Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Seated Male Youth (Study for Daniel)
The Morgan in New York has an exceptional collection of drawings ranging from preparatory studies to finished works of art with nearly twelve thousand drawings from the fourteenth through to the twenty-first centuries. The primary focus of the Morgan Library & Museum’s collection is European drawings executed before 1825, but the Morgan also has the largest collection of Rembrandt etchings in the United States.
I have been lucky and immensely fortunate to draw at the Louvre Museum in Paris for a few years now. In doing so I have learnt some practical techniques and some aspects on how to use my time there productively. Read more
Detail of Mussorgsky by Ilya Repin, 1881. © State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
An unprecedented cultural exchange between the National Portrait Gallery in London and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow — marking the 160 anniversary of the foundation of both galleries — Russia and the Arts is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see masterpieces that rarely leave Russia. Presenting celebrated portraits of key figures from a golden age of the arts in the country, it is one of the most important Russian exhibition ever to take place at a British museum. Read more
Detail. Madame Grand, 1783. Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
There were a small number of eighteenth century women artists that became prominent for their talent and teaching, the stylistic innovations they created, and their influence on other artists. Nowhere can this be better seen than in the life and works of the French painter Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Read more
Battle of the Nude Men by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, 1465–1475. Engraving 42.4 x 60.9 cm
Italian Renaissance artists became anatomists by necessity. They were attempting to refine a more lifelike human figure, even though opportunities to help their knowledge by direct anatomical dissection were restricted. In Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, he states that the sculptor, painter, and printmaker Antonio Pollaiuolo (1431–1498) was the “first master to skin many human bodies in order to investigate the muscles and understand the nude in a more modern way.” We can see his knowledge displayed beautifully in Pollaiuolo’s engraving Battle of Naked Men. The nude warriors are in extreme action showing their nearly flayed musculature. Read more
Pierre-Paul Prud’hon Black and white chalk on blue paper
I am passionate about drawing the body, drawing out the human, representing the person, presenting the individual. Read more
As a reaction against the constricting teaching of the Parisienne École des Beaux Arts, the Grande Chaumière (academy of the large thatched cottage) was founded on the left bank of Paris in 1902, which at the time was the heart of forward thinking intellectual and artistic life. Read more
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he human figure has been a subject in art for thousands of years, since prehistoric times. The classical Greek style is firmly rooted in analytical corporal observation, such as this inspirational late hellenistic era Laocoön and his Sons in the Vatican Museum. Read more
Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758–1823)
An académie is an observational figure study drawn from a live model over many days such as that of French artist Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, who used drawings as the foundation for his work.
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Art-Students and Copyists in the Louvre Gallery, Paris, 1868. Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
The Louvre is the book from which we learn to read. Paul Cezanne
The Louvre is the world’s most visited museum and one of the world’s largest. Read more