European Drawings (16th century to 19th century)

Anonymous German Artist
Three Blacksmiths crafting Armour at an Anvil
16th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Bartolomeo Cesi
Holy Family with St John the Baptist, adored by an unidentified figure
ca. 1590-1600
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Johann von Aachen
Salomé with the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1605-1610
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Claude Lorrain
Study of Tree Trunks
ca. 1640
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Prologue to Daphnis and Chloe

"When I was hunting in Lesbos, I saw the most beautiful sight I have ever seen, in a grove that was sacred to the Nymphs: a painting that told a story of love.  The grove itself was beautiful – thickly wooded, flowery, well watered; a single spring nourished everything, flowers and trees alike.  But the picture was lovelier still, combining great artistic skill with an exciting, romantic subject.  Many people were attracted by its fame and came, even from abroad, to pray to the Nymphs and to look at the picture."

"The picture: women giving birth, others dressing the babies, babies exposed, animals suckling them, shepherds adopting them, young people pledging love, a pirates' raid, an enemy attack – and more, much more, all of it romantic.  I gazed in admiration and was seized by a yearning to depict the picture in words."

"I searched out an interpreter of the picture and produced the four volumes of this book, as an offering to Love, the Nymphs, and Pan, and something for mankind to possess and enjoy.  It will cure the sick, comfort the distressed, stir the memory of those who have loved, and educate those who haven't.  For certainly no one has ever avoided Love, and no one will as long as beauty exists, and eyes can see.  As for me – may the god Love let me write about others' passions but keep my own self-control."

– written in Greek by Longus (2nd century AD), translated by Christopher Gill (1989)

Eustache Le Sueur
Study for St Gervasius
ca. 1652
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Michel Dorigny
Study for the Muse Urania
before 1665
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Karl Dankwart
Christ crowned with Thorns
before 1704
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jacques de Lajoue and François Le Moyne
Fireworks Display celebrating the Convalescence of Louis XV
1726
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Francesco Guardi
Architectural Capriccio - Garden Entrance to a Palace
before 1793
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Felice Giani
Design for Ceiling Decoration
ca. 1800-1823
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Pietro Antonio Novelli
Seated Slave
before 1804
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anton von Maron
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
before 1808
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Augustin Pajou
Lion Statue
(formerly in the Villa Medici, Rome - now in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence)
before 1809
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Vincenzo Camuccini
Adam and Eve mourning the dead Abel
before 1844
drawing
Groeningemuseum, Brussels

Alfred-Émile-Léopold Stevens
Sheet of Studies for a General of the French Revolution
ca. 1890
drawing
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

European Portraits (17th century to 19th century)

attributed to Alessandro Merli
Giovanni Battista Vitturi, Councillor of Venice,
swearing an oath before St Mark, with the Virgin and Child looking on
ca. 1600-1625
manuscript leaf
Victoria & Albert Museum

Gerard Seghers
Portrait of Godfried Chodkiewicz
before 1651
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Paulus Pontius after Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of artist Gerard Seghers
before 1658
engraving
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully after Jacques-François-Joseph Saly
Portrait of Louis-Joseph le Lorrain
ca. 1754
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pietro Antonio Novelli (designer)
Portrait of George III set into an Imaginary Monument
Dactyliotheca Smithiana
(Title-page to the catalogue of Counsel Joseph Smith's engraved gems,
a collection purchased by George III)
1767
engraving
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Raphael Morghen
Bust of Stanislaus Augustus, King of Poland
(after a sculpture by Domenico Cardelli)
1786
engraving
British Museum

Augustin de Saint-Aubin
Profile Portrait of a Lady in a Bonnet
ca. 1780
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Augustin de Saint-Aubin
Portrait of Louise-Émilie, Baronne de  * * *
1779
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Augustin de Saint-Aubin
Portrait of Jean Racine 
1800
etching and engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

from Andromache

Orestes to Hermione –

J'ai mendié la mort chez des peuples cruels
Qui n'apaisaient leurs dieux que du sang des mortels:
Ils m'ont fermé leur temple; et ces peuples barbares
De mon sang prodigué sont devenus avares.
Enfin je viens à vous, et je me vois réduit
A chercher dans vos yeux une mort qui me fuit.

I've begged for death where cruel tribes appease
With human blood their brutal deities:
They barred me from their altars, and would not spend
The blood I should have been content to lend.
At last I've come to seek within your eyes
The death I chase, and which forever flies.

