Grey matters

By Jane Munro
 T
HE humble pencil is one of the most com-
mon implements used for drawing, and also
one of the most versatile, allowing the artist to
explore a vast range of effects, from a needle-sharp
contour line to the velvety depths of soft pencil shad-
ing, at times worked to a dense, metallic sheen. One
of its most eloquent champions, the artist and author
Mervyn Peake, considered it to be the draughtsman’s
most elemental form of expression, what vocabulary
James Eden and Olly Rooks,
photographic still from Burst video
was to the writer, or the keyboard to a pianist. A soft
pencil was a ‘rich, exhaustive, medium’, he wrote, ca-
pable of creating ‘a thousand moods that lie between
delicacy and violence’: its ability to create tones rang-
ing from ‘the frailest of greys to the black of the tomb’
made it ‘Hell and heaven in a cedar tunnel.’

This exhibition celebrates the extraordinary

expressive potential of the medium, through four
centuries of drawings from the Museum’s collections.
While almost all were made using graphite, not
all were made with a pencil, at least in the form
we know it today. Seventeenth-century ‘plumbago’
miniaturists, for example, would have used graphite in
its purest mineral state, in ‘plummets’ (a term adapted
from metal alloy styluses), or sticks that were also
ground and manipulated with a stump to model flesh
tones, light and shade. Innovations in pencil-making
from the end of the eighteenth century made it
possible to introduce different degrees of darkness in
the mark left by the pencil on its support: the harder

2
the substance the lighter the line. The drawings
displayed here show something of the range of effects
that could be achieved by artists who were masters
of their medium: from the vigorous compositional
sketches that speak of the ‘wild fancy’ of George
Romney, to crisp contours and fine webs of pencil
hatching in works by Degas, Legros, Burne-Jones and
Augustus John to the raw strength of smudged outline
drawings by L.S. Lowry, a true devotee of the pencil.

Contemporary artists Christopher Le Brun

and Christopher Cook confront and confound
preconceptions of graphite as an essentially linear
medium, by employing modern forms of graphite in
highly innovative ways. Smooth-flowing batons of
extremely soft graphite gave Christopher Le Brun
the freedom to work uninhibited, ‘burying’ successive
strata of ideas, and allowing form to emerge
uncertainly, suggestively. Christopher Cook, on the
other hand, uses a highly personal medium of graphite
powder mixed with oil, resin and solvents to create
enigmatic imagery that blurs the boundaries between
drawing, painting, and photography.

3
James Eden and Olly Rooks, photographic still from Burst video.

A new generation of artists has used graphite as a

way of exploring the act of drawing itself. In their
performance video, James Eden and Olly Rooks limit
the artist’s intervention to a hand that punctures a
graphite-filled balloon, unleashing the potential of the
medium to create its own, mysterious, marks.

http://vimeo.com/11821911
© James Eden and Olly Rooks

4
GREY
G
RAPHITE is an allotrope of carbon, chemically
related to diamonds. Originally referred to
as ‘black-lead’, it has been known severally as
MATTER wad(d), kellow, black-calke/cowke, and plumbago; even
today, it is not uncommon to refer to ‘lead’ pencils.
Its existence as a mineral was established in 1779 by
a Swedish chemist, Carl W. Scheele; a decade later it
was given the name ‘graphite’ by the German chem-
ist and mineralogist, Abraham Gottlob Werner, a term
derived from the Greek word ‘graphein’, meaning to
draw/write.

Historically, it has had a number of uses, notably as

a lubricant, but has also been used in anything from
lining the inside of casting moulds of cannon and
musket balls, to the manufacture of baseball bats
and golfballs, as well as in the nuclear and aerospace
industries. Until well into the nineteenth century, it
was also recommended for minor medical conditions,
such as colic or dyspepsia, sometimes taken with nux
vomica.

As a material for artists, it appears to have been in

use by the mid-sixteenth century. Initially, it would
have been applied it in its pure mineral state, either
as a baton wrapped in sheepskin or string, or using
a wooden or metal holder, known as a porte-crayon.
Wood-cased pencils, in a primitive form of those we
know today, seem to have been available from the end
of the seventeenth century; soft woods such as deal,

5
pine and, especially cedar were preferred for ease of
cutting and sharpening.

Finest English graphite, from Borrowdale in Cumbria,

soon became a highly prized commodity, encouraging
pencil makers to experiment with ways of finding a
cheaper alternative by using lower grade graphite,
mixed with binders and other substances. In 1662 the
Bleistiftmacher (lead pencil maker) Friedrich Staedler
of Nuremberg, devised one of the most successful
of these early composite pencils by mixing ground
graphite with sulphur and antimony, and inserting
into wooden shafts; however, while they were an
improvement on earlier admixtures, they were still
liable to break more easily than pure graphite, and left
a less clear mark.

A truly viable substitute for pure graphite emerged

only at the end of the eighteenth century, as an
economic imperative brought on by wartime
embargos. Dwindling supplies from mines in
Cumberland, exacerbated by a trade blockade
during the war between France and England from
1793, deprived Continental pencil manufacturers
of imported Borrowdale graphite, and prompted
a national effort to invent an equally performing
alternative. In 1794 the painter, chemist, physicist and
engineer, Nicolas-Jacques Conté responded to the
challenge set by the French Minister of War, Lazare
Carnot, in just eight days. The following year, he was

6
granted a patent for his new process, which involved
mixing low-grade, finely-ground graphite powder,
readily available in France, with clay and water, and
placing the pastes into narrow moulds that were then
fired at high temperatures, and then inserted into
grooved wooden batons.

In 1798, three years after Conté’s invention, a

counter-claim for the invention of this new form of
‘composite’ graphite pencil was made by the Austrian
mechanic, Josef von Hardtmuth, who opened a
pencil factory in Vienna in 1790. While precedence is
impossible to establish, Hardtmuth’s discovery only
serves to highlight the drive to invent a modified form
of graphite pencil, stimulated by economic necessity.

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SHADES
T
ODAY, pencils are general graded according to
the European system – possibly established by
a British pencil maker, Brookman in the early
OF 1900s (see nos. 9 and 31) - using a sequence ranging
from ‘H’ (for hardness) to ‘B’ (blackness) and ‘F’ (fine
GREY point); depending on the manufacturer, as many as
twenty grades can exist, from 9H (the hardest) for 9B
‘H’ to ‘B’ (softest). Nineteenth-century artists’ suppliers often
advertised different grades of pencil as being suitable
for specific types of work:

HH - very hard, for architects

H - hard, for lightly indicating contours

HB - for sketching

B - soft, for shading

BB - very soft, for deeper shading

8
GREY
F
OR over two centuries before the term ‘graphite’
was invented, Britain was the leading supplier of
the mineral then known as ‘black lead’. Sometime
AREAS before 1565, an enormous deposit of graphite was
discovered in Borrowdale in Cumberland, and when it
was found it would not burn, was initially used by the
local population to mark sheep.

