Trois Crayons Newsletter, September 2025
The recordings of the Tracing Time events programme are now online and can be viewed in full below and on Youtube. Thank you to all the speakers, partners and attendees who came to the No.9 Cork Street auditorium and supported our many partnership events.
Timeless Materials: A Conversation on Drawing with Contemporary Artists
Presented in partnership with The Drawing Foundation.
27 June 2025
This recording is part of Tracing Time, the summer exhibition and talks programme presented by Trois Crayons. In a lively discussion moderated by Annette Wickham, three artists, Joana Galego, Nicholas C Williams, and Pippa Young, discussed their use of traditional drawing materials and techniques. The conversation focused on how looking to the practices of the past informs how they approach their own work in the studio.
Women Artists in Focus: Curating New Narratives
Saturday, 28 June, 2pm
Organising exhibitions centred on historic women artists presents a distinct set of challenges and opportunities. In 2023, Jennifer Higgie released The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art & the Spirit World. In 2024, Amy Lim was research curator for Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920 at Tate Britain, while Rachel Sloan is currently developing an exhibition on British women artists and landscape, opening at The Courtauld Gallery in 2026. In this session, panellists presented their projects before engaging in a lively discussion around the complexities, discoveries, and rewards of charting overlooked art historical territory.
The Drawings of John Constable
Monday, 30 June, 4pm
Drawing was central to John Constable’s working life. Detailed sketches from nature, sometimes on a tiny scale, underpinned his exhibition works; they could provide inspiration for a watercolour of Stonehenge or information about a specific type of plough. And yet his drawings could also have an emotional dimension: Constable’s most private, soul-searching works are not in oils but in ink and graphite. In this talk Susan Owens explores the wide range of his drawing practice from early Gainsborough-influenced views of East Bergholt lanes to the visionary ink blots of his later years.
Piccadilly Jim: The Discovery of James Gibbs’s Designs for the Façade of Burlington House
Presented in partnership with The Burlington Magazine.
Tuesday, 1 July, 4pm
In the No.9 Cork Street auditorium, located just a few hundred yards from the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House, William Aslet delved into his fascinating reassessment of James Gibbs’s unexecuted designs for the façade of Burlington House at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
New Ways of Looking at Italian Renaissance Drawings
Presented in partnership with L’IDEA.
Wednesday, 2 July, 4pm
This panel explored how traditional connoisseurship and cutting-edge new technologies are reshaping our understanding of Italian Old Master drawings. Rachel Hapoienu and Tom Nevile presented research afforded by emerging tools such as the VSC scanner and the Trois Crayons Museum Forum. Following these presentations, Martin Clayton and Catherine Whistler led a discussion on recent and ongoing research projects in the field.
The Intimate Collector: Why Drawings Thrive in the Digital Age
Presented in partnership with Arcarta.
Thursday, 3 July, 4pm
Why are drawings capturing the imagination of a new generation of collectors – especially younger and first-time buyers? This session explored how digital platforms are transforming access to works on paper, reshaping the way collectors discover, connect with, and build trust in galleries online. From social media to virtual viewing rooms, the panel considered the tools driving this shift – and what it means for the future of the drawings market.
Presented in partnership with Maak.
Friday, 4 July, 4pm
Between Drawings and Ceramics featured a panel discussion that brought together the worlds of drawings and ceramics. The conversation explored the parallels and contrasts in how these two mediums are collected, appreciated, and understood.
The Drawings of Jean-Antoine Watteau
Presented in partnership with Master Drawings.
Saturday, 5 July, 4pm
Watteau has been the focus of two major exhibitions this year — at the Château de Chantilly and the British Museum. In this panel, co-curator Axel Moulinier and curator Grant Lewis discussed their distinct approaches to the 18th-century master in conversation with Jennifer Tonkovich.
Visuable is an award-winning digital brand agency based in London, specialising in creating iconic Squarespace websites, complemented by branding, copywriting, and SEO strategies designed to supercharge your business success.
