Against the backdrop of a heatwave, the London “season” reached a sweltering climax last week, crowned by a flurry of art fairs, gallery exhibitions and auctions. Highlights from the Sotheby’s sales included a free pen and ink sketch by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, a pastel of a lion by Eugène Delacroix and a biblical scene by the Master of the Liechtenstein Adoration; while at Christie’s, a pair of WilliamBlake drawings and a J.M.W. Turner watercolour were particularly striking. The capital also saw the second editions of Studiolo and Classic Art London, as well as the fourth edition of the Treasure House Fair, all of which hosted an impressive range of works on paper from participating galleries. The Warburg Institute hosted a symposium on early Netherlandish drawings, organised in conjunction with the exhibition at the British Museum, which brought together many leading scholars from the USA, Europe and the UK. Fortunately, unlike the season, the exhibition will continue throughout the summer before it closes on 20 September.
In this month’s magazine, we look beyond the UK and share details of the next edition of the Trois Crayons Drawings Hub in the Demystifying Drawings section. Our first international selling exhibition will be taking place in Texas, travelling to three cities between October and November. The issue also features news headlines, gallery listings, announcements, events, calls for papers and an overview of recent institutional acquisitions. For our Drawing of the Month, Danielle Canter, curator of Odilon Redon: Otherworldly Visions at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, shares a personal highlight from the exhibition. After the month’s exhibition listings and the Real or Fake quiz, the issue concludes with a trio of audio, video and literary recommendations.
For next month’s edition, please direct any recommendations, news stories, feedback or event listings to tom@troiscrayons.art.
IN GALLERY, ART FAIR AND AUCTION NEWS
Open until 17 July – Drawn to Paper: Gwen John to Arshile Gorky at Piano Nobile (London).
Open until 25 July – Prints and Drawings from the 16th to 20th Century at Emanuel von Baeyer Gallery, Cecil Court (London).
Open until 31 July – Moving Stillness: Nordic Painting & Drawing from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Early Modern Period at Colnaghi (London).
Francesco Salviati (1510–1563), Design for a Vase with Hercules and Farnese Lilies, c. 1540. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. 50.605.
IN LECTURE AND EVENT NEWS
6 July – Conversation: The Connoisseur - Peter Burke in Conversation at The Warburg Institute (London). Speakers: Peter Burke, Paul Taylor. 17:30 BST. Free; advance registration required.
10 July – Lecture: Art Study Center Seminar: Jacques de Gheyn II at Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA). Speaker: Susanne Bartels. 11:00 EDT. Free; advance registration required.
Call for papers – Many (More) Antwerp Hands. Collaborations Across Media, ca. 1500-1750 at the Rubenshuis (Antwerp). Application deadline: 31 July. Event dates: 22–23 April 2027. Organised by Rubenshuis, Emily Hirsch, Hanne Schonkeren, Margot Steurbaut and Annelies Verellen.
Call for papers – Marking Completion: The Status and Circulation of Drawings from the 15th Century to Today at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute and the Medici Archive Project (Florence). Application deadline: 10 July. Event dates: 22–23 September. Organised by the Lise Meitner Group "Coded Objects", Karina Pawlow and Rebecca I. Arnheim.
Call for papers – Drawing as Knowledge: Practice, Theory and History at the Paul Mellon Centre (London). Application deadline: 13 July. Event dates: 16–17 September. Organised by Alixe Bovey, Kate Retford and Flora Dennis.
Call for papers – Drawn to Perfection: The Finished Drawing in Early Modern Europe at The Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting (Philadelphia). Application deadline: 15 July. Event dates: 11–13 March 2027. Organised by Jasmine Clark and Emma P. Holter.
Call for papers – Raphael in Paper: The Material Reception of Raphael through Drawings, Prints, and Manuscripts at The Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting (Philadelphia). Application deadline: 31 July. Event dates: 11–13 March 2027. Organised by Maria Gabriella Matarazzo and Elisa Spataro.