As the properties and uses of graphite – in particular

for munitions – began to be better understood,
precautions were taken to protect the valuable
resource. Mines were taken over by the Crown and,
once sufficient stocks of graphite had been extracted,
were flooded to prevent theft. In the early part
of the eighteenth century, best graphite or ‘wad’
could fetch £1300 per ton; understandably, it was
transported to monthly markets in London under
armed guard. Despite these measures, there appears
to have been an active black market; eventually,
in 1752, an Act was passed that made stealing or
receiving black-lead a felony punishable by whipping
and hard labour, or transportation. A century later, the
situation seemed little improved. Commenting on the
displays of mining and mineral products at the Great
Exhibition in 1851, including those of British pencil
makers, one visitor observed that, while graphite was
less scarce than it had been at the beginning of the
century, the demand for Borrowdale graphite was still
high. Strict security measures had been implemented
at the mine, he noted: guards were placed at the

9
entrance, workmen changed their clothes under the
supervision of a steward, who, armed with two loaded
blunderbusses, was also responsible for overseeing
employees who sorted and cleaned the ‘plumbago’.

With dwindling supplies of Borrowdale wad, would-

be miners and exploiters looked further afield for
new deposits of the mineral in the nineteenth century.
One of the most remarkable of these was the French
explorer, trader and businessman, Jean-Pierre Alibert
(1820-1905), who in 1847 went prospecting for gold
in Siberia and instead found a rich seam of graphite in
a mountain range close to the Chinese border.

Jean-Pierre Alibert mine in Siberia from A.W.Faber, The Pencil-Lead mines

of Asiatic Siberia, 1865
Exploiting a site over 2000 metres above sea level,
in extreme climatic conditions, took considerable

10
resolve. Alibert set up an entire community on the
mountain, complete with church, kitchen garden and
hippodrome, and only after mining for seven years
came across graphite of a quality high enough to rival
the depleted English supplies. After several more
years, these were finally shipped down the frozen
Siberian rivers to the Pacific and Indian oceans, and
on a two-year journey across land to the pencil
manufacturer A.W. Faber in Nuremberg, to whom he
sold exclusive European rights.

Alibert (or Ivan Petrovich as he called himself

in Russia) was no mean self-publicist. One of his
moments of glory came in 1862, when he was
awarded two medals at the Great Exhibition in
London for an outstanding display of graphite
and other minerals that included entire busts (of
Alexander II and the Russian folk hero Yermack
Timofeyevich), carved out of solid blocks of graphite.
Liberal in his success, Alibert offered samples of his
famous graphite to public institutions in London and
Paris, and to titled Heads of State throughout Europe.

Today, the main countries exporting graphite are

China, India, Brazil, North Korea and Canada.

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1.

David LOGGAN
1635-92

A Judge, 1650-60

Graphite on vellum laid down on

card
Oval, 114 x 88 mm
Given by A.A. de Pass, in memory
of his son, Crispin de Pass, 1933
No. 1655

David Loggan was born in Danzig of Scottish parents and worked in Amsterdam
until he came to London around 1660. He is widely considered as one of the
masters of ‘plumbagos’, a form of portrait miniature painting executed in graphite,
and sometimes ink, on vellum (fine animal skin) that enjoyed great popularity in
the second half of the seventeenth century. The word ‘plumbago’ was an alternative
term for black lead, both of which were commonly used to describe the mineral
before it acquired the name graphite in 1789.

Plumbagos were first made in the Netherlands, as a by-product of the flourishing

print trade, and were introduced to England after the restoration of the monarchy

12
in 1660, when printmakers returned home from exile abroad. They developed
from the original drawings used as the basis of their engravings to become
small, independent, works in their own right, rivalling portrait miniatures. Loggan
himself worked both as an engraver and a miniaturist; the Fitzwilliam owns a large
collection of his portrait engravings, in many of which he depicts his sitters in
‘medallion’ frames similar to the oval frames he used in his ‘plumbago’ miniatures
(see, for example fig. 1).

The identity of the sitter in this portrait is unknown. He wears the judicial dress
of the period; a broad collar, probably of lawn, an ermine cape and the judicial cap,
worn over the white sergeant’s coif.

fig 1. David Loggan

Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll
Given by John Charrington, 1933 P.7948-R

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2.

Thomas FORSTER
c.1677- c.1710

Unknown girl, 1708

Graphite on vellum
Oval, 108 x 79 mm
Signed in graphite: T. Forster /
Delin / 1708
Given by A.A. de Pass, in memory
of his son, Crispin de Pass, 1933
No. 3791

Little is known about Forster. Clearly a talented artist, he appears to have worked
in London, but may have been visiting from Ireland. All of his known miniatures,
dating from between 1690 and 1713 are in ‘plumbago’, or graphite.
Forster models the sitter’s features and dress with astonishing delicacy, using
ground graphite powder, blended with a stump so that it takes on the appearance
of a grey ink or watercolour wash.
Later sources recommended that, to obtain smooth, even, tones with graphite
powder, the artist use cotton, or a device called an estompe-ombreur (lit. a ‘stump-
shadower’), a curved wooden handle with a flattened end, covered in suede.

14
3.

John BROWN
1752-1787

Portrait of Captain
John Wood(s), late
1770s

Graphite on paper
Circular, 125 x 125 mm
Bought from the Perceval Fund,
2003
PD. 20-2003

John Brown received his initial training in Edinburgh, but spent most of the 1770s
in Italy, where he was part of a thriving international community of artists that
included Henry Fuseli, Johann Tobias Sergel, George Romney (see nos. 5, 23 and 24)
and John Flaxman (no. 29).
He worked primarily as a printmaker and draughtsman and went on to make
his reputation as a portraitist in ‘crayons’. The majority of his surviving portrait
drawings are on a much larger scale than this example; several depict the first
members of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, founded by the 11th Earl
of Buchan in 1780. This is the only portrait in this smaller format that Brown is
known to have made in Italy. It demonstrates the extraordinary refinement with

15
which he was able to recreate texture, volume, light and shade through subtle
modulations of graphite in the sitter’s features, costume and setting. The result is
image which, despite its small scale, rivals the colouristic richness of an oil painting.

DETAIL John Brown, Portrait of Capt John Wood(s) (no. 3)

16
4.

Alessandro MAGANZA
1556-1640

Christ before Pilate

1580s ?
Graphite on paper
217 x 185 mm, irregular
Bought from the Perceval Fund,
1964
PD.39-1964

Maganza was born in Vicenza and worked there, in Venice, and elsewhere in the
Veneto. This sketch was used by Maganza’s son for a painting in the parish church
of Fontaniva, east of Vicenza.

Graphite was probably first used for artistic purposes from the mid-sixteenth
century. Originally thought to have been drawn in black chalk, closer analysis has
shown that the medium used in this drawing is graphite, a rare example of Maganza
working solely in what would then have been known as ‘black lead’.

Early drawing manuals advised artists to work first ‘rustically’ in charcoal, sketching

17
in rough outlines that could be subsequently brushed off with a feather, before
reinforcing, or modifying, them with black chalk or graphite (J.B. The Mysteries of
Nature and Art, Conteined in foure several Tretises …The Third Booke of Drawing, Painting,
Limning, Graving, London: Ralph Mab, 1634, p. 104). Long before the invention of the
pencil, artists would have applied graphite in its pure mineral form, as ‘black leade
plummets’, wrapped in sheepskin or bound in string to protect the hands.

18
5.

George ROMNEY
1734-1802

Study for the head of

Bolingbroke, 1788-90

Graphite on paper
287 x 262 mm
Bought, 1874
L.D. 80

Speed was essential to Romney’s working methods. His son recalled that he
constantly had a sketchbook to hand to record ideas or subjects of passing
interest, and even executed compositional sketches in oils in less than an hour, ‘as it
were by magic, [in] the most bold and dashing manner’ (Memoirs, 1830, p.129).

