Resources & Recommendations #25
Wednesday, 1 October 2025. Newsletter 25.
to listen
Not Just the Tudors: Shakespeare's Male Muse: A Mystery Solved?
New light has been cast this month on a 400-year old mystery relating to Shakespeare’s “Mr. W.H.”, thought to be Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, the addressee of the poet’s most homo-erotic sonnets. A long-hidden miniature, investigated by Drs. Elizabeth Goldring and Emma Rutherford, might just be a vital piece of evidence that could help shape understanding of literary history.
to watch
Drawings Revealed: Sketch, Shade, Smudge-Drawing from Gray to Black
Kimberly Schenck, former head of paper conservation at the National Gallery of Art in Washington delivers a fascinating lecture on black drawing media "Sticks, Stumps, and Fingers—Drawings Revealed" to celebrate the opening of Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black, on view until 18 January 2026 at the Harvard Art Museums. Schenck discusses the innovative applications employed by artists in their choice and manipulations of black drawing media and supports, from fingertips to rolled paper stumps.
to read
Art UK: The importance of drawings in the Dutch and Flemish Golden Age by Alex Cohen
Using the sale of the Anglo-Dutch painter Sir Peter Lely’s collection of almost 10,000 drawings as an entrance point, Alex Cohen examines the sources, inspiration, and motivation behind the drawings produced in the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of the seventeenth century. Ranging from travel, domestic prosperity, functionality, war, and leisure, Cohen guides the reader beyond the worlds of Rembrandt and Rubens.
