Old Master Drawings ONE of the many surprises afforded to
the experts by the recent Exhibition of Italian Art was the extraordinary interest taken by the general public in the drawings there on view. Hopelessly crowded out of the other rooms by enthusiastic sightseers and parties of school children, serious students and connoisseurs had hoped there would be more elbow-space in the two rooms :devoted to drawings. Alas ! these were as difficult to get near as any of the other exhibits, and surprisingly . good taste was shown by hundreds of people—not experts —who expressed their genuine conviction that nothing in the exhibition thrilled them more than the series of • drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and his great contem- poraries.
The peculiar charm and fascination of drawings has ' long been appreciated by collectors, who know their value as avenues by which we may approach the inner mind of a master and get the best and most intimate • insight into his point of view and method of working.
• Every good dilettante of the eighteenth century had his Cabinet of Drawings, and one of the earliest British appreciations of this manifestation of art work was ex- pressed by Jonathan Richardson the Elder. "In draw- ings," said that worthy, "one finds a great variety, from their being first thoughts (which are often very slight, but spirituous scrabbles) or more advanced, or finished."
These first thoughts, it should be added, vary not only in degree but also in kind. Perhaps the greatest superi- ority that Old Master drawings have over their modern equivalents is that hardly any of the former were done for the market : for the most part these old" scrabbles" .are genuine working drawings, notes made by the master to help him in the production of his pictures. His sketch-book was part of his workshop and it would surprise him if he knew how saleable to-day are its scattered pages.
Broadly speaking, any master's drawings may be classified under two categories : (i) those relating to the whole of a picture, and (ii) those relating to a detail, to a part. The first section may be described as Composition Studies, ranging from the most rough-and-ready notation of an idea for the grouping of a picture to an elaborately finished cartoon such as Leonardo's Madonna and St. Anne • in the Diploma Gallery of the Royal Academy. Greatly as drawings of this first section may vary in style and execution as well as subject, the -variety of the second is almost infinite. Under this second category come studies of figures and studies of-landscape, studies of part of a figure, of a head, a back, of drapery, or, again, of a tree, a plant or a flower ; notes of movement, notes of effects of light and shade—in short, a record of any- • thing the artist's eye may see. • As for variety of style, forms can be seen and recorded in terms of pure outline, or in terms of pure light and shade ; and between these two extremes there is a whole world of individual compromises between the two methods. An artist is free to use the continuous line of a Botticelli or a Foujita, or the broken lines of a Rembrandt or a Sicked ; and no man can truly say that the one method • is better than the other. All that matters in art is the result obtained by the method the artist has chosen for his purpose. Students of drawings are well catered for to-day. A whole literature on the subject exists, Messrs. B. T. Batsford in particular having issued a sumptuous series of volumes edited by Mr. Campbell .Dodgson, and also a useful periodical which keeps students informed as to new discoveries and new attributions in the realm of Old Master drawings. In addition to the superb collections of drawings in the Victoria and Albert and British Museums, periodical exhibitions of Old Master drawings are held in private galleries. At the moment of writing there are no fewer than three exhibitions of this character open in Bond Street and thereabouts. And at each of them we may see drawings of many types and styles. The chief feature, perhaps, of the remarkable collection at the Savile Gallery is the group of a dozen Tiepolo . drawings. These range from the spirited study for a whole pyramidical composition, The Madonna and Child with lendant Saints, from the D'Hendecourt Collection, to such superbly finished studies of detail as the Head of a • Young Man. Then there is an altogether exceptional wash drawing by Claude, Ship in a Storm at Sea, in which the swirling arabesques of penline evoke comparison with the penmanship displayed in Chinese drawings of the Sung period. Indeed, in this small but exceedingly • choice collection there is not one drawing but yields its own delight and some measure of instruction.
• Among the Dutch drawings of the seventeenth century in Messrs. P. and D. Colnaghi's galleries landscapes pre. dominate, and the fine examples of Jan van Goyen, • Jan Breughel, and Isaac van Ostade in particular ar€ complete little pictures in themselves, though many arc probably sketches made on the spot for development later in oil paintings. Less finished and detailed, but most fascinating and instructive, is a group of composition studies, strongly showing the influence of Rembrandt, by Theodore Rombouts (1597A687) and Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678). It is by the concentrated study of drawings of this order that the novice in collecting . may learn to distinguish the niceties which differentiate the work. of Rembrandt himself from that of the best artists of his school.
A third exhibition of drawings now on view at the Fine Art Society is much more miscellaneous in character, ranging from a few mediaeval illuminations to vigorous . studies by such famous nineteenth-century French masters as Degas and Forain. Here the student can perceive not only the idiosyncrasies of draughtsmanship peculiar to individual artists, but also the general differentiation • of styles which indicate national characteristics and the work of a particular epoch. For just as one artist differs from another, so do countries and ages. However much the art of one nation may react on that of another, there is an essential difference between the Italian and the Dutch outlook on life, between the point of view common to Christian Europeans in the fifteenth century, say, and • that common to the more sophisticated draughtsmen of the eighteenth century. These differences, often subtle but easily recognizable with experience, May be detected in drawings quite as much as in paintings, and their recognition and identification is one of the many intellec- tual pleasures which await the collector and student of
Previous page