Subjects of spirits, ghosts and visionary beings particularly appealed to Romney’s
‘wild fancy’; a drawing representing the Lapland witches from John Milton’s
Paradise Lost (1667) is on the reverse of this sheet. While this created the
problem of representing the invisible, it also allowed him to work directly from
the imagination, uninhibited by the need to reproduce a close physical likeness.

19
However Romney’s visions of fantastical creatures also relied on his knowledge
of other artists’s works. In this drawing, he depicts not the magically-evoked
spirit, but the reaction of Bolingbroke, the conjurer in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part
2, who had summoned it to appear. The open-mouthed expression of terror is
clearly inspired by the seventeenth-century French artist, Charles Le Brun’s widely
circulated posthumous publication, Expressions of the Passions of the Soul, in which
he codified the physiognomic expressions of human emotions, in this case Fear (fig.
1).

Fig. 1 Charles Le Brun, ‘L’Effroy’ (‘Fear’),

from Méthode pour apprendre à dessiner
les passions (1698)

A larger and more finished compositional drawing of the subject is also in the
Fitzwilliam Museum (B.V.13).

20
6.

William BLAKE Graphite on paper

378 x 522 mm
1757-1827 Bequeathed by Sir Geoffrey
Keynes, 1985
Macbeth and the ghost of Banquo c. 1780 PD.170-1985

Blake is best known for his richly coloured printed books, watercolours and
tempera paintings, but drawings such as this show that he was also a vigorous
draughtsman in pencil. In a few summary lines, he powerfully evokes Macbeth’s
horror at seeing the ghost of the murdered Banquo. Rigid with fear, his hands
raised in alarm, Macbeth stares fixedly at the ghost, seated impassively at his own
place at table (Macbeth, Act III, sc. 4). The features of the ghost have been said to
resemble Blake’s own (compare fig. 1).

21
 For Blake, the ‘first lines’ applied to the paper
preserved the vitality and originality of his vision,
unmediated by the materiality of painting and
printmaking.

fig. 1 John Linnell, Two portraits of William

Blake in profile, c. 1821
PD.56-1950

22
7.

Samuel PROUT
1783-1852

The Piazzetta,Venice
1824-32

Graphite on paper
362 x 259 mm
Bequeathed by J. R. Holliday, 1927
No. 1573

Prout was one of the leading landscape painters of his day, working extensively
in watercolour as well as in oils. In addition, he was a highly sought-after teacher,
who, between 1812 and 1820, published a number of popular drawing manuals for
amateur artists that contributed significantly to the dissemination of his work, and
the popularity of his style.

This drawing was probably made between Prout’s first visit to Venice in 1824
and 1832, when it formed the basis of an engraving by Edward Finden in Finden’s
Illustrations of the life and work of Lord Byron (London, 1833-4).

23
For the artist and critic John Ruskin, Prout was a master of the pencil. Prout was
not a colourist, he wrote, ‘nor in any extended or complete sense of the word a
painter. He is essentially a draughtsman with the lead pencil … the chief art-virtue
of [his work] is the intellectual abstraction which represents many features of
things with a few lines’ (Works , XIV, p. 392). Nor did Prout’s imperfect mastery of
perspective detract from the brilliance of his drawings, Ruskin believed: like Turner
(Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy), Prout drew architectural subjects
‘only with as much perspective as suited him’ and ‘twisted his buildings …into
whatever shapes he liked’ (Elements, 1857, pp. xix, 19).

In common with many artists of his day, including John Linnell, who used them for
more than half a century (see no. 31), Prout favoured pencils manufactured by the
firm Brookman & Langdon, widely considered one of the best pencil makers of
the day. One of the later partners in the firm, is thought to have been responsible
for introducing letters to signify the varying darkness of their mark, from ‘B’
(black) to H (hard) at the beginning of the twentieth century, a system still used by
manufacturers today.

SEE: http://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/directory-of-
suppliers/b/british-artists-suppliers-1650-1950-br.php

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8.

Frederick Landseer
GRIGGS
1876-1938

The rood tower

and south transept,
Lincoln Cathedral,
1912

Graphite on paper
317 x 227 mm
Signed and dated, lower left: F.L.
GRIGGS / 1912
Given by Benjamin Chandler,
1946
No. 2765

Hard graphite pencil produces a sharpness of line that is ideal for rendering
architectural detail, and is also readily translatable into print. Born in Hitchin,
Griggs worked extensively as a draughtsman and etcher of landscapes and
architectural subjects, and also worked as an architect at Chipping Campden. Many
of his drawings formed the basis of illustrations for topographical books of his
travels in England and France, notably the series Highways and Byways, launched
in 1902, which recorded the architectural heritage of the southern and eastern
counties of England. This drawing was used as the basis of an illustration in W. F.
Rawnsley, Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire (London,1914).

25
Architectural subjects were sometimes criticised as being the most lowly form
of drawing, as they were, by their very nature, concerned purely with accurate
recording of form, and discouraged imaginative input or creative flights of fancy.
As Griggs’s skilful drawing shows, however, technical virtuosity has an allure of its
own.

26
9.

Alphonse LEGROS
1837 – 1911

Portrait of a young
girl, 1903

Goldpoint on pink prepared

paper
283 x 225 mm
Signed and dated upper right:
A.Legros /1903
Given by Sir Ivor and Lady
Batchelor, 1997
PD.4-1997

Legros was trained in France, but settled in England in 1863, and became an
influential teacher in his own right, first at the South Kensington Art School, and
later at the Slade School of Art. His pure line drawing in the French academic
tradition owed much to Ingres, (nos. 11, 12, 13) and his prominence as a teacher
in the later part of the nineteenth century ensured that his linear style was
transmitted to a younger generation of artists, such as Augustus John (no. 26).

A gifted etcher, Legros also enjoyed working with an extremely fine line in his
drawings, using an accumulation of delicately hatched line to create shadow and
modelling. Although this portrait appears at first sight to be drawn in pencil, closer

27
inspection shows that Legros has used metal – in this case gold – point, a medium
used extensively since the Middle Ages, and which preceded the use of pencil. For a
fuller description of the technique, see no. 27.

By the nineteenth century, most artists preferred drawing instruments and

processes which demanded less painstaking preparation and implementation, but
Legros remained a fervent adherent of metalpoint, and became one of the leading
artists to revive the use of the medium. His sensitive metalpoint drawings were
much admired by his fellow artists, including Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon,
who bequeathed a number to the Fitzwilliam in 1937 [http://www.fitzmuseum.
cam.ac.uk/opacdirect/6512.html], and Edgar Degas, who acquired two and
hung them in his bedroom.

DETAIL: Alphonse Legros, Portrait of a young girl (no.9)

28
10.

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar
DEGAS
1834-1917

Study of the head

of Thérèse Degas,
the artist’s sister, in
profile to left, c. 1855-
56

Graphite on faded pink paper

285 x 236 mm
Bequeathed by A.S. F. Gow,
through the National Art
Collections Fund, 1978
PD. 24-1978

In the early years of his career, Degas made a number of drawings using a hard
graphite pencil, sometimes, as here, on coloured paper grounds, to create an
extremely crisp linear contour that recalls the soft grey line of metalpoint drawings
by Italian Renaissance artists whom he admired, such as Leonardo da Vinci,
Lorenzo di Credi, and other draughtsmen of the Florentine school (see no. 27).
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the technique of metalpoint enjoyed a
modest revival (see no.9), especially after the publication in 1858 of a translation of
Cennino Cennini’s Il Libro dell’Arte by Ingres’s pupil Victor Mottez, a treatise which
Degas himself owned. Cennini’s book gives a brief description of the technique,
but also lengthy advice on the preparation of the lightly-coloured grounds. The

29
drawing on the reverse of this sheet (fig. 1), showing a bare-footed male figure
in drapery, is made on a pink-prepared ground which perhaps records Degas
experimenting with the technical processes which Cennini explained in his book.

