A crowned, bearded man sits facing us on a throne, and he holds a sword and orb in this vertical drawing, which was made using black ink on parchment-colored paper. A three-peaked, jeweled crown nestles in a twisted turban on the man’s head. He faces us but his eyes look to our right, and he has a long, hooked nose and flowing hair and beard. A band of ornate jewels could be a collar resting over his shoulders and on his chest, or it could be that the edge of his robe is elaborately decorated. His robe has voluminous, flowing long sleeves and his garment is decorated with bands of jewels and fringe at the shoulders, hem, and down the front. His left hand, on our right, rests on a round orb about the size of an orange, and he holds the hilt of a jewel-encrusted sword upright with his other hand so the tip of the sword rests on the ground. The artist signed the work with his initials at the bottom center: “AD.”
Albrecht Dürer, An Eastern Ruler Seated on His Throne, c. 1495, pen and black ink on laid paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1972.22.1.a

Drawing

Nearly every artist makes drawings at some point. Some use them as a way of thinking, jotting ideas down as quickly as they occur. Such rough sketches can offer fascinating glimpses into the artist’s imagination or their process. Meanwhile, many artists make elaborate drawings as finished works.

  • A muscular man stands with one hand on a walking stick and the other braced on the underside of a stone block above his head in this full-length, vertical drawing. The man’s body faces our left in profile, but he turns his face to look up and off to the right. Short, curling horns nestle among his curly hair, and he has a curly goatee. He has a furry brow, like a goat, a flattened nose, and drooping eyes. His lips are parted, and his top eye teeth and bottom middle teeth show. His right hand, to our left, reaches up to the stone overhead. He holds his other arm across his body to brace that hand on a waist-high staff. He stands with his weight on his left foot, closer to us, and his other ankle crosses in front so the balls of that foot rest on the ground. A rectangular frame is drawn with brown ink, and the corners are shaded sage green. More drawn frames suggest stepped molding within a frosty green band. Cursive text in the lower right corner reads, “alla porta di fontana Bellio di bronzo p piu di dua volte il vivo b 7 erano dua variati.”
  • A crowned, bearded man sits facing us on a throne, and he holds a sword and orb in this vertical drawing, which was made using black ink on parchment-colored paper. A three-peaked, jeweled crown nestles in a twisted turban on the man’s head. He faces us but his eyes look to our right, and he has a long, hooked nose and flowing hair and beard. A band of ornate jewels could be a collar resting over his shoulders and on his chest, or it could be that the edge of his robe is elaborately decorated. His robe has voluminous, flowing long sleeves and his garment is decorated with bands of jewels and fringe at the shoulders, hem, and down the front. His left hand, on our right, rests on a round orb about the size of an orange, and he holds the hilt of a jewel-encrusted sword upright with his other hand so the tip of the sword rests on the ground. The artist signed the work with his initials at the bottom center: “AD.”
  • A young woman with pale skin stands with her back to us as she points to a blackboard with a long stick in this vertical watercolor painting. Her body is angled away to our right, and she turns her head so her face is in profile, also to our right. The blue eye we can see looks down under a furrowed brow, and her small lips are closed over a rounded chin. She holds the pointer in her right hand as her left arm tucks across her lower back so that hand hooks into the right elbow. Her honey-blond hair is tied with a light tan ribbon like a headband, and a braid is coiled at the back of her head. She wears a checkered white and pale-green pinafore over a long, sage-green dress. The toe of one black shoe peeks out from under the hem. The blackboard behind her is drawn with three rows of geometric shapes outlined in white chalk. Her pointer aims at a circle near the top right corner. The floor and upper half of the wall behind and above the board are pink-tinged tan, and nickel gray fills the lower half of the wall beneath the board. The artist signed and dated the lower right of the blackboard, “Homer '77.”
  • Pools of sapphire, aquamarine, and cobalt-blue watercolor puddle and bleed together in this abstract painting on paper. Most of the horizonal sheet is taken up with a dark blue form reminiscent of a hill. The upper corners of the sheet are painted powder blue, suggesting sky. The sheet is edged with the white of the paper, and the darker and lighter blue areas are also mostly separated by a thin white line.
  • A grassy field leading back to hazy mountains under a sun shown in eclipse are painted with muted earthy tones in this horizontal watercolor. The field along the bottom third of the sheet is painted in soft peanut brown, and a line of trees on the far side are misty sage green. Ridges of the mountains are layered like sheets of torn paper under a parchment-white sky. The sun at the top center is mostly covered by a silvery disk.
