Contemporary, portrait, landscape, painting, best, top ten, paintings, oil, artist, artists, gallery, life, figure, graphite, sketch, Snowdonia, drawings, pencil, Art, geometry, composition, Master, Masterpiece, Welsh, Wales
There have been a couple of recent exhibitions in the UK devoted to Life Drawing, in an attempt, as I understand it, to demonstrate the key importance to all artists of the discipline of drawing directly from the figure.
If this is the intention, then possibly (but don't hold your breath) these exhibitions will have successful outcomes, and with luck there may be a welcome resurgence of what is seen by many as the best training for the hand and eye.
To this end, I thought it might be a good idea to remind ourselves of some of the best Life/Figure drawings made throughout the centuries.
In the selection of these ten great figure drawings (and bearing in mind that any selection can only be personal) I have tried as much as possible to choose drawings which seem to be fairly close to a standard life drawing 'brief', (i.e., it should lean towards being an 'objective' study, rather than towards being an 'expressive' artwork; and it should tackle to some degree the straightforward observation of form, light, space, proportion, movement, and so on).
This obviously suggests that a very wide range of styles and approaches could still be included in such a list, but I wanted to stay away from any drawings which too overtly suggest that the making of an 'artwork' is the artist's intention.
(N.b., - in no particular order)
1
'Studies for the Libyan Sibyl (recto)'
Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1510-11, Red, White and Black Chalk,
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This is a sheet of studies by one of the greatest draughtsmen ever.
As a sculptor, we would expect Michelangelo to have a precise sense of three dimensionality and of space, and of course he has, and yet he continuously demonstrates a student's desire to simply get things right.
The wonderful, and seemingly effortless, depiction of musculature in the main figure is expressed with a combination of strength and subtlety. There is no 'showing off' here, just a modest dedication to truth. This can be seen in his repeated attempts to get the studies of the big toe correct.
This is a drawing which was made as part of his working process and was not intended to be displayed. (Don't forget that very few of his drawings remain, - it is thought that he destroyed the majority of them because they were not up to scratch, or because, having been part of the research and preparation for a particular sculpture or painting, they were then no longer needed!)
'Young Woman Sleeping'
Rembrandt van Rijn, Brush and Brown Wash, 1654,
The British Museum.
This is a drawing which is wonderfully and deceptively simple. It is the kind of spontaneous and rapidly executed drawing which all of us want to produce, and which so many beginners emulate much too quickly in their artistic careers. (The running before you can walk syndrome).
It has the look of Chinese brush calligraphy in it's simplicity and spontaneity.
Yet this mastery can only be achieved by the many thousands of hours which Rembrandt devoted to drawing. He left at least 1500 drawings, which is remarkable in itself. (Some first rank artists have no drawings which have survived, Caravaggio, Vermeer, etc).
I don't know (and there have been various thoughts on this) whether this was made as a preparatory drawing for a painting, or simply as a one-off study.
And I'm not sure that it matters - either way it is sheer genius.
3
'The Tub / Woman in the Bath'
Edgar Degas, Pastel, 1818, Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut.
It's a given for me that a Degas should be included in a top ten of figure studies, as he produced so many wonderful examples.
I love these straightforward studio studies, which usually appear not to have been made as preparatory studies for more finished pictures, but more likely produced for their own sake.
They have an intimate warmth and are so accurate not just anatomically, but gesturally, and in terms of texture, form and space.
4
'Figural Study for the Raft of the Medusa'
Théodore Géricault, Charcoal on Paper, 1818, The Louvre, Paris.
Géricault made innumerable studies for his great painting of the 'Raft of the Medusa'.
Many of them were drawn from cadavers at a hospital morgue, while others were from a posed model.
The painting depicted the scandalous wreck of the French frigate, Méduse, which was grounded through navigational incompetence in shallow water off the coast of West Africa in 1816. There were 146 passengers and crew that were cast adrift on a makeshift raft, and all but fifteen perished from starvation, suicide or murder, before the survivors were rescued.
The painting took two years to complete, including all the preparatory studies, and was a sensation at the 1819 Salon.
The above drawing is a brilliant, fairly rapid, study, with a great grasp of the 'gesture' of the body, and enough information about the subtleties of the body to act as a wonderful preparatory drawing for the painting itself.
5
'Woman with Dead Child'
Käthe Kollwitz, Etching, 1903, Kunsthalle, Bremen.
Kollwitz produced drawings, paintings and prints which featured her powerful and committed social and political perspective on life.
In this particular etching of a 'Woman with Dead Child' the power of the image is in the strong tonal mass, the simplicity and weight of the pose, and the subtlety and variety of the texturing.
