MAY 2025
Thursday, May 1
Trois Crayons celebrates the art of drawing from the 15th to the 21st century. From in-person exhibitions and collaborative events to our monthly newsletter and social media activity, we connect the global drawings community.
Coming Up
Greetings from Trois Crayons HQ.
Following yesterday’s announcement of our summer exhibition Tracing Time, which returns to No.9 Cork Street from 26 June – 5 July, we are pleased to share another exciting development in this month’s newsletter: the launch of the forthcoming Trois Crayons Museum Forum.
Also in this issue, Christof Metzger, Curator of German and Austrian Art up to 1760 at the Albertina, Vienna, selects our Drawing of the Month, while Laura Staccoli reviews the National Gallery’s newly installed display of the lesser-seen Carracci Cartoons. Read on for a periodic escape from the world of tariffs and market gloom, with a selection of drawing world news, exhibitions, and literary, visual, and audio highlights, and, as ever, the ‘Real or Fake’ section.
For next month’s edition, please direct any recommendations, news stories, feedback or event listings to tom@troiscrayons.art.
TROIS CRAYONS MUSEUM FORUM
We are delighted to announce the forthcoming launch of the Trois Crayons Museum Forum, an innovative digital platform dedicated to the discussion and identification of Pre-Modern drawings in public collections. Launching in the summer of 2025, this international subject specialist network will foster collaboration between curators, scholars, art dealers, and the wider public.
The forum provides a space for curators and institutions to share lesser-seen and lesser-studied works from their collections—so-called ‘problem’ drawings—raising unresolved questions of attribution, sitter identity, dating, subject matter, and provenance. By opening these discussions to the global community of experts and enthusiasts, the platform enhances visibility and invites fresh perspectives on drawings that might otherwise remain in obscurity.
This free-to-use digital resource will harness the power of collective research and community collaboration, encouraging knowledge exchange and innovative approaches to longstanding art-historical challenges. Through crowd-sourced insights and collaborative scholarship, the Trois Crayons Museum Forum aims to deepen our understanding of Pre-Modern drawings and deepen public engagement with institutional collections.
If you would like to learn more about the project or get involved as a curator or institution, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We are excited to share more and look forward to future discussions.
NEWS
In Art World News
In the UK, celebrations of J.M.W. Turner’s 250th anniversary year continued with a flurry of events centred around the artist’s birthday on April 23. A drawing of a lion by Rembrandt is due to come to market next year and may become the most expensive work on paper ever sold at auction. Proceeds have been earmarked for big cat conservation. The drawing, which comes from the collection of American businessman and philanthropist Thomas Kaplan, is currently on view at Amsterdam’s H’ART Museum, in the exhibition From Rembrandt to Vermeer: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. In Rome, a recently discovered fresco at the Palazzo Nardini has been attributed to an artist in the orbit of Perugino by Antonio Forcellino, the cultural heritage restorer. In London, V&A East is due to open on May 31, and the National Gallery’s newly refurbished and rehung Sainsbury Wing will be accessible to the public from May 10. The British Library has also announced plans for a groundbreaking £1.1 billion development. For further information on the plans for the new exhibition galleries, see here.
In Exhibition and Art Fair News
In New York, Nicholas Hall is hosting Beyond the Fringe: Painting for the Market in 17th-Century Italy at 17 East 76th Street from April 23 – May 22.
In London, Abbott & Holder is hosting John Sutcliffe: A Celebration at 30 Museum Street from April 24 – May 10.
In London, Guy Peppiatt Fine Art and Emma Rutherford are hosting Vellum, Paper and Ivory: Portraits and Portrait Miniatures 1550-1950, at 6 Masons Yard from April 28 – May 9.
In New York, Hauser & Wirth is hosting William Kentridge: A Natural History of the Studio at 542 West 22nd Street from May 1 – August 1.
In Berlin, Galerie Michael Werner is hosting Frank Auerbach at Hardenbergstr. 9A from May 3 – June 28.
In New York, TEFAF New York is open to the public from May 9 – 13 at The Park Avenue Armory.
In London, Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert is hosting In the Mood for Love: Hockney in London, 1960-1963 at 38 Bury Street from May 21 – July 18.
In Brussels, Colnaghi has opened a new gallery space at 30 rue Jacques Jordaens. To mark the occasion, Colnaghi will unveil an important recently rediscovered drawing, the Triumph of Minerva by Jacob Jordaens. The exhibition, STUDIO, remains open until May 30.