Marie-Thérèse Flavie De Gas (1840-1897), shown here at the age of around

sixteen, was eight years Degas’s junior. In 1863, she married her cousin, Edmondo
Morbilli, in Paris.

Fig. 1 Edgar Degas, Study of drapery of

an unknown saint, reverse of no. 10

30
11.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique
INGRES
1780-1867

Joseph Woodhead
and his wife, née
Harriet Comber, and
her brother, Henry
George Wandesford
Comber, 1816

Graphite on paper
304 x 224 mm
Signed and dated, lower right:
Ingres a / rome 1816
Given by the National Arts
Collection Fund, 1947
PD. 52-1947

Ingres made his earliest graphite portraits in the 1790s as a student at the
Académie Royale in Toulouse. These took the form of miniature profile medallions,
a style of portraiture popular in the eighteenth century that was also practiced by
his father. In scale these were broadly similar to the plumbago miniatures that had
been fashionable a century earlier (nos. 1 and 2), and like them were often drawn
in graphite on vellum, although the profiled features were also influence by antique
cameo gems.

After studying in Paris, Ingres won the highly competitive Prix de Rome awarded
by the École des Beaux-Arts, which allowed him to travel to Rome as a pensioner

31
at the French Academy. He travelled there in 1806, and remained for over a decade,
eventually becoming Director of the Academy. Pencil portraits provided him with
a staple income during his stay, not least after 1815, when the fall of the Empire
robbed him of his patrons in the French administration.

Between 1815 and 1817, Ingres made around thirty portraits of British sitters
in Rome - most visitors, but some resident - of which this is among the finest.
Comparatively large in scale, it is also a rare group portrait that celebrates the
female sitter, Harriet Woodhead’s, newly extended family. With her (oddly-
proportioned) right arm she holds that of her new husband, Joseph, an agent in
the Royal Navy. The younger man on the right is her brother, Henry, shown at
the age of eighteen, who accompanied the newly-weds on at least part of their
honeymoon. The following year, he began his studies in Cambridge, took his degree
in 1812, and eventually (from 1835) took over his father’s position as rector in the
parish of Oswaldkirk in Yorkshire.

At a time when he was ambitious to establish a reputation as an artist in Paris,

Ingres seems to have resented the drudgery of grand tourist portraiture. One
unfortunate English visitor felt his frustration only too clearly when, arriving at
the artist’s house and asking if he was the author of the ‘charming little portraits’,
Ingres slammed the door in his face, saying that the only person residing there
was a ‘history painter’! In fact, while he felt they distracted him from his higher
aspirations, Ingres’s astonishing facility as a draughtsman meant that he was able
to execute the portraits very quickly, normally in two sessions in a single day. The
rhythmic flurry of pencil work - not least in the costumes, drapery and poised
wayward curl of Mrs Woodhead’s hair – show the supreme confidence with which
he mastered his medium.

32
DETAIL, Jean-Domnique-Auguste Ingres, Joseph Woodhead and his wife, née Harriet Comber,
and her brother, Henry George Wandesford Comber (no. 11)

33
12 & 13.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique
INGRES
1780-1867

A nymph, after Jean

Goujon, c. 1802-06

Graphite on paper
460 x 117 mm
Signed with initial, lower left: I
Bequeathed by Guy John Fenton
Knowles, 1959
PD.42-1959

A nymph, after Jean

Goujon, c. 1802-06

Graphite on paper
454 x 116 mm
Signed with initial, lower left: I
Bequeathed by Guy John Fenton
Knowles, 1959
PD.43-1959

Ingres is as celebrated for what he said about drawing as for his drawings
themselves.
He advised his many pupils and followers to draw ceaselessly in a notebook, and,
if they had no materials at hand to do so ‘with their eyes’. He invested accurate
drawing with a quasi-moral or ethical purpose: it was, he famously claimed,
‘the probity of art’, ‘three and a half quarters’ of a painting, lacking only the colour.
Mastery of contour was essential to creating beautifully-drawn form, he believed,
although it should at the same time convey ‘expression, the inner form, the plane,
modelling’ (Delaborde, Ingres, sa vie, ses travaux …, 1870, p.123).

34
Ingres urged his pupils to draw assiduously after the great artists of the past, as he
has done here, copying the bas-relief sculptures by the sixteenth-century sculptor
Jean Goujon, which formed part of his Fountain of the Innocents, erected in 1549,
and by 1824 in the Louvre.

Although some critics, like the poet Charles Baudelaire, thought that the ‘laborious
finesse’ of Ingres’s line destroyed the overall harmony of a composition, his drawing
style had a huge influence on future generations of French artists, including Edgar
Degas (no.10) and Alphonse Legros (no.9), and through the latter to his students
at the Slade School of Art at the turn of the century. In fact, these two drawings
provide physical evidence of the transmission of his ideas: both were given by
Ingres to Legros, and by him to the father of the
donor, Charles Julius Knowles,

Distinguishing graphite from other media, such as

black chalk, can often be tricky, even to the highly-
trained eye. In general, graphite leaves a tell-tale
metallic sheen to the mark on the paper, though in
some cases, as in this drawing, the situation is less
clear-cut. The thicker, darker contour of the figures
might have been achieved by using soft-grade pencils,
but when viewed under the microscope seems to
share many of the characteristics of black chalk.

fig. 1 Jean Goujon (c. 1510-after 1572),

perhaps with Pierre Lescot, The Fountain
of the Innocents, Louvre, Paris
© Musée du Louvre, Paris

35
14.

Sir Edward Coley

BURNE-JONES
1833 – 1898

Study of drapery
for Merlin in The
Beguiling of Merlin,
1872

Graphite on white cartridge

paper
360 x 242 mm
Bequeathed by Charles
Haslewood Shannon, 1937
No. 1997

Like other Pre Raphaelites painters, Burne-Jones favoured graphite as a drawing

medium. From the early 1870s, in particular, he made numerous pencil studies
for his finished paintings, generally of individual figures, or parts of he body – feet,
arms, hands &c. This detailed study of drapery is one of the most beautiful of the
numerous preparatory drawings for his painting The Beguiling of Merlin (1873-4, fig.
1).

Burne-Jones believed that drapery played a crucial part in conveying the mood
and meaning of a painting. Here, for example, he indicates the featureless model
in only a few perfunctory outlines; instead, his focus is on the weighty folds of the

36
 draperies that lie heavily on the near-somnolent figure
of Merlin, bewitched by the huntress, Nimue.
However not all his contemporaries admired his
painstaking attention to this sort of decorative detail.
His erstwhile friend and mentor, John Ruskin, for
one, found Burne-Jones’s efforts misplaced: ‘Nothing
puzzles me more that the delight painters have in
drawing mere folds of drapery and their carelessness
about the folds of water and clouds, or hill and
branches. Why should the tucking in and out of
muslin be eternally interesting ?’ (Quoted in Georgina
Burne-Jones, Memorials,1904, vol. 2, p. 18.)

fig. 1 Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, The

Beguiling of Merlin, 1872-7, Lady Lever
Art Gallery, Port Sunlight
Courtesy National Museums Liverpool

37
DETAIL Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Study of drapery for The Beguiling of Merlin (no. 14)

38
15.