Of course another badge of honour that she earned, is the 'distinction' of having her work removed (like many other foremost German artists of the period) from Museums and Galleries by the National Socialists, as 'degenerate'.
6
'Man sitting on a rock'
Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 1789
This drawing featured in a recent exhibition at the Wallace Collection (Manchester Square, London).
Most of the drawings (by students at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, during the 18th Century) were between A2 and A1 size, on paper, using various kinds of chalks or charcoal.
They had a sort of unity of style originating from the fact that the students were being taught by teachers who would be suggesting similar 'requirements' for the drawing (...what we would today call a 'brief'), and who would be giving consistent stylistic guidance.
The drawing above, by Isabey, (a pupil of Jacques-Louis David) is a terrific example. It is made using charcoal or black crayon, with white chalk for highlighting. He used a mid-toned paper, which makes the exercise quicker to execute.
It took a total of six hours to complete, in three, two-hour sessions.
7
'Mother and Child'
Mary Cassatt, Oil paint, Wichita Art Museum.
A straightforward study of a woman with a child, with no mythological or religious intent.
Cassatt was influenced by Degas. They both rejected the previous academic approach, and moved towards an instant application of paint, plus direct observation of the figure.
Her work is characterised by excellent drawing, and by strong composition and image-making, as seen in this example.
8
'Seated Male Nude'
(Formerly attributed to ) William Etty, 1850
There is some discussion about who actually produced this study (the paper on which is was produced was watermarked 1850 - a year after Etty's death!), - but for the sake of inclusion in this list, I'm not particularly worried who it is attributed to, - I'm looking at the work not the artist.
It is an example of a remarkably fresh, yet subtly-nuanced study. I really admire the simplification of the modelling, and the confident and dynamic execution.
9
'Seated Female Nude'
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon.
Prud'hon is an artist who straddles the Neo-Classicism and Romanticism divide.
Working for Napoleon's court, particularly producing portraits, Prud'hon obviously had to draw well. And this is an example of his strong tonal approach, clear and precise, but powerful and expressive.
The solidity of the form is emphasised by the strong overhead lighting. Great work, and of course it influenced the work of Géricault (above).
10
'Kneider Weiblicher Halbakt"
Egon Schiele, 1917, Gouache, Black Crayon, Wash and Pencil on Paper.
This is a drawing which most nearly strays from the brief that I set myself when compiling this list, (i.e., works which are 'studies' and not 'artworks'), so he only just squeezes in.
Schiele, who was mentored by Gustav Klimt, produced work which was spiky, linear, tortured, and stylised.
He is seen as part of the wider Expressionist movement, and he was a highly controversial artist in his life and his art, (spending time in prison for alleged sexual offences and also having exhibitions closed down and work seized).
.....ten great drawings, (in no particular order).
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.......and to put things into perspective, so to speak, here's one of my own recent studies!
'Reclining Female'
Harry Robertson, Oil Pastel on paper, 90 minutes.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details......” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
Whose hair is this and who painted it?
(The answer will be in the next posting.)
And here's the answer from the last posting -
'The Death of Actaeon'.
by Titian, 1559-1575, National Gallery, London.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details......” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
"Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality."
Edgar Degas
. . and now, a Recommended Read . .
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Music
Click here to find a few songs on YouTube, and I'll add more as time goes by.
Music
Beyond painting, my other preoccupation is music - particularly songwriting.
I've recently started, just for fun, linking the two preoccupations together, by featuring a few paintings along with one of my recorded songs. If you have a spare minute, you're welcome to take a look. . .
These songs can also be found on (and downloaded from) iTunes, Spotify, CDBaby, and many other platforms, - (my intention is to upload a different song each month)
Also in the last period I've been recording some songs with some friends - have a listen here if you have the time.
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'The Road to Wigan Pier'
By George Orwell
Published by Penguin Modern Classics
I recently re-read this book after a conversation I had with an old friend who was in one of those they-don't-know-how-lucky-they-are-these-days moods.
And by the time I had reminded myself about Orwell's passages on the miners and the industrial landscape that surrounded them, I concluded that my friend was right!
Brilliant observation and hard-hitting writing at it's best.
A searing account of George Orwell's observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell's later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain.
Published with an introduction by Richard Hoggart in Penguin Modern Classics.
'It is easy to see why the book created and still creates so sharp an impact ... exceptional immediacy, freshness and vigour, opinionated and bold ... Above all, it is a study of poverty and, behind that, of the strength of class-divisions'
Richard Hoggart
Review from Amazon.
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Contemporary, portrait, landscape, painting, best, top ten, paintings, oil, artist, artists, gallery, life, figure, graphite, sketch, Snowdonia, drawings, pencil, Art, geometry, composition, Master, Masterpiece, Welsh, Wales