In Arles, the Festival du Dessin continues until May 11. In step with the festival, the Musée Réattu is hosting 5 simultaneous exhibitions including displays focused on the work of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Henri Rivière.
Jonathan Richardson the Elder, Self-portrait, c. 1733. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
In Lecture and Event News
In London, on May 6, Dr Susan Owens will deliver this year’s Milein Cosman Slade Lecture, Places of the Mind, Portraits of the Soul: Drawings by Jonathan Richardson and John Constable. The lecture will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, UCL, and will explore drawing’s role in soul-searching and self-reflection, with a focus on the work of Jonathan Richardson and John Constable.
In London, on May 15, Vittoria Cervini will give a specialist tour of the Royal Museums Greenwich’s drawings by the Van de Velde family, Drawing at Sea: A Closer Look at Van de Velde's Works on Paper. The tour will run from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. at the Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre, and tickets are £20 (£15 for students).
In Paris, on May 16, Bella Maniera’s Le Prix JRC will be presented at the Librairie du Louvre. Éric Pagliano will also discuss his new work, L’art du dessin.
In London, on May 22, Dr Ben Street will deliver a lecture at The Brown Collection, Mannerism: Now and Then.
In Antwerp, on May 5, there will be a conference at the Rubenshuis, Tout le monde pour ma patrie: Rubens and the World. Tickets are €150 (€100 for students).
In The Hague, the RKD will organise a short course on watermark analysis using digital tools. Courses will take place from May 12–15 and May 19–22.
On Zoom, on May 29, there will be a book launch for Printing Colour 1700–1830, edited by Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Elizabeth Savage.
In Literary and Academic News
The Baltimore Museum of Art is seeking a full-time Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs.
The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden is seeking a full-time curator for the print cabinet, specialising in art on paper after 1945.
Marco Simone Bolzoni’s latest hard back catalogue, Pellegrino Tibaldi: Le Storie di Polifemo, has been announced by the publishers Ugo Bozzi Editore. Pre-orders will soon be available.
The winner of the Prix Bella Maniera 2024, Damien Tellas, will release his new book, Michel Dorigny (1616–1665), this June with the publishers ARTHENA.
The Rubenshuis library has acquired Anne-Marie Logan’s archive on Rubens drawings, containing some 110 boxes containing 2,770 kilograms of archival material and books.
The journal Simiolus is now accepting submissions for the annual Haboldt-Mutters Prize for young art historians. Scholars who wish to compete for this award for the best original contribution on European art prior to 1950 should be younger than 35 at the time of submission. The author of the winning paper, which should be handed in before the end of the year, will receive €2,000.
In Acquisition News
With the Salon du Dessin and TEFAF in the rear-view mirror, several institutional acquisitions have since been announced. For the Salon’s official press release, see here. For TEFAF’s official press release, see here. Among the acquisitions announced at the Salon, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston acquired Giuseppe Manocchi’s The Base of the Trajan Column in Rome from Martin Moeller & Cie. News of the ultimate destination of Gustav Klimt’s rediscovered portrait of Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona, exhibited by W&K – Wienerroither & Kohlbacher at TEFAF, has yet to emerge.
During the Semaine du Dessin, two drawings by Carle van Loo offered at Millon were pre-empted by the Louvre, while a third drawing from the sale, by Eugène Delacroix, was also pre-empted by a French institution.
At Artcurial, a drawing by Jean-Baptiste Greuze was pre-empted by the Petit Palais.
Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge has announced the recent acquisition of several drawings: works by Jacob Jordaens for the Rubenshuis, Antwerp; by Pieter de Jode for the Museum Plantin-Moretus; and by Sieuwert van der Meulen for the Stedelijk Museum, Alkmaar.
The RKD has received two sketchbooks by the sculptor Fred Carasso, donated by the artist’s family.
A rare watercolour by the author Emily Brontë has been acquired by the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth, from Forum Auctions in London.
A drawing by Jean-Marie Delaperche has joined the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, as announced on their social media channels.
EVENTS
Jan van Kessel the Elder, Insects and a Sprig of Rosemary, 1653. National Gallery of Art, Washington. The Richard C. Von Hess Foundation, Nell and Robert Weidenhammer Fund, Barry D. Friedman, and Friends of Dutch Art.
This month we have picked out a selection of new and previously unhighlighted events from the UK and from further afield. For a more complete overview of ongoing exhibitions and talks, please visit our Calendar page.