Sir Edward Coley

BURNE-JONES
1833 – 1898

Studies for The Mirror

of Venus, c. 1873

Graphite on cartridge paper

218 x 179 mm
Bequeathed by Charles
Haslewood Shannon, 1937
No. 2003.1

Burne-Jones drew obsessively throughout his career. His friend Graham Roberston
considered him to be ‘pre-eminently a draughtsman … to draw was his natural
mode of expression – line flowed from him almost without volition. If he were
merely playing with a pencil, the result was never a scribble, but a thing of beauty
however slight, a perfect design’ (Time Was, 1931, p. 84).

He worked in a wide range of drawing media, and sometimes in phases. In the

1850s, for example, he produced a series of elaborately-worked pen and ink
drawings, in part influenced by the engravings of the sixteenth-century German
artist, Albrecht Dürer, but by the following decade seems to have preferred

39
using chalks and watercolour in a softer drawing style that corresponded to the
‘Venetian’ or ‘Giorgionesque’ style he adopted in his paintings in these years.

However, pencil remained a staple, and in the 1870s he began to use harder forms
of graphite and occasionally metalpoint in his drawings, reflecting his growing
passion for fifteenth-century Florentine art, Botticelli, in particular.

Burne-Jones painted two versions of the Mirror of Venus, a watercolour begun in

1868 and a larger oil (now in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon), begun in
1873, and finished in 1877; this is one of several studies for the later composition
in the Museum’s collection. Most of these preparatory drawings were made
as studies for paintings, but Burne-Jones also exhibited them as independent
works of art, and gave many to his friends. For some later commentators, Burne-
Jones’s devotion to drawing, together with that of certain contemporaries, such
as Frederick, Lord Leighton, had been instrumental in encouraging a renewed
appreciation of graphite drawing in the twentieth century (Salwey, The Art of
Drawing in Lead Pencil, 1921, p. 26).

40
16.

Sir Edward Coley

BURNE-JONES
1833 – 1898

Studies of figures
for The Passing of
Venus,1880

Graphite with highlights in white

bodycolour on green prepared
paper
168 x 210 mm
Signed and dated in graphite,
lower left EBJ 1880; inscribed,
lower right: PASSING OF VENUS
Bequeathed by Charles
Haslewood Shannon, 1937
No. 2019b

Burne-Jones first conceived of the subject representing The Passing of Venus in 1861,
as a tile design with the title The Triumph of Love. He took up the subject again in a
number of compositions in oil and bodycolour made during the 1870s and early
1880s, and in 1898 turned into a tapestry.

The figure represented in this drawing, dated 1880, may be a study for the
unfinished bodycolour version of the composition in Tate Britain which was begun
in 1881, although it also appears in the bottom left hand corner of the tapestry, and
in the preparatory watercolour sketch for it, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York.

41
Unusually, Burne-Jones has used a prepared green paper for this study. To enhance
the graphite line against the dark background, he has added selective touches
of white bodycolour to highlight the folds of the draperies, and create a more
pronounced sense of volume.

DETAIL Studies of figures for The Passing of Venus 1880 (no. 16)

42
17.

Henri de TOULOUSE
LAUTREC 1864-1901

Portrait of Lili
Grenier, 1894-97

Graphite heightened with white

on grey green paper
235 x 151 mm
Verso: rough sketch of a seated
woman in blue crayon. Inscribed:
Mort (?)
Bequeathed by A.S.F. Gow,
through the National Art
Collections Fund, 1978
PD. 67-1978

Lautrec summed up his all-consuming passion for drawing in one simple statement:
‘I am a pencil.’

The Symbolist poet, Arthur Symons, who knew him well (they met at the Moulin
Rouge one night in June 1890), remembered that, ‘Whenever he dined [for
instance], in Le Rat Mort, he would call out to a woman he admired: ‘Arrêtez-vous!’
[‘Stop!’], and … would take out his notebook and draw some passionate design
of her; then he would get up and wander around the tables, drinking in women’s
beauty as if he literally drank – as vampires do – their flesh and blood’ (From
Toulouse Lautrec to Rodin, 1929, p. 2). He tended to draw his models - ‘especially

43
the women’ - with a sometimes ‘injurious’ sadness,
Symons wrote, only suddenly to repent, investing
his contour with ‘a caressing flexibility, which is, as
Verlaine might have said or sung, a prayer to be
pardoned’ (ibid, p. 37).

The sitter in this drawing was the companion of

Albert Grenier, a fellow student of Lautrec in the
studio of Fernand Cormon; they eventually married in
1904. She was a favourite model of a number of other
artists of the day, including Renoir, Degas and Albert
de Belleroche,with the latter of whom she had an
affair.

44
18.

Keith VAUGHAN
1912 - 1977

Male nude: study for

Lazarus, 1957

Graphite on paper
180 x 128 mm
Signed and dated, lower right: K.V.
/Study for Lazarus II. 1957
Bequeathed by Dr. W.M. Keynes,
2010
PD.38-2010
© The Estate of Keith Vaughan. All
rights reserved, DACS 2012

Vaughan painted a series of compositions on the Lazarus theme between 1956 and
1959. His reason for adopting this title is unclear, although it has been argued that
it may reflect his preoccupation with death at the time, not least after his friend
John Minton died of a drugs overdose at the end of 1956.

Many of Vaughan’s surviving drawings come from notebooks and portfolios

found in his studio after his death in 1957. They show that he used vigorously-
drawn sketches such as to prepare carefully for his finished paintings, testing out
various composition and distributions of light. This perhaps corresponded to a
controlling facet of his personality of which he was himself very conscious: as he

45
wrote in 1961, ‘The trouble has always been that I insist on being in control all the
time. I have a fear of spontaneity and mistrust what probably I wrongly regard as
‘accidents’’ (Journals, 1989, p. 129).

46
19.

Graphite on paper
Keith VAUGHAN 177 x 209 mm
1912 - 1977 Signed and dated, lower right: K.V
/ Bathers 1952
Bequeathed by Dr. W.M. Keynes,
Male nude: study for The Bathers, 1952 2010
PD.37-2010
© The Estate of Keith Vaughan. All
rights reserved, DACS 2012

Vaughan made numerous studies of male nudes throughout his life, often from
models who were also his lovers. The majority are shown standing, often full
frontal, and always eroticised. ‘If one uses the image of a human figure,’ he wrote,
‘one must start by making it erotic – because that’s the first thing that strikes you
about it. But the erotic image soon ceases to be human and you paint the eroticism
out.You don’t just castrate it ... but transpose it into the flat plastic language of
form and colour, which has its own needs and limitations. A man must have his
genitals in art as well as life, but they serve a different end. They are not for using
in bed, but for building a picture with …’ (Letter to E.M. Forster 18 April 1962,

47
Quoted Yorke, Keith Vaughan: his life and work, 1990, p. 214).

In 1952, he began to gather together nude studies from life drawings into multi-
figure compositions he described as ‘Assemblies’, and over the following two
decades produced nine works with this title. Often set in spare landscape settings,
his strongly geometrical figures closely recall nude studies executed in watercolour
by Paul Cézanne in the 1890s. In fact,Vaughan greatly admired Cézanne’s work, and
in 1952, the year he made this drawing, hung a reproduction of one of the latter’s
most celebrated paintings, Les Grandes Baigneuses (‘The Large Bathers’,1899-1906)
in his new studio in Belsize Park, London. At precisely this time Vaughan was being
acknowledged by contemporary critics as a true heir to Cézanne, notably in his
structural use of form.

