Well what a wonderful exhibition. The great masters truly showing their skills as drawers. There were so many piees of work there I cannot recall them all. And of course they weren't all simple drawings.
I don't think I'd seen a Pisarro before. I was really drawn into the painting I saw. I didn't note its title. But it was the use of creams in a scenery that really just kept me there looking.
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What's utterly amazing is the incredible collection the Courtauld has. How did they acquire such an incredible collection. They had one of the most famous Renoirs, Van Gogh, Manet. I will need to return to the Courtauld and just sit. If I lived in London now I would spend lunch times there amidst the wonder of this art. How have I come to be so absorbed by art works? It's sort of taken over my soul. I want more and more. Ha! There's a familiar thing.
I was also mesmerised by Rubens painting of Helena. I was also wondering about his age when he married her. It seemed wrong and a lady I encountered and I both hoped that he might have been a kind and gentle man. His painting of her dress was just so exquisite. And was this her wedding gown? Her father was a silk trader so no doubt this was contributory in her style and no doubt her dowry too.
I get such stimulation from the creativity. Looking at the strokes or the touch of the paint on the canvass or board. The shapes they've seen and transposed. The ideas. The colours. It's just so incredible to me. I so want to possess these works. I bought a print of Seurat. The woman emerging out of the darkness. The scribbles of black crayon were intriguing me and just how this beautiful woman does seem to be emerging from all the scribbles. Just stunning.
And then home ..... :(
Press Release
"
MANTEGNA TO MATISSE:
MASTER DRAWINGS FROM THE COURTAULD GALLERY
The Courtauld Gallery, London, 14 June to 9 September 2012
The Frick Collection, New York, 2 October 2012 to 27 January 2013
The Courtauld Gallery holds one of the most important collections of drawings in Britain. Organised in collaboration with The Frick Collection in New York, this exhibition presents a magnificent selection of some sixty of its finest works. It offers a rare opportunity to consider the art of drawing in the hands of its greatest masters, including Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Cézanne and Matisse. The Courtauld last displayed a comparable selection of its masterpieces more than twenty years ago and this exhibition will bring the collection to new audiences nationally and internationally.
The exhibition opens with a group of works dating from the 15th century, from both Northern and Southern Europe. An exquisite and extremely rare early Netherlandish drawing of a seated female saint from around 1475-85 is rooted in late medieval workshop traditions (fig. 1). It was also at this time that drawing assumed a new central role in nourishing individual creativity, exemplified by two rapid pen and ink sketches by Leonardo da Vinci. These remarkably free and exploratory sketches show the artist experimenting with the dynamic twisting pose of a female figure for a painting of Mary Magdalene (fig. 2). For Renaissance artists such as Leonardo, drawing or disegno was the fundamental basis of all the arts: the expression not just of manual dexterity but of the artist’s mind and intellect.
These ideas about the nature of drawing achieved their full expression in the flowering of draughtsmanship in the 16th century. At the heart of this section of the exhibition is Michelangelo’s magisterial The Dream (fig. 3). Created in 1533, this highly complex allegory was made by Michelangelo as a gift for a close friend and it was one of the earliest drawings to be produced as an independent work of art. More typically, drawings were made in preparation for other works, including paintings, sculptures and prints. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s engaging scene of drunken peasants cavorting at a festival in the Flemish village of Hoboken was drawn in 1559 in preparation for a print (fig. 4). Whereas Michelangelo sought ideal divinely inspired beauty in the human figure, Bruegel here revels in the disorder of everyday life.
Despite the important preparatory function of drawing, many of the most appealing works in the exhibition were unplanned and resulted from artists reaching for their sketchbooks to capture a scene for their own pleasure – Parmigianino’s Seated woman asleep is a wonderful example of such an informal study surviving from the early 16th century. Drawn approximately 100 years later in around 1625, Guercino’s Child seen from behind retains the remarkable freshness and immediacy of momentary observation (fig. 5). Guercino was a compulsive and brilliantly gifted draughtsman. Here the red chalk lends itself perfectly to the play of light on the soft flesh of the child sheltering in its mother’s lap. No less appealing in its informality is Rembrandt’s spontaneous and affectionate sketch of his wife, Saskia, sitting in bed cradling one of her children (fig. 6). The exhibition offers a striking contrast between this modest domestic image and Peter Paul Rubens’s contemporaneous depiction of his own wife, the beautiful young Helena Fourment (fig. 7). Celebrated as one of the great drawings of the 17th century, this unusually large work shows the richly dressed Helena – who was then about 17 – moving aside her veil to look directly at the viewer. Created with a dazzling combination of red, black and white chalks, this drawing was made as an independent work of art and was not intended for sale or public display. In its imposing presence, mesmerising skill and subtle characterisation, it is the equal of any painted portrait.