UK
Wordlwide
DRAWING OF THE MONTH
Christof Metzger, curator for German and Austrian Art until 1760 at the Albertina, Vienna, has kindly chosen our 20th Drawing of the Month.
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
Lectern with Books, 1521
Brush and black ink and white bodycolour, on gray-violet prepared paper, 19.9 × 27.8 cm, Albertina Museum, Vienna
The Renaissance, understood as the revival of ancient Greco-Roman artistic culture, spread from Italy to all of Europe in the two centuries following the year 1400. This period of change, which recognised humankind’s intellectual faculties as the driving force behind all cultural development, affected philosophy and literature, but its legacy, even today, remains most conspicuous in the visual arts. The art of drawing played a role in this transformation: papermaking finally became widespread in Europe, and the discovery of new drawing materials inspired among artists an ever-increasing fondness for experimentation. Soon, artists came up with the idea of preparing supports with coloured grounds or using paper that had been dyed in the production process. This opened up entirely new aesthetic experiences for artists and their audiences. The darkening of the drawing surface, in greater or lesser intensity, resulted in a reduction of contrast and thus also a certain harmonisation of the image. Furthermore, the introduction of colour created a sense of material preciousness. The middle tone of the ground enabled the draftsman to work toward both the darks and the lights. This meant reducing everything depicted to contrasting tonal relationships, translating specific colour values into a language of dark, middle, and light tones. Both north and south of the Alps, the idea of chiaroscuro drawing—drawing in light and shade—was born.
From Albrecht Dürer himself, we learn that he produced preliminary drawings “with half-colours” during his stay in the Netherlands in 1520–21. By this, we can assume that he meant drawings in chiaroscuro. This technique accompanied him through most of his artistic life. In January 1521, Albrecht Dürer began work on a painting showing Saint Jerome in his study. The composition was unprecedented for the subject matter: an up-close chest-length portrait of the aged church father at his desk. The immediate foreground is occupied by a skull and a lectern. While pointing at the skull with his left hand, Jerome leans his head against his right hand and gazes pensively toward the beholder. A book, which we are obviously disturbing the saint in reading, is lying open on the lectern. Dürer completed the painting in March of the same year and gave it as a gift to the Portuguese merchant Rodrigo Fernandez d’Almada.
While working on the painting, Dürer developed his pictorial concept in several precise chiaroscuro studies on gray-violet prepared paper. He based the figure of Saint Jerome on two portrait studies of a ninety-three-year-old man he had met in Antwerp. One of those, at the Albertina, supplied much of the pose and the main features. Three sheets of the same paper, albeit with a more evenly applied, darker ground, contain further preparatory details in chiaroscuro, showing the saint’s proper left arm and hand together with a partial figure study, the skull, and the lectern. Dürer’s handling of the drawing implements and materials was the same as in the main study for the head. Largely dispensing with outlines, he laid out broad areas of the darkest shadow using a brush and black ink, after which he defined less deeply shaded areas with quick hatching done in relatively watery, diluted ink. Using the tip of a thinner brush, he applied fine highlights in white. As in the head study, he worked the brightest passages with a finger, creating a rough, granular surface texture with the white bodycolour. All this gave rise to marked contrasts, which on the darker ground are even more prominent that those of the head study, with its somewhat paler support.
Despite the great care that Dürer lavished on the studies, he nevertheless faced major problems when combining the individual motifs in the painting. The limited surface area of the table leaves no room for the proper right arm, so the elbow rests on a small box that is unclearly situated in the pictorial space. The skull is oversized, and the proper left arm bends at a sharp angle to position the index finger in a meaningful pointing gesture. The lectern, designed so magnificently, looks diminutive and is heavily cropped at the left, sacrificing a detail as attractive as the hidden bentwood box which may contain the writing utensils of the great writer. Once more Dürer proves himself to be the master on paper, whose drawings so often overshadow his paintings.
Dürer’s Lectern with Books is in the exhibition Leonardo – Dürer. Renaissance Master Drawings on Colored Ground at the Albertina Museum, Vienna, to 9 June.