IN LITERARY, MUSEUM AND ACADEMIC NEWS
New resource – Leonardotheka. Two collections of writings and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci have been digitally reunited for the first time in 400 years and made publicly available through a freely accessible platform conceived and developed by the Museo Galileo in Florence. The project reunites the 1,119 folios of the Codex Atlanticus from the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana with the approximately 500 drawings from the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. The digital archive is the result of a collaboration between the Museo Galileo in Florence and the Royal Collection Trust in Windsor Castle, the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan and the Biblioteca Leonardiana in Vinci.
Restitution case – A watercolour by Félicien Rops (1833–1898), La Buveuse d’absinthe, sold by the Jewish lawyer and collector Armand Dorville in 1942 under duress by the Vichy regime, and unknowingly acquired by the Royal Library of Belgium in 1968, has been symbolically restituted to the descendants of Dorville’s family.
New publication – Dessins français des collections privées françaises by Jean-Pierre Cuzin et al. Editions sans Egal. €39.
New publication – Johannes van Bronckhorst (1627-1656) by Tomasso Borgogelli. Editori Paparo. €40.
New publication – «Mai abbastanza». Studi in onore di Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò, edited by Sonja Brink, Francesco Grisolia, and Mario Epifani. Michael Imhof Verlag. €59.
New publication – The Drawing Collections of the Sforza Castle in Milan edited by Alessia Alberti, Simona Maniello e Francesca Mariano. Sagep Arte. €24.
New publication – Simiolus. Journal for the History of Art (Vol. 47, No. 1).
Prize – Prize for Research on South Netherlandish Art 1400–1800, The Burlington Magazine and the University of Cambridge. £1,000 will be awarded, with publication of the research in the magazine’s annual Northern European Art issue, plus a print and digital subscription, for an article of innovative object-related scholarship by an early-career scholar. Application deadline: 1 September.
Prize – 9th Annual Ricciardi Prize, Master Drawings. $5,000 for the best new and unpublished article on a drawings topic (of any period) by a scholar under the age of 40 (born November 15, 1986 or later). Application deadline: 15 November.
Job opportunity – Curator of Prints and Drawings at Universiteit Leiden (Leiden). Application deadline: 13 July.
Fellowship opportunity – BRON Research Centre Fellowshipat Musea Brugge (Bruges). Application deadline: 31 October.
Fellowship opportunity – BAEF-Rubenianum Fellowship at Rubenshuis (Antwerp). Application deadline: 31 October.
Lorenzo Tiepolo (1736–1776), Head of a Youth with His Hand Covering His Face, c. 1760. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco. Photograph by Jorge Bachmann, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
IN ACQUISITION NEWS
Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), The Triumph of Minverva. Acquired by the Flemish government from Colnaghi. On long-term loan to the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp.
Hubert-François Gravelot (1699–1773), Council of the Order of the Holy Spirit Held. Acquired by the Musée de la Légion d'honneur, Paris, from Galerie Pierre Brost, Paris.
Lorenzo Tiepolo (1736–1776), Head of a Youth with His Hand Covering His Face. Acquired by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, from Galerie Eric Coatalem, Paris.
Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840), Turmeric (Curcuma longa). Acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London.
Knud Baade (1808–1879), Preparatory Study for After the Storm. Gift of Mr. Filippo Benappi to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, in honour of Katherine C. Luber, Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director & President.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882), Christina Rossetti. Acquired by the National Trust.
Berthe Morisot (1841–1895), Sewing Near the Window. Acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, from W.M. Brady & Co., New York.
Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), The Exit. Acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, from Waddington Custot, London.
Léon Spilliaert (1881–1946), Hofstraat in Ostend. Gift of the Alex Katz Foundation to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland.
Odilon Redon (1840–1916)
The Battle of the Bones, c. 1881
Charcoal and pastel with stumping and removal on tan paper, 36.5 × 45 cm (14 3/8 × 17 11/16 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2024.17
Odilon Redon (1840–1916), The Battle of the Bones, c. 1881. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, inv. 2024.17.