The central role of drawing in artistic training is underlined in a remarkable sheet by Charles Joseph Natoire from 1746. It shows the artist, seated in the left foreground, instructing students during a life class at the prestigious Académie royale in Paris (fig. 8). Drawing after the life model and antique sculpture was considered essential in the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the great champions of this academic tradition was Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The beautiful elongated forms of the reclining nude in his Study for the ‘Grand Odalisque’, 1813-14, represents the highest refinement of a precise yet expressive linear drawing style rooted in the academy (fig. 9). Outside the academy, drawing could offer the artist a means of liberating creativity. Goya’s Cantar y bailar (Singing and dancing), 1819-20, comes from one of the private drawing albums which the artist used to inhabit the world of his dreams and imagination.
Canaletto’s expansive and meticulously composed View from Somerset Gardens, looking towards London Bridge
is one of several highlights of a section exploring the relationship between drawing and the landscape. This group stretches back as early as Fra Bartolomeo’s Sweep of a river with fishermen drawn in around 1505-09, and also includes a particularly strong selection of landscapes from the golden age of the British watercolour. The interest in landscape is nowhere more powerfully combined with the expressive possibilities of watercolour than in the work of J.M.W. Turner. His late Dawn after the Wreck of around 1841 was immortalised by the critic John Ruskin, who imagined the solitary dog shown howling on a deserted beach to be mourning its owner, lost at sea (fig. 10). For Ruskin, this was one of Turner’s ‘saddest and most tender works’.
The Courtauld collection includes an outstanding selection of drawings and watercolours by the great French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists for whom the Gallery is most famous. Apples, Bottle and Chairback is one of Cézanne’s finest late works in any technique (fig. 11). Here we see the artist pushing watercolour to its extreme through his extraordinary intuitive but masterful handling of successive layers of coloured washes over luminous white paper. Another highlight of this group is the equally remarkable large crayon drawing by Cézanne’s younger contemporary, Georges Seurat. His standing female nude materialises in an almost unfathomable manner from an intricate web of curving crayon lines (fig. 12). The exhibition concludes with work by the two greatest artists of the 20th century, Picasso and Matisse, who reinvented the art of drawing for the modern age.
The Courtauld’s drawings collection is largely the result of a series of remarkable individual gifts. They include the drawings presented by Samuel Courtauld alongside his collection of French Impressionist paintings, the bequest by Sir Robert Witt of some 3,000 drawings in 1952, and Count Antoine Seilern’s Princes Gate bequest which, in 1978, brought many of the most famous individual drawings into the collection. Additionally, the works in the exhibition reveal rich and intriguing earlier collecting histories in which artist collectors such as Peter Lely in the 17th century and Thomas Lawrence and Joshua Reynolds in the 18th century feature alongside some of the great princely and connoisseurial collectors of Europe.
Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from The Courtauld Gallery
is organised under the auspices of the IMAF Centre for Drawings which was established in 2010 to support the study, conservation and public enjoyment of The Courtauld’s collection. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition has been prepared in collaboration with The Frick Collection and features twenty authors contributing entries on individual works in their specialist areas, often with new technical research undertaken at The Courtauld. Spanning some 500 years, Mantegna to Matisse offers an opportunity to study and enjoy a remarkable array of masterpieces. The exhibition also aims to celebrate the great versatility and diversity of draughtsmanship and invites audiences to consider what makes a master drawing.
This afternoon I've watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. What a lovely little afternoon film. The acting was of such a high standard. Maggie Smith, Judy Dench, Bill Nighy (I want to marry him), and others. it was an uplifting film and amusing too. I want to live in Jaipur of course. It romanticised it all. I mean how ON earth could I afford to live there? How on earth could these old people afford to live there? But the idea was simply enticing.
Directed by John Madden.
I liked this quote:
Evelyn: Nothing here has worked out quite as I expected.
Muriel: Most things don't. But sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff
And of course the one repeated throughout. "everything will be alright in the end and if it's not alright, it's not the end".
I have not done any studying. I've sort of written it off and delayed the start until next weekend. I have a long weekend and will study all day Friday. Munch on Saturday, study all day Sunday and Monday. Well there is the AWOL on Sunday as well. I do not feel inclined or disciplined. I am scared I am going to write myself off the degree. This would be disastrous, another thing not completed. Am I sabotaging?
P{lease God guide me. I am thinking I should be studying something like art history or creative. And yet this degree would help me with my potential earnings and personal sense of credibility. I love the subject as well. I am fascinated by humans.
It seems these approaching last years are too demanding on me whilst I am so exhausted from work. Not to mention the long hours at work and the demands on my spiritual, physical and mental resources. God I need some help here.