REVIEW
The Carracci Cartoons: Myths in the Making (10 April 2025 - 6 July 2025)
The National Gallery, London
Laura Staccoli, Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art, Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Warwick
Agostino Carracci, Cephalus carried off by Aurora in her Chariot. Image credit: The National Gallery, London
The National Gallery’s latest free exhibition, The Carracci Cartoons: Myths in the Making (Room 1) presents a rare opportunity to engage closely with two monumental full-scale drawings by Agostino Carracci (1557-1602), created in preparation for the ceiling fresco of the Farnese Gallery in Rome. While the younger brother, Annibale (1560-1609), is often credited with the overall execution of the gallery, the present display offers an exceptional opportunity to reassess Agostino’s role in the design of one of the most ambitious artistic endeavours of the early seventeenth century.
The unveiling of the Farnese Gallery ceiling in 1601 marked a turning point in Italian art. Commissioned by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, the great-grandson of Pope Paul III, the mythological scenes, largely derived from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, celebrate the loves of the gods in a sophisticated decorative scheme, combining quadri riportati or feigned paintings, illusionistic architecture, simulated sculpture and fictive antique bronze medallions, integrated into one elaborate architectural framework. The National Gallery’s cartoons were executed around 1599 in preparation for two compartments on the long sides of the gallery ceiling, depicting the stories of Cephalus and Aurora and A Woman borne off by a Sea God(?). The cartoons, measuring nearly four metres wide and two meters tall, in black charcoal and white chalk on multiple sheets of blue-grey paper, are the only surviving large-scale cartoni for the project apart from a substantial fragment of the cartoon by Annibale for the Triumph of Bacchus and Adriane, now in Urbino. Acquired by the National Gallery collection in 1837 as a gift from Lord Francis Egerton (later Earl of Ellesmere), the cartoons had previously belonged to Sir Thomas Lawrence, a well-known admirer and collector of Carracci drawings. As part of a remarkable four-year-long conservation project (1990-94), the cartoons were restored and cleaned, significantly improving the legibility of the blue paper, which had discoloured and become brown in appearance, thus bringing the drawings close to their original splendour.
The exhibition’s accompanying text illustrates the different methods employed by the artists to transfer the design onto the ceiling, offering visitors a rare opportunity to uncover fascinating details behind the making of large-scale cartoons. As was conventional in Renaissance practice, the Carracci brothers created numerous preparatory drawings for the frescoes, including individual figure studies, compositional and decorative studies, before scaling up the final compositions into full-size drawings. The Cephalus was cut into sections, and the design transferred directly on the plaster, likely using a stylus. The sheets of paper were then reassembled and mounted on a canvas support. In contrast, the Woman cartoon was pricked for spolvero, suggesting the creation of an auxiliary cartoon to be cut into sections and used for transfer, thereby preserving the original drawing. Technical examination indicates that the cartoons were always intended for display and were likely reused in academies for teaching, as evidenced by numerous copies made after them.
Agostino Carracci, A Woman borne off by a Sea God (?). Image credit: The National Gallery, London
While the cartoons usually represent the latest stage in the process from invention to wall, the high level of elaboration and continuous reworking in the Gallery’s cartoons demonstrates the experimental nature of Agostino’s draughtsmanship. In one section of the Woman cartoon, a visibly pasted piece of paper reveals that a segment of the cartoon with a winged putto was replaced and covered with a drawing of a drapery. Numerous pentimenti are visible throughout the composition. In the Cephalus, Agostino explored different solutions for the putto’s head, first directed towards Aurora’s chariot, then away from it, contributing to a heightened sense of movement. In the companion cartoon, Agostino altered significantly the position of the hand of the goddess, initially resting on the seagod’s shoulder.
As when they were created, today viewers are invited to make connections between the cartoons and the masters of the High Renaissance, particularly Michelangelo and Raphael, as well as Roman antiquity, which served as a profound source of inspiration for the Carracci. The twisting pose of the youthful Cephalus evokes Michelangelo’s monumental reclining nudes, such as the figure of Adam in the Sistine Chapel. Yet here, the anatomical precision of the male body underscores Agostino’s mastery of chiaroscuro and his training in life drawing, lending the scene a fresh dynamism. The elegant pose of the goddess, with her mantle waving freely in the air echoing her arm’s gesture, demonstrates Agostino’s familiarity with Raphael’s Triumph of Galatea in the Villa Farnesina, just across the Tiber; meanwhile, the woman looking towards the viewer has been interpreted as an allusion to the Crouching Venus, part of the Farnese family’s exceptional collection of antique sculptures. Although the exhibition does not feature additional works, the witty interplay of figures in ‘cinematic’ motion within the large cartoons stimulates endless visual connections, leaving one eager to see more.
