Artists at work

LONDON 2018

This trans-historical exhibition was held in The Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery at The Courtauld Gallery (3 May – 15 July 2018). Selected principally from the Katrin Bellinger Collection, the display spanned from the 16th to the 20th centuries and focused on representations of studios—symbolic, actual and religious—as well as artists’ depictions of themselves or others at work. Art historians have interpreted these themes variously as a means of elevating the social and economic status of artists; of illustrating the marriage of intellectual knowledge and practical skill proposed by academic theorists; or as sophisticated allegories of the philosophical significance of visual art. Even at the most pragmatic level of recording the clutter of the everyday studio, drawing human models or antique casts in an academy, or sketching in a landscape, works with these subjects are imbued with layers of meaning.

The exhibition was curated by the late Deanna Petherbridge (The Primacy of Drawing: Histories & Theories of Practice, Yale University Press, 2010) in collaboration with Anita V. Sganzerla. Both curators also co-authored the catalogue.

Lambert Doomer, Amsterdam 1624 - 1700 Amsterdam

An artist seated by a tree, c. 1660

Pen and brown ink, brown wash, 270 x 245 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1992-001

Jan de Bisschop, Amsterdam 1628–1671 The Hague

Two artists drawing an antique bust (rect); A reclining man seen from the back (verso), c. 1660

Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, 91 x 135 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1992-012

Carlo Labruzzi, Rome 1748–1817 Perugia

The Colosseum from the Palatine Hill, Rome, Late 1760s–1780

Pen and brown and grey ink, watercolour, over traces of graphite, 375 x 540 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2012-017

Georg Eduard Gehbe, Meiningen 1845–1920 Saltzburg

A painter in a forest, surprised by a deer

Graphite, 300 x 220 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1995-056

Hubert Robert, Paris 1733–1808 Paris

An artist drawing beside a statue of Jupiter, 1762

Red chalk, 530 x 400 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1989-006

Egon Schiele, Tulln 1890–1918 Vienna

Office at the Mühling prisoner-of-war camp, 1916

Black and red crayon, 461 x 292 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2013-031

Horst Janssen, Hamburg 1929–1995 Hamburg

The atelier of the sculptor Remo Rossi, Locarno, 1972

Graphite and coloured chalks , 225 x 365 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1994-001

George Grosz, Berlin 1893–1959 Berlin

'Gute Zeit' (Good Times), 1940

Pen and black ink, watercolour, white heightening, 635 x 480 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2017-029

Ermenegildo Antonio Donadini, Split 1847–1936 Radebeul

The artist's studio, Munich, 1877

Graphite, 348 x 417 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2010-011

James Ensor, Ostend 1860–1949 Ostend

View of the artist's studio, 1882

Black chalk, 224 x 175 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2013–006

Adolph von Menzel, Breslau 1815–1905 Berlin

Studies of a man painting, 1888

Graphite with stumping, 200 x 125 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2011-022

Jules de Goncourt, paris 1830–1870 Paris

Portrait of Mademoiselle Blanche Passy at the easel, wearing a man's cravat, 1859

Graphite, 248 x 165 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2011-063

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Montauban 1780-1867 Paris

Portrait of the engraver Auguste-Gaspard-Louis Boucher-Desnoyers, 1825

Graphite, 357 x 270 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1995-038

Fanny Guillaume de Bassoncourt, Baronne de Molaret, Chartres 1820-1888 Chartres?

Portrait of an artist at her easel, 1837

Graphite, 282 x 222 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2015-017

Lovis Corinth, Tapiau 1858–1925 Zandvoort

Self-portrait with pencil and sketchbook, 1924

Graphite, 313 x 248 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2017-006

Horst Janssen, Hamburg 1929–1995 Hamburg

Don Quichotte =yolovi= [I saw him], 1972

Graphite and brown chalk, 210 x 245 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2017-008

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Venice 1727–1804 Venice

Punchinello as a portrait painter, c. 1802–03

Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown and ochre wash, 355 x 470 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2004-014

Jean-Honoré Fragonard , Grasse 1732–1806 Paris

The inspiration of the artist, c. 1760–63

Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, brown ink framing lines, 230 x 349 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2017-025

Attributed to David Kandel, active in Strasbourg 1520–92

Virtue protecting the artist, 1587

Pen and black ing, grey wash, 165 x 144 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1992-008