Bliss
XX
ps - I really am incredibly lukcy. I wrote this morning (6 Sep) to the gallery just enquiring if there was any way to get hold of a poster for the exhibition. And I received an email back sayig yes and they would post it.
I never imagined I would be so lucky.Thank you Universe. It's of little consequence in the greater scheme of things. But they didn't sell them so it will be quite special to me to have one.
x
I don't think I'd seen a Pisarro before. I was really drawn into the painting I saw. I didn't note its title. But it was the use of creams in a scenery that really just kept me there looking.
123.45.6789101112
MANTEGNA TO MATISSE:
MASTER DRAWINGS FROM THE COURTAULD GALLERY
14 June to 9 September 2012
Captions
1. Workshop of Hugo van der Goes
(c. 1440-82)
A seated female saint, c. 1475-85
Pen, point of the brush and grey ink,
heightened with white on green prepared paper, 230 x 189 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
2. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Studies for a Saint Mary Magdalene
c. 1480-82
Pen and brown ink, 139 x 79 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
3. Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475-1564)
The Dream (Il Sogno), c. 1533
Black chalk, 398 x 280 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
4. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569)
Kermesse at Hoboken, 1559
Pen and brown ink, 265 x 394 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
5. Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
(1591-1666)
Child seen from behind, c. 1625
Red chalk with stumping, 301 x 211 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
6. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69)
Saskia with one of her children, c. 1635
Red chalk, 141 x 106 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
7. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
Portrait of Helena Fourment, c. 1630-31
Black and red chalk heightened with white, pen and ink
612 x 550 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
8. Charles Joseph Natoire (1700-1777)
Life class at the Académie royale, 1746
Watercolour, chalk (black) on paper
454 x 323 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
9. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
Study for ‘La Grande Odalisque’, 1814
Graphite, 185 x 254 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
10. J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
Dawn after the wreck, c. 1841
Watercolour and gouache, 251 x 368 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
11. Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Apples, bottle and chairback, c. 1904-6
Graphite and watercolour, 462 x 604 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
12. Georges Pierre Seurat (1859-1891)
Female Nude, c. 1881
Conté crayon and pencil, 630 x 484 mm
© The Courtauld Gallery, London
Thomas Girtin painted Appledore. I hadn't realised how special Appledore actually was and there we were as a family there every year. I have good feelings about Appledore.
MANTEGNA TO MATISSE:
MASTER DRAWINGS FROM THE COURTAULD GALLERY
The Courtauld Gallery, London, 14 June to 9 September 2012
The Frick Collection, New York, 2 October 2012 to 27 January 2013
The Courtauld Gallery holds one of the most important collections of drawings in Britain. Organised in collaboration with The Frick Collection in New York, this exhibition presents a magnificent selection of some sixty of its finest works. It offers a rare opportunity to consider the art of drawing in the hands of its greatest masters, including Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Cézanne and Matisse. The Courtauld last displayed a comparable selection of its masterpieces more than twenty years ago and this exhibition will bring the collection to new audiences nationally and internationally.
The exhibition opens with a group of works dating from the 15th century, from both Northern and Southern Europe. An exquisite and extremely rare early Netherlandish drawing of a seated female saint from around 1475-85 is rooted in late medieval workshop traditions (fig. 1). It was also at this time that drawing assumed a new central role in nourishing individual creativity, exemplified by two rapid pen and ink sketches by Leonardo da Vinci. These remarkably free and exploratory sketches show the artist experimenting with the dynamic twisting pose of a female figure for a painting of Mary Magdalene (fig. 2). For Renaissance artists such as Leonardo, drawing or disegno was the fundamental basis of all the arts: the expression not just of manual dexterity but of the artist’s mind and intellect.
These ideas about the nature of drawing achieved their full expression in the flowering of draughtsmanship in the 16th century. At the heart of this section of the exhibition is Michelangelo’s magisterial The Dream (fig. 3). Created in 1533, this highly complex allegory was made by Michelangelo as a gift for a close friend and it was one of the earliest drawings to be produced as an independent work of art. More typically, drawings were made in preparation for other works, including paintings, sculptures and prints. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s engaging scene of drunken peasants cavorting at a festival in the Flemish village of Hoboken was drawn in 1559 in preparation for a print (fig. 4). Whereas Michelangelo sought ideal divinely inspired beauty in the human figure, Bruegel here revels in the disorder of everyday life.