Admittedly a single figure avoids psychological drama, which arises when two or more are
present, when inter-personal as well as formal relationships have to be solved. A favourite
device of Vermeer (and myself) is to turn the second figure back to the viewer, thus
presenting the viewer in relation to the first figure.

(Keith Vaughan, Journals, 4 October 1959)

48
20.

L.S. LOWRY
1887-1976

Portrait of a man in
profile, 1919

Graphite on paper, laid down

215 x 208 mm
Signed and dated in graphite,
lower right: LSL / 1919
Given by Donald Melville, 1998
PD.19-1998
© The Estate of L.S. Lowry. All
rights reserved, DACS 2012

Very few of Lowry’s drawings were made as preparatory studies for paintings;
most, like this drawing, were made as independent works in their own right. Figure
subjects feature prominently among them, as they do in his paintings: in particular,
he became increasingly drawn to subjects he described as, ‘Creatures on the scrap-
heaps of life; the defeated ones. Those strange and lonely creatures who have
been most notably and preposterously stamped by physical infirmity, ugliness and
poverty’ (Levy, Drawings of L. S. Lowry,1963, p.22).

49
21.

Graphite on paper
Christopher LE BRUN, P.R.A. 758 x 570 mm
b. 1951 Signed and dated in graphite,
lower right: Le Brun 12.5.83
Given by the Friends of the
Untitled (12.5.83) 1983 Fitzwilliam Museum, 1999
PD.16-1999
© Christopher Le Brun / The
Bridgeman Art Library

Christopher Le Brun works as a painter, sculptor and printmaker, and in 2000

was made the first Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy in London; he was
named President of the Royal Academy in December 2011.

In the 1980s, he made a number of drawings independently of his paintings which

allowed him to explore a potential subject through a free association of ideas and
images, as they occurred. To work with the necessary ease and fluidity, Le Brun
began by using very soft pencils – 8B or 9B – but came to prefer large graphite
sticks, which gave a thicker mark, and did not need constant resharpening, but

50
instead could ‘run continually without interruption, like paint to some extent.’
Eventually, through rubbing out and reworking, Le Brun was able to arrive at a
potent ‘atmosphere of suggestion’ which convinced him.

Although the drawing is untitled and far from representational, it draws to some
degree on biographical detail of the artist’s life. Le Brun has commented that
the subject – or perhaps inspiration – was a warship: the raking bow, funnel and
forward mounted gun are just visible under the network of graphite marks. Born
in Portsmouth, Le Brun and his family felt very much involved with the Falklands
War in 1982; his mother also lived close to the Royal Navy Dockyard which was
bombed heavily during World War II.

51
22.

L.S. LOWRY
1887-1976

Head of an old man,

1925

Graphite on paper, laid down

370 x 263 mm
Signed and dated in graphite,
lower right: LSL 1925
Given by Donald Melville, 2006
PD. 20-2006
© The Estate of L.S. Lowry. All
rights reserved, DACS 2012

Lowry studied at Manchester Municipal College of Art from 1905, where he drew
from the casts after the Antique as well as from the life, and later, from 1919-
25, continued his studies at Salford School of Art. He came to believe that, while
painting could not be taught ‘because everybody’s colour sense is different’, in
drawing, the case was more clear- cut: ‘the model is there and you get it either
right or wrong, you see.’

Lowry used graphite pencil for almost all the drawings he made over a period of
more than fifty years. His process was relatively consistent: he used an HB pencil
to establish line and detail, but on the whole preferred the darker effects of soft

52
graphite pencils, 5B or 6B, smudging the marks with his fingers and erasing to
create a strong sense of internal modelling. It could be that he has also used a
carpenter’s pencil in this drawing.

53
23 a.

George ROMNEY Graphite on paper

128 x 160 mm
1734-1802 Bought, 1874
M.D. 54a
Study for The Temptation of Christ, 1795-96

Romney’s residing fame is as a portraitist, but, as his great friend John Flaxman
(no. 29) remembered, his ‘heart and soul’ were given over to ‘historical and ideal’
painting – subjects drawn from literature and history. While very few finished
paintings of this type survive, his drawings - over 600 of which are in the
Fitzwilliam - show that he explored these themes relentlessly, and in a variety of
media.
According to his son, John, most of these were ‘executed in a slight, bold & rapid
manner, just sufficient to convey the ideas’ (Memoirs, 1830, p. 54). The source of
these ideas has been disputed: some accounts claim that Romney did not himself
invent them, but rather relied heavily on suggestions from those in his immediate

54
circle. Whatever the case, Romney evidently worked feverishly in order to set
down successive ideas for compositions, which his friend and biographer William
Hayley claimed served him as ‘hasty hints’ to be developed in painting sessions over
the winter months. Certainly these drawings – originally part of a sketchbook –
give every sign of having been made in rapid succession; the scoring just visible in
the raking light on the darker parts of the drawing suggests that Romney used an
inferior grade of graphite, with impurities that scratched the surface of the sheet.

DETAIL George Romney, The Temptation of Christ (no. 23a)

55
23 b.

George ROMNEY Graphite on paper

131 x 184 mm
1734-1802 Bought, 1874
M.D. 54b
Study for The Temptation of Christ, 1795-96

In his memoirs of his father’s life, the artist’s son, John Romney, recorded that,
around 1795, his father had intended to paint a large canvas on the theme of
the Temptation of Christ, but was prevented from finishing it after experiencing
‘some slight paralytic affection’ (Memoirs, 1830, p. 253). The painting was to have
represented Christ, sitting impassively among the ghosts of Eve and Noah, a
terrifying Miltonic Satan, and hordes of haranguing fiends, ‘vociferating noise and
boisterous insult’; had he completed it, his son claimed, it would have ‘ranked him
with Michelangelo’ (ibid).

56
24 a.

George ROMNEY Graphite with (faded) pen and

black ink on paper
1734-1802 121 x 172 mm
Bought, 1874
John Howard visiting a Lazaretto, c. 1791-2 MD. 32a

57
24 b.

George ROMNEY Graphite on paper, touched in

(faded) pen and black ink
1734-1802 109 x 75 mm
Bought, 1874
John Howard visiting a Lazaretto, c.1791-2 M.D. 32b

These two drawings record Romney’s evolving ideas for a composition inspired
by a contemporary publication by the philanthropist and prison reformer, John
Howard, An Account of the Principal Lazarettos of Europe (1789), in which the
author described the appalling conditions that prevailed in lazarettos (places
used to quarantine the sick) across the Continent. Romney planned to executed
one, or perhaps as many as three, oil paintings representing the ‘scenes of human
wretchedness’ that Howard evoked in his book; none appears to have survived,
although the Fitzwilliam owns twenty-seven drawings representing ideas for the
finished compositions.

58
25.

