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.
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, 270 x 245 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1992-001
Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, 91 x 135 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1992-012
Pen and brown and grey ink, watercolour, over traces of graphite, 375 x 540 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2012-017
Graphite, 300 x 220 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1995-056
Red chalk, 530 x 400 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1989-006
Black and red crayon, 461 x 292 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2013-031
Graphite and coloured chalks , 225 x 365 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1994-001
Pen and black ink, watercolour, white heightening, 635 x 480 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2017-029
Graphite, 348 x 417 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2010-011
Black chalk, 224 x 175 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2013–006
Graphite with stumping, 200 x 125 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2011-022
Graphite, 248 x 165 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2011-063
Graphite, 357 x 270 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1995-038
Graphite, 282 x 222 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2015-017
Graphite, 313 x 248 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2017-006
Graphite and brown chalk, 210 x 245 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2017-008
Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown and ochre wash, 355 x 470 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2004-014
Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash, brown ink framing lines, 230 x 349 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 2017-025
Pen and black ing, grey wash, 165 x 144 mm Katrin Bellinger Collection, inv. no. 1992-008