Despite the important preparatory function of drawing, many of the most appealing works in the exhibition were unplanned and resulted from artists reaching for their sketchbooks to capture a scene for their own pleasure – Parmigianino’s Seated woman asleep is a wonderful example of such an informal study surviving from the early 16th century. Drawn approximately 100 years later in around 1625, Guercino’s Child seen from behind retains the remarkable freshness and immediacy of momentary observation (fig. 5). Guercino was a compulsive and brilliantly gifted draughtsman. Here the red chalk lends itself perfectly to the play of light on the soft flesh of the child sheltering in its mother’s lap. No less appealing in its informality is Rembrandt’s spontaneous and affectionate sketch of his wife, Saskia, sitting in bed cradling one of her children (fig. 6). The exhibition offers a striking contrast between this modest domestic image and Peter Paul Rubens’s contemporaneous depiction of his own wife, the beautiful young Helena Fourment (fig. 7). Celebrated as one of the great drawings of the 17th century, this unusually large work shows the richly dressed Helena – who was then about 17 – moving aside her veil to look directly at the viewer. Created with a dazzling combination of red, black and white chalks, this drawing was made as an independent work of art and was not intended for sale or public display. In its imposing presence, mesmerising skill and subtle characterisation, it is the equal of any painted portrait.
The central role of drawing in artistic training is underlined in a remarkable sheet by Charles Joseph Natoire from 1746. It shows the artist, seated in the left foreground, instructing students during a life class at the prestigious Académie royale in Paris (fig. 8). Drawing after the life model and antique sculpture was considered essential in the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the great champions of this academic tradition was Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The beautiful elongated forms of the reclining nude in his Study for the ‘Grand Odalisque’, 1813-14, represents the highest refinement of a precise yet expressive linear drawing style rooted in the academy (fig. 9). Outside the academy, drawing could offer the artist a means of liberating creativity. Goya’s Cantar y bailar (Singing and dancing), 1819-20, comes from one of the private drawing albums which the artist used to inhabit the world of his dreams and imagination.
Canaletto’s expansive and meticulously composed View from Somerset Gardens, looking towards London Bridge
is one of several highlights of a section exploring the relationship between drawing and the landscape. This group stretches back as early as Fra Bartolomeo’s Sweep of a river with fishermen drawn in around 1505-09, and also includes a particularly strong selection of landscapes from the golden age of the British watercolour. The interest in landscape is nowhere more powerfully combined with the expressive possibilities of watercolour than in the work of J.M.W. Turner. His late Dawn after the Wreck of around 1841 was immortalised by the critic John Ruskin, who imagined the solitary dog shown howling on a deserted beach to be mourning its owner, lost at sea (fig. 10). For Ruskin, this was one of Turner’s ‘saddest and most tender works’.
The Courtauld collection includes an outstanding selection of drawings and watercolours by the great French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists for whom the Gallery is most famous. Apples, Bottle and Chairback is one of Cézanne’s finest late works in any technique (fig. 11). Here we see the artist pushing watercolour to its extreme through his extraordinary intuitive but masterful handling of successive layers of coloured washes over luminous white paper. Another highlight of this group is the equally remarkable large crayon drawing by Cézanne’s younger contemporary, Georges Seurat. His standing female nude materialises in an almost unfathomable manner from an intricate web of curving crayon lines (fig. 12). The exhibition concludes with work by the two greatest artists of the 20th century, Picasso and Matisse, who reinvented the art of drawing for the modern age.
The Courtauld’s drawings collection is largely the result of a series of remarkable individual gifts. They include the drawings presented by Samuel Courtauld alongside his collection of French Impressionist paintings, the bequest by Sir Robert Witt of some 3,000 drawings in 1952, and Count Antoine Seilern’s Princes Gate bequest which, in 1978, brought many of the most famous individual drawings into the collection. Additionally, the works in the exhibition reveal rich and intriguing earlier collecting histories in which artist collectors such as Peter Lely in the 17th century and Thomas Lawrence and Joshua Reynolds in the 18th century feature alongside some of the great princely and connoisseurial collectors of Europe.
Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from The Courtauld Gallery
is organised under the auspices of the IMAF Centre for Drawings which was established in 2010 to support the study, conservation and public enjoyment of The Courtauld’s collection. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition has been prepared in collaboration with The Frick Collection and features twenty authors contributing entries on individual works in their specialist areas, often with new technical research undertaken at The Courtauld. Spanning some 500 years, Mantegna to Matisse offers an opportunity to study and enjoy a remarkable array of masterpieces. The exhibition also aims to celebrate the great versatility and diversity of draughtsmanship and invites audiences to consider what makes a master drawing.
Muriel: Most things don't. But sometimes what happens instead is the good stuff
ps - I really am incredibly lukcy. I wrote this morning (6 Sep) to the gallery just enquiring if there was any way to get hold of a poster for the exhibition. And I received an email back sayig yes and they would post it.
I never imagined I would be so lucky.Thank you Universe. It's of little consequence in the greater scheme of things. But they didn't sell them so it will be quite special to me to have one.
x