Graphite on gesso on
Barbara HEPWORTH strawboard
1903-1975 275 x 376 mm
Signed and dated, lower right:
Barbara Hepworth 2/12/47
Study of a surgeon’s hands, 1947 Bequeathed by Claude William
Guillebaud, 1973
PD. 53-1973
© Bowness, Hepworth Estate

In 1947, Hepworth was granted permission by a surgeon-friend to make drawings

of an operation at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter, where
her own daughter, Sarah, had once been a patient. Fascinated by the surgeons’
concentration and dexterity, and by the stillness of the operating theatre, she
made over fifty drawings on a sterilised pad, some of the team at work, others
studies of hands engaged in a complicated bone operation. For Hepworth these
ten-hour drawing sessions were a compelling experience: ‘from the moment when
I entered the operating theatre I became completely absorbed by two things: first,
the extraordinary beauty of purpose and co-ordination between human beings

59
all dedicated to the saving of life. And the way that the unity of idea and purpose
dictated a perfection of concentration, movement and gesture; and secondly, by
the way this special grace (grace of mind and body) induced a spontaneous space
composition, and articulated an animated kind of abstract sculpture very close to
what I had been seeking in my own work’ (Barbara Hepworth, Drawings from a
Sculptor’s Landscape,1966, pp. 21-22).

Adapting methods used for metalpoint drawings – and, to an extent, tempera

painting, Hepworth drew on a ground composed of several layers of what she
described as the ‘best flat paint procurable’ (often Ripolin flat white), rubbing down
or scraping the surface to achieve the hardness and depth she required. She liked
to use ‘Venus’ pencils ‘H - 4B’ , depending on the hardness of the surface she had
created.

60
DETAIL: Barbara Hepworth, Study of a surgeon’s hands (no. 25)

61
26.

Augustus JOHN
1879-1961

Study of Alexandra
Schepeler, 1907

Graphite on paper
355x 253 mm
Given by Sir Herbert Thompson,
Bart., 1920
No. 1024
© The Artist’s Estate / The
Bridgeman Art Library

Augustus John worked in a wide variety of drawing media, but fine, closely-hatched
pencil drawings such as this best reveal his inheritance of the French-influenced
drawing techniques that were introduced to the Slade School of Art by Alphonse
Legros (no. 9). John was one of the so-called ‘generation of the 1890s’ at the Slade,
where his astonishing talent as a draughtsman soon led him to be compared to
Renaissance masters, including Michelangelo.

Founded in 1871 by the collector and art patron, Felix Slade, the Slade offered its
students a solid grounding in draughtsmanship. However, unlike other art schools
in Britain, where students learned to draw with charcoal and chalk, afterwards

62
‘fudging out’ with rolled-up blotting paper or stumps, the Slade encouraged fluidity
of contour and purity of line, ‘drawing on the point’, as it was called.

The sitter is John’s then mistress, the Russian-born Alexandra (Alick) Schepeler,
with whom he had first become infatuated in 1906. He found in her ‘the paradox of
Polish pride united to Russian abandon,’ a volatile femme fatale whom he expected
at any moment to find ‘performing some diabolical incantation, or brewing a hellish
potion.’

63
27.

Agnolo di Domenico del

MAZZIERE, called the
MASTER OF SANTO
SPIRITO
1466-1512

Head of a young man,

looking upwards

Metalpoint on pale brown

ground, heightened with white
199 x 148 mm
Inscribed in brown ink, verso: gan
belleno; P; numbered in graphite,
upper right: 189
Bequeathed by Charles
Haslewood Shannon, 1937
No. 2114

Metalpoint preceded the use of pencil in workshop practice. One of the key
sources for understanding the technique of metalpoint is the treatise Il Libro
dell’Arte (The Craftsman’s Handbook) written by the Italian artist, Cennino Cennini
at the turn of the fifteenth century. In it, Cennini singled out metalpoint (and
silverpoint in particular) as an ideal medium for beginners, as its precise line
encouraged discipline and control. He recommended preparing the ground with a
mixture of ground bone, lead white and earth pigments and adding a liquid binding
agent such as glue size, gum water, linseed oil or saliva. This preparation was then
applied to the support - paper, vellum or occasionally wood - with a soft brush,
generally in several layers, and burnished using a hard, polished stone such as agate

64
to obtain a smooth surface. As the metal stylus made contact with the prepared
ground, it left a deposit which rapidly tarnished with the air to leave a thin grey
line.

Graphite resembles metalpoint, but, by abrasion of the mineral on the support

(generally paper or vellum), produces as rich textural stroke that is distinctive from
the flat markings of a metal stylus.

Acquired by the donors as a work by the Florentine painter Lorrenzo di Credi

(c. 1459-1537), this drawing has subsequently been attributed to his near-
contemporary, Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere, who, with his brother, ran a
highly-productive workshop in Florence from the 1480s onwards.

The study is preparatory to the painting of The Virgin and Child between two angels,
with Saints Bartholomew and John the Evangelist, and God the Father above, in the
Pinacoteca at Volterra in Tuscany.

65
28.

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar DEGAS Graphite with traces of crayon

on paper, laid down
1834-1917 262 x 340 mm
Bequeathed by A.S. F. Gow,
Studies after G.B. Francia’s Madonna and Child through the National Art
Collections Fund, 1978
with Saints and Madonna and child by a follower PD. 30-1978
of Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1859-60

Late in life, Degas claimed that no art was ‘less spontaneous’ than his: ‘what I do
is the result of contemplation and study of the great masters.’ (quoted George
Moore, 1890, in Thomson, The Private Degas, p.9). Surviving drawings, many made in
sketchbooks used on successive visits to Italy, record that he copied avidly from an
array of different artists and schools, most particularly works by Italian Renaissance
painters.

Both paintings Degas has copied on this sheet are now in the National Gallery,
London: on the left, Francia’s Madonna and Child with Saints; on the right a Madonna

66
 and child by a follower
of Leonardo. They were
among the forty-six
paintings acquired by the
Gallery from Edmond
Beaucousin, a friend of
Degas’s father.
Degas probably saw
both pictures after his
return from Italy in April
1859, and before the
paintings left for London
the following February.

His needle-sharp pencil

line and densely-hatched
shading is clearly
inspired by metalpoint
drawings by the
sixteenth-century Italian
artists who inspired him
(see no. 27).

DETAIL: Edgar Degas, Study after Madonna and child by a follower of Leonardo
da Vinci, (no. 28

67
29.

John FLAXMAN Graphite on paper (31 leaves)

178 x 210 mm
1755-1826 Given by Charles Fairfax Murray,
1916
Volume of pencil portraits, c.1803 No. 828

The Fitzwilliam owns an important collection of sketchbooks by John Flaxman, of

which this is among the most charming and informal. The volume includes portraits
of many of Flaxman’s most intimate circle of friends and colleagues, including
William Blake, Henry Fuseli and the sculptor Thomas Banks and his family. It was
probably offered as a gift from Flaxman to his wife, Ann.
The portraits, all in graphite, are carried to varying degrees of finish. That of James
Parker (f. 27, reproduced above), a fellow apprentice engraver of William Blake’s,
who later translated many of Flaxman’s own designs for Homer’s Iliad into print,
for example, is elaborated in some detail; others, such as this family group (f. 14,
which probably shows Matilda, daughter of another engraver-friend, Wilson Lowry,

68
on the right) are evidently drawn as more spontaneously observed sketches.
Matilda was herself a gifted artist, who married an astronomer named Herring;
she belonged to the same sketching club as Flaxman’s wife, and exhibited publicly
throughout her life, from1805-55.

69
30.

