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