Danielle Canter, Assistant Curator in the Department of Drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of Odilon Redon: Otherworldly Visions, has kindly chosen our drawing of the month.
Upon entering the exhibition Odilon Redon: Otherworldly Visions, on view at the Getty from 14 July to 18 October, you are immersed in darkness. The first gallery features examples of Redon’s noirs, drawings and prints made in black media with often equally shadowy subject matter. A highlight of the room is this study of two skeletons in the aftermath of a battle; their broken bones scattered across the foreground as they attempt to keep fighting.
Between 1870 and 1890 Redon worked almost exclusively in shades of black, establishing a distinct visual language through enigmatic imagery and highly personal symbolism. This unusual composition was inspired by a passage from Maurice Bouchor’s 1880 poem La Bataille des Os, which tells the story of two men who kill each other in a duel over a lover and, after death and burial, return to her home to continue the battle. Redon responded to the sights and sounds of Bouchor’s macabre scene: “Sometimes it was an arm that, severed from the body, fell with a crash; sometimes a half-dislocated jaw; a leg dislocated by a blow of the shovel; a broken tibia that littered the carpet.”
Set against an opaque background of deep black charcoal, the wounded skeletons in the drawing are composed of reserves of pale tan paper rather than the addition of media. With careful application of the powdery charcoal and its selective removal, Redon fashioned the fine details of the bones from the bare sheet.
The simplicity of the composition is in sharp contrast to a related drawing in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum, in which Redon depicted an earlier scene of the two skeletons feasting and cavorting in their former lover’s home. In the Getty drawing, Redon eschews the descriptive setting to place the figures against an ambiguous black field.
Scientific analysis conducted in the lead-up to the exhibition has unveiled a more complex story buried beneath the darkness. Scans reveal that Redon struggled to arrange the animated skeletons, shifting their positions and breaking them into pieces before covering the remains of his own bodily violence under a thick layer of charcoal. The altered composition helps to explain the row of angled red lines that mark off a strip of charcoal at the top of the sheet. Once the standing skeleton on the left was dismantled and strewn across the foreground, the expanse of black media overwhelmed the drawing. With bright red pastel, Redon indicated where the work could be trimmed or framed over to balance the weight of the scene.
The drawing was acquired by the Getty in early 2024, not long after I arrived at the museum. Fascinated by the darkly-comic subject and the unusual use of the paper reserve, I delved deep into Redon literature and closely examined the other charcoal drawings and pastels in the Getty collection. This research was the foundation of the current exhibition, in which visitors can encounter Redon’s dark and fantastic world.
Odilon Redon: Otherworldly Visions is on view at the Getty from 14 July – 18 October 2026.
Trois Crayons is Taking Drawings to Texas
On Paper: Drawings from the Renaissance to the Modern Day
October – november 2026
Trois Crayons 2025 Exhibition Tracing Time, at Frieze No.9 Cork Street | © Image credit, Andrew Smith Creative.
We are excited to share the details of the first international iteration of our Drawings Hub which will take place in the form of an expanded, multi-city edition held in the United States this autumn. Building on the success of the 2024 and 2025 editions in London, the 2026 Drawings Hub will be held in respected local galleries in three cities across the state of Texas in October and early November 2026. Alongside openings in each location, the programming around the exhibition will include dedicated museum events with established local institutions. Our Drawings Hub model features no gallery booths and breaks from the traditional art fair structure, with all artworks being thoughtfully curated by the team to create an exciting and innovative selling exhibition.
On Paper: Drawings from the Renaissance to the Modern Day will first open in Houston in collaboration with Josh Pazda Hiram Butler Gallery from 9 October to 13 October. Josh Pazda Hiram Butler is a prominent contemporary gallery located in the Rice Military neighbourhood. Originally founded in 1984, it is renowned for its discerning selection of artists, from acclaimed American postwar modernists and international mid-level creatives to unknown yet crucial voices. Josh Pazda Hiram Butler regularly participates in the ADAA Fair and IFPDA Print Fair, both held in New York.