The exhibition’s interpretation also highlights Annibale’s intervention and ‘correction’ of Agostino’s designs, most notably in Cephalus’ loyal companion, who is rendered with bolder, more forceful contours. Annibale also reworked the figure of the triton blowing a conch shell, which takes inspiration from the Torso Belvedere, and adjusted the composition directly on the fresco, probably shortly after Agostino’s premature departure from Rome. The dolphin’s tail, which covers the buttocks of a putto in the foreground, has been interpreted as Annibale’s playful parody of the seagod’s sensual gesture.
While Annibale’s undisputed talent and primary responsibility in the execution of the Gallery are not in question, Agostino’s contribution should not be underestimated. Recent scholarship has revealed that the collaboration between the two brothers may have been more significant than previously assumed, prompting new questions about Agostino’s role in the development of the project. The vitality of his drawings for the Farnese frescoes attests to a spontaneous creativity and an experimental approach that persists even in the final stages of the design. While research into the Farnese Gallery drawings is still ongoing and Agostino’s catalogue raisonné is forthcoming, this timely exhibition invites us to reconsider the centrality of drawing within the creative process of one of the greatest masterpieces produced in Rome at the dawn of the Baroque.
Image credit: Palazzo Farnese, Roma, public domain (source: Wikimedia Commons)
Real or Fake
Can we fool you? The term “fake” may be slightly sensationalist when it comes to old drawings. Copying originals and prints has formed a key part of an artist’s education since the Renaissance and with the passing of time the distinction between the two can be innocently mistaken.
Photo © The Courtauld
Photo © The Courtauld
One of these two drawings is a genuine work by the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), the other is a forgery. Tiepolo skilfully used vigorous lines to endow his figures with energy, and employed wash judiciously, using blank areas of paper to great effect. He also modulated the tones of wash to effortlessly suggest variations in colour. Which one is the forgery? You can find the solution below.
Scroll to the end of the newsletter or click here for the answer.
Resources and Recommendations
to listen
Pope Francis and art, JMW Turner’s 250th birthday, John Singer Sargent’s Madame X
Following the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday, The Art Newspaper’s managing editor, Louis Jebb, who has written an extensive obituary of the late pontiff, joined Ben Luke to talk about the late pope’s engagement with art and with the Vatican art collections. The podcast also features an interview with Amy Concannon, the senior curator of historic British art at Tate Britain, about J.M.W. Turner’s enduring appeal, following the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth on Wednesday 23 April. Luke also discusses John Singer Sargent’s most famous—and in its time, his most infamous—painting, Madame X (1883-84) which is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
TO watch
Turner: The Man Who Painted Britain
More parochial Turner ‘content’ in the recommendations section this month. The artist’s 250th anniversary celebrations present a perfect opportunity to revisit a classic 2001 BBC docudrama, presented by Tim Marlow, on the extraordinary story of a brilliant self-made man. While Turner is considered by many to be Britain's greatest landscape painter, his private life reveals a man of extremes and contradictions.
to read
Seven Facets of Architectural Disegno by Cara Rachele
Cara Rachele explores the varied facets of the relationship between disegno (‘drawing’ or ‘design’) and architecture in the Renaissance. Through seven concepts, Rachele explores disegno’s different roles in architectural theory and practice, illuminating the complexities and contradictions of the relationship in reality and imagination, in the conceptual and the material.
answer
The original, of course, is the lower image.
Upper Image: Forgery in the manner of Tiepolo family, Two seated soldiers, The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)
Lower Image: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), Helmeted male head, The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)
Helmeted male head is the genuine drawing by Tiepolo. It may be related to the head of Alexander the Great in his painting Alexander and Bucephalus. Tiepolo’s ink lines are simple and assured, restrained yet lively. The wash is applied sparingly to indicate areas of shade against the white highlights of the bare paper. The drawing of the Two seated soldiers was donated to The Courtauld in 2011 as a forgery for teaching purposes. In trying to imitate the energetic lines of Tiepolo, the forger has filled the page with frenzied zigzags. Many lines are heavy and smudged, in contrast to Tiepolo’s refined and confident strokes. The wash here is applied across large areas, lacking any comprehension of Tiepolo’s subtle mastery of light and shade.
This case study is an extract from Art and Artifice Fakes from the Collection 17 June – 8 Oct 2023 Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery and Project Space. For further examples of forgeries in the collection of the Courtauld Gallery and the stories of their detection, see the article.