Graphite on paper
Keith GRANT 215 x 330 mm
Inscribed in graphite, lower left: 2/9/89
Born 1930 Iceberg off Jakobhavn, drawn from
Greenlander/ Henrick Peteressen’s boat.;
and, upper right, with colour notes.
Sketchbook, Greenland, 1989 Open to show f. 16: Tabular iceberg, the
ice fjord, Jacobshavn
Given by the artist, 1996
PD. 47-1996
© Keith Grant

Keith Grant’s passion for the northern landscapes of Scotland, Norway and Iceland
was fuelled as a student at the Royal College of Art by one of his teachers, Colin
Hayes. While he has painted in a range of climates and landscapes, he remains
attached to remote, elemental, regions, and now lives and works in Norway.

Grant used this sketchbook during his first visit to Greenland in 1989 (he has
returned on two further occasions). In the detailed journals he kept during this
visit, also in the Fitzwilliam, he wrote of the overriding impression of greyness that
he experienced in this powerful arctic landscape, but one which was composed

70
of infinitely subtle modulations of grey: ‘grey clouds, grey sea and everywhere ice
floes and icebergs … The sea calm and of a luminosity which seems tarnished like
old silver.’ Yet, far from excluding colour, the ‘dove-grey ground’ set it in a different
register: ice-bergs fluoresced the ‘most subtle of blues and greens’, and snow was
‘stained with reds, ochres and madders.’ ‘Will I be able to remember the colour
of the sea, the hues of the ‘germoline sky’ and the green; the ethereal pallor of
ice?’ Grant wondered; the colour notes made on many of drawings were clearly
intended as a verbal prompt.

Asked ‘why graphite?’, Grant responded, as many artists would, ‘I can’t be without
it’, adding, ‘it works no matter what the temperature!’

71
31.

John LINNELL Bought with a grant from the

Heritage Lottery Fund, together
1792-1882 with contributions from the
Friends of National Libraries, the
‘Cash book’, December1813- February1822 Pilgrim Trust and the Charlotte
Bonham-Carter Charitable Trust,
2000
MS. 20-2000

Linnell was a pivotal figure in nineteenth century British art. A pupil of the
landscape painter and drawing master John Varley, he formed a close friendship
with William Blake (no. 6) and later became father-in-law to Samuel Palmer.
In addition to owning an important collection of his paintings, drawings
and watercolours, the Fitzwilliam houses a significant archive of Linnell’s
correspondence, journals, and other manuscript material.

Linnell’s account books show how carefully he sourced materials for his paintings
and drawings. He acquired ‘black lead pencils’ from a number of different suppliers,
but, like many writers and artists of the day, including Mary Shelley and Samuel

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Prout (no. 7), seemed to set store by those made by the firm Brookman &
Langdon, and may have been prepared to pay a premium for them: while in May
1817, he bought 10 ‘black-lead pencils’ from an unknown source for 12/-, the
account book records that the following month, on June 5th, he paid over three
times that - £3 1/- - for an unspecified number from Brookman & Langdon. The
firm seems to have ceased trading in the 1860s (see http://www.npg.org.uk/
research/programmes/directory-of-suppliers/b/british-artists-suppliers-
1650-1950-br.php).

For further details of the Linnell archive, see: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.

ac.uk/gallery/linnell/intro.htm

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32.

Gabriel FERRIER

1847-1914
Sketchbook, with
views and copies of
paintings made in
Italy, 
c.1875


Graphite on paper
140 x 84 mm
Given by Jane Roberts, in
memory of Marianne Joannides,
2008
PD.1-2008

Open to show f. 10, recto.

Gabriel Ferrier worked mainly as a portraitist and as a decorator of public

buildings; one of the most visible of his large-scale works are his ceiling paintings
representing the Seasons in the restaurant of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Ferrier studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in 1872 won the coveted
prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel to Italy to study for three years at the
expense of the State. This sketchbook is one that he used during his stay, and
contains mainly copies of paintings by Italian artists whose works Ferrier saw in
churches and galleries, for the most part in Venice.

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33.

Graphite powder with oil, resin

Christopher COOK and solvents on coated rag paper
b. 1959 720 x 1020 mm
Given by the Friends of the
Fitzwilliam Museum, 2003
Drivetime, 2003 PD. 61-2003
© Christopher Cook

Christopher Cook works with a highly personal graphite-based medium. Mixing

graphite powder, oil, resin and solvents, he pours or brushes the solution on to
coated paper or primed aluminium, and works it with a variety of implements.
Using a raw material associated with draughtsmanship, but defying categorization
as drawing (Cook refers to them simply as ‘graphites’), images such as Drivetime
fuse the gestural presence of painterly brushstrokes with the blurred graininess of
early photography.

The medium demands that the artist work intensively, responding quickly to the
various possibilities thrown up by his process, in sessions that can last up to thirty-

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six hours, but that often result in a failure - or rehearsal – that is wiped away and
retried. These are works that relish the imaginative openness of the undefined:
improvisational, fluid, indefinite, they operate by poetic allusion rather than
description.

Originally a painter of strongly coloured symbolic imagery, Cook was drawn to

work in graphite - and a monochromatic range - on his return from a four month
residency in India, where he had made a sequence of sand drawings. Cook has
since extended this reference to include other Asian influences, such as Chinese
ink painting, and Zen calligraphy. For him the greyscale opens out creative
possibilities rather than limiting them: ‘the possibility for improvisation is extended
because there is no colour to point in set directions. I recognize this in the mists
of Chinese and Japanese painting, a miasma in which one searches, and from which,
gradually, form emerges.’

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Publications Cited & Further Reading

Georgina Burne-Jones, Memorials of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd, 1904

E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, ed. The Works of John Ruskin, London: George Allen, 1903

Henri Delaborde Ingres, sa vie, ses travaux, sa doctrine sa vie, d’après les notes manuscrites et les lettres du maître,
Paris : Plon, 1870

William Hayley, The life of George Romney, Esq. Chichester : pr. for T. Payne, London, 1809

Barbara Hepworth, Drawings from a Sculptor’s Landscape, with an introduction to the drawings by Alan Bowness,
London: Cory, Adams & Mackay, 1966

Drawings of L. S. Lowry, with an introduction and notes by Mervyn Levy, London: Cory, Adams & Mackay, 1963

George Moore, ‘Degas. The Painter of Modern Life’, Magazine of Art, 13 (1890), quoted Richard Thomson, The
Private Degas, London: Herbert Press, 1987

Mervyn Peake, Craft of the Lead Pencil, London: A. Wingate, 1946

Henry Petrowski, The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance, New York: Knopff, 1990

Graham Robertson, Time Was, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1931

Rev. John Romney, Memoirs of the Life and Works of George Romney … , London: Baldwin and Craddock, 1830

John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing in Three Letters to Beginners, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 65 Cornhill.,
1857

Jaspar Salwey The Art of Drawing in Lead Pencil, London: Batsford, 1921

Arthur Symons, From Toulouse Lautrec to Rodin, with some personal reminiscences, London: John Lane, 1929

Keith Vaughan Journals 1939-1977, ed. Alan Ross, London: John Murray, 1989

James Watrous, The Craft of Old Master Drawings, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957

WEBSITES

http://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/directory-of-suppliers/b/british-artists-suppliers-
1650-1950-br.php).

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/linnell/intro.htm

77
With thanks to David Shaw, Ayshea Carter, Sean O’Neill, Michael Jones and Lynda Clark, who
have contributed in significant and imaginative ways to this publication, and to Andrew Bowker,
Sean Fall, Richard Farleigh, Jane Ison, Anna Lloyd-Grifiths and Lisa Psarianos for mounting an
elegant exhibition.

All images are © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, unless otherwise stated.

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