In Houston, Trois Crayons will be working with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, to deliver the first talk to coincide with the Drawings Hub, with a focus on collecting drawings. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is the second largest museum in America. Their collection spans more than 5,000 years of history with nearly 80,000 works from six continents.
Following the Houston leg, the selling exhibition will move next to the Dallas Fort Worth area, held in collaboration with Gallery 19C in Westlake from 22 October to 29 October. Gallery 19C is an international gallery with an exclusive focus on 19th century European paintings. Founded in 2016, Gallery 19C celebrates the revolutionaries and innovators - artists such as Delacroix, Courbet, Corot and Millet - alongside the art of traditional artists, who have been often overlooked yet equally deserve a place in the pantheon of 19th century art history. Gallery 19C participates at TEFAF Maastricht and the Winter Show in New York.
Paired with the second stop on the tour will be an educational talk with the Dallas Museum of Art. The Dallas Museum of Art is one of the largest art museums in America, located in the nation's largest arts district in downtown Dallas with more than 25,000 works of art spanning 5,000 years.
The multi-city event will have its final showcase in Austin in collaboration with Martha’s from 4 November to 8 November. Martha’s is a contemporary art gallery that specializes in working with early-career artists and is committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse ecosystem for artists and collaborators. Founded by Ricky Morales and Meredith Williams in 2020, Martha’s have most recently participated at NADA Miami, Untitled Houston, The Armory New York & Dallas Art Fair.
During the time at Martha’s, there will be the concluding talk with the Blanton Museum of Art which will take place at the exhibition. The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S., with a permanent collection consisting of more than 22,000 objects.
Previous editions of the Trois Crayons Drawings Hub included master works on paper spanning five centuries from over 35 participating galleries, including drawings, watercolours and pastels. The selling exhibitions drew more than 2,000 visitors from around the world, receiving widespread praise for their unique approach to displaying and celebrating paper in its many forms.
JULY HIGHLIGHTS
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Landscape with Cottages and a Hay Barn, 1641 (detail). National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, inv. NGI.2024.13.
No Netherlandish seventeenth-century artist produced more drawings of a city's ramparts than Herman Saftleven (1609–1685) did of Utrecht. The artist regularly roamed the city walls and the Stadsbuitengracht to capture views of the city. Over a period of nearly thirty years – between 1645 and 1674 – his walks resulted in more than 175 views of, along, and from the city wall. One of the drawings illustrated here is by the artist himself, while the other is deemed to be a copy (not a fake). But which is which?
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The original is the upper (left) image.
Saftleven depicted Utrecht’s Lucasbolwerk, an earthen defensive structure along the city walls, on several occasions. The earliest of these is the upper drawing, at the Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam, which can be dated to around 1645. In a 2024 RKD Study analysing Saftleven’s city wall drawings, Laurens Schoemaker argued that the lower drawing, at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, is too weak to be by Saftleven himself and must be a copy.
The National Gallery’s Stories in Colour podcast is back for a second season. Composer Dr Deborah Pritchard and leading expert on synaesthesia Professor Jamie Ward answer questions such as: What is synaesthesia and what might yellow sound like? The guests are joined in the studio by violinist Greta Mutlu and cellist Richard Harwood. They help bring Deborah’s own personal experience of synaesthesia to life through music.
In December 2025, Sir Gabriele Finaldi delivered The Burlington Magazine David Scrase annual lecture at the National Gallery in London, focusing on the weird and wonderful drawings of the Spanish baroque artist Jusepe de Ribera. The event marked the inauguration of a new annual lecture series established in honour of David Scrase (1949–2020), celebrating the study of Old Master drawings and the enduring pleasure they inspire. Martin Clayton is scheduled to deliver the second lecture in late 2026.
With the recent passing of one of Britain's greatest masters, David Hockney, Apollo magazine have resurfaced an interview from 2010 in which the artist spoke to Martin Gayford about his unorthodox and firmly held beliefs about the Old Masters. Hockney’s 2001 book, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters controversially argued that many Old Master painters used optical devices, a notion which has been hotly contested by art historians.