– Jean Racine (1667), translated by Richard Wilbur (1980)

Augustin de Saint-Aubin after Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Portrait of Denis Diderot
1766
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Augustin de Saint-Aubin
Portrait of Marie de Rabutin (Mme. de Sévigné)
1802
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Edwin Landseer
Portrait of Mancini, Landseer's servant
before 1873
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Edgar Degas
Portraits at the Stock Exchange
ca. 1878-79
pastel on paper, mounted on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Édouard Vuillard
Family at Table
1893
oil on cardboard
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

European Portraits (19th century back to 15th century)

Édouard Vuillard
Misia at the piano
ca. 1895-96
oil on cardboard
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Horace Vernet
Sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen with his bust of Horace Vernet
ca. 1833
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Johann Baptist Lampi
Portrait of Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily, the last Holy Roman Empress
ca. 1804-1806
oil on canvas
private collection

John Hamilton Mortimer
Jack Broughton the Boxer
ca. 1767
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Anton Raphael Mengs
Portrait of William Fermor
1757
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The Fields Beneath (St. Pancras Old Church)

I make my tour
of the garden waiting room
where the tall trees
wander among the corpses.

I might go past
the last resting place
of Sir John Soane
in his stone telephone kiosk,

or the wooden bench
where the Beatles sat
on their "Mad Day Out"
July 28th, 1968.

The body of J.C. Bach,
"The English Bach,"
lies somewhere near here,
lost to the Railway in 1865.

A plaque remembers him
as Queen Charlotte's music tutor,
who collaborated with someone
and died young.

Perhaps Jerry Cruncher got him,
or perhaps he survived
and is strolling with his friend
in the fields beneath.

I drag my feet
through the backsliding seasons
towards a gate in the wall
with its timetable of opening hours.

– Hugo Williams (2014)

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Empress Maria Theresa
ca. 1745
pastel on vellum
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of a Magistrate
before 1746
oil on canvas
Musée des Ursulines de Mâcon

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of Konrad Detlef, Graf von Dehn
1724
oil on canvas
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Jacob Ferdinand Voet
Portrait of Hortense Mancini, Duchesse de Mazarin
ca. 1670-80
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Isaac Fuller
Self-portrait
ca. 1670
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of a Lady
ca. 1630-40
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Hans Holbein
Portrait of Sir John Godsalve
ca. 1532-34
drawing with bodycolour
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Robert Campin
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1435
oil and tempera on panel
National Gallery, London

Robert Campin
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1435
oil and tempera on panel
National Gallery, London

Drawings (Nineteenth-Century Figures)

Jacques-Louis David
Flying Figure holding Crown / Reclining River God
before 1825
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous French Artist
Standing Man
19th century
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Eugène Delacroix
Sheet of Figure-studies
before 1863
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Edgar Degas
Studies of Draped Figure
1857-58
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Victor-François-Eloi Biennourry
Standing Soldier
1851-52
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Soldier

Yes. Why do we all, seeing of a soldier, bless him? bless
Our redcoats, our tars? Both these being, the greater part,
But frail clay, nay, but foul clay. Here it is: the heart,
Since, proud, it calls the calling manly, gives a guess
That, hopes that, makesbelieve, the men must be no less;
It fancies, feigns, deems, dears the artist after his art;
And fain will find as sterling all as all is smart,
And scarlet wear the spirit of war there express.

Mark Christ our King. He knows war, served this soldiering through;
He of all can reeve a rope best. There he bides in bliss
Now, and seeing somewhere some man do all that man can do,
For love he leans forth, needs his neck must fall on, kiss,
And cry 'O Christ-done-deed! So God-made-flesh does too:
Were I come o'er again' cries Christ 'it should be this'.

– Gerard Manley Hopkins (sonnet written in 1885, first published in 1918)

David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville after Raphael
Figure Group from Rape of the Sabine Women
before 1849
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Alexandre Cabanel
Helmeted Figure with Sword
1878
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Auguste Rodin
The Golden Age
ca. 1871-78
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alfred George Stevens
Study for Belphoebe in Spenser's Faerie Queene
ca. 1855
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alfred-Émile-Léopold Stevens
Académie
1844
drawing
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Alphonse Legros
Figure Study
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alphonse Legros
Figure Study
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alphonse Legros
Figure Study
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alphonse Legros
Figure Study
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York