minton, who were concerned with what David Mellor described as, "the body and sexuality; nostalgia and anxiety; myth-making; organic fantasies; the threat of war and extinction."
– curator's notes from the Tate Gallery