January 2025

Trois Crayons Newsletter, 1 January 2025

to listen

William Blake’s Eccentric Arts

‘For Blake, visionary art is not mysterious or fuzzy or soft. Visionary art is something which actually very precise and crisp.’ In this episode, British art historian Martin Myrone, Convenor of the British Art Network at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and former senior curator of Pre-1800 British art at Tate Britain, discusses Blake’s work and reputation during and after his lifetime. Myrone wrote the introduction to Lives of William Blake, a book of early accounts of Blake’s life from Getty Publications.

to watch

200 Years of the National Gallery

In celebration of the National Gallery’s 200-year anniversary, a three-part documentary series has been released tracing its origins in a private house in Pall Mall to its current home in Trafalgar Square. Narrated by National Gallery staff, past and present, the series guides the viewer through change, war, and the embrace of modernity. See here for episodes 2 and 3.

to read

Sanguine: a History of Red Chalk Drawings

Kirsten Tambling traces the history of drawing in red chalk, or ‘sanguine’ as it came to be known (after the Latin word for 'blood'), from Renaissance Italy to Belle Époque Paris. And of course, a history of red chalk would not be complete without some discussion of the ‘trois crayons’ technique, from which this organisation takes its name.