  • Four drawings of faces and bodies are affixed onto a larger vertical album page, on which architectural decorations have been drawn on to act as frames. Three vertical drawings are spaced along the top half of the ivory-colored album page, and one larger horizontal drawing fills the bottom half. Drawn with brown ink and gray washes, the frames resemble moldings and scrolls around each drawing, with garlands flanking the bottom sketch. The three drawings in the top zone are done with metalpoint on gray or mauve paper and are highlighted with touches of white. The metalpoint technique creates faint silvery-gray lines. In the top left drawing, a nude man stands facing us. In the center, the face of a cleanshaven young man with curling hair beneath a cap looks down and to our left. Below the face, a forearm and hand clutching a rock appears next to another study of a hand. In the drawing to our right, a man wearing a toga-like robe leans on a walking stick, facing our left in profile. The drawing at the bottom is done with gray metalpoint lines and white strokes against golden yellow paper. A person sits and twists up in a spiral to our left. In the center of this drawing are three studies of muscular legs. Then, to our right, a man sits on a throne holding a spear or scepter and globe, facing our right in profile. An inscription in the frame below the bottom drawing reads, “Filippo Lippi Pitt: Fior:”
  • A man with a rounded nose and wide, soft jawline looks out at us in this almost square red-chalk drawing. The man’s shoulders angle to our right, and he turns his face to us, his heavy-lidded eyes shadowed under a floppy beret. His thin lips are closed, and he has a goatee. Curly hair frames his face, and one long lock falls over his right shoulder, to our left. A light-colored collar, perhaps lace, lies across his shoulders over a darker garment.
  • This horizontal drawing shows the head, chest, and one arm of a person in the act of drawing. Created with wide, soft black marks against sand-brown paper, the person faces our left in profile and raises their right hand, farther away from us, close to a diagonal line probably representing paper or another surface. Long hair is pulled back from a high forehead and the person has dark eyebrows, a prominent nose, high cheekbones, and their lips are pulled slightly down at the corners. A dark line between the thumb and forefinger of the raised hand represents the drawing material, held near the diagonal line. The face and hand are more detailed than the body, which is blocked in with vertical, zigzagging lines. The artist signed and dated the work in the lower right corner: “Kathe Kollwitz 1933.”
  • Painted and drawn with areas of flat, vibrant colors, we look slightly down onto a bustling street market in this stylized, horizontal scene. It is created almost entirely with shades of sky and royal blue, buttercup and harvest yellow, caramel and ash brown, and spearmint green with only a few touches of brick and crimson red. The people all have black-colored skin with their features outlined in white. They sit, stand, gather, or walk along stalls lining the street that extends away from us. Some wear caps, headdresses, or are bareheaded. They wear wraps or togas that mostly leave arms bare. Some carry goods on their heads, sit and eat, hold children and babies, or reach for wares. One person holds a white chicken and another leads a couple of goats along the street. The inverted, narrow V of the street meets the shallow V of the rooflines of the buildings or awnings of the stalls just above the center of the composition. The upside-down triangular filling the distant area between the rooflines has a dark yellow ground where densely packed tables, carts, buildings, people, and several chickens are tiny in scale. A strip of blue along the top edge of the painting suggests the sky above. The artist signed and dated the work in graphite in the lower right corner, “Jacob Lawrence 64.”
  • A winged woman, painted with tones of pale and butter yellow, kneels on a rock and looks up at a winged, horned creature with steel-gray skin and a curling tail flying above her in this vertical, graphite and watercolor work on paper. The woman, her body facing us, takes up most of the bottom half of the composition, and the winged creature the top half. The woman’s long blond hair flies up around her upturned face like stylized rays of sunlight. Her arms are spread wide, wrists flexed so her palms face out, and her pale, apricot-colored wings curve up over her shoulders and tuck behind her in a heart shape. She rests on a crescent moon with the tips pointing upward, which, in turn, rests on a gray, squared rock. Mirroring her pose but flying so his body faces downward as his feet point away from us, the creature above the woman has a muscular, humanoid physique. His long tail curls to our left in three loops, and is shaded with pale maroon red. Ram’s horns curve up from inside a golden crown encircling the top of his head, which faces us. Upon closer inspection, several faces, drawn with graphite and filled with nickel-gray watercolor, are connected around the creature's neck and also look down in profile onto the woman. The profiles overlap and some of the heads have moss-green, curling horns. The tips of the flying creature's outstretched fingers and arms nearly touch the sides of the paper and his light, rose-colored bat-like wings extend off both sides and the top of the composition. The background behind the pair is dark gray with white zigzagging lines to the left and right of the woman. Faces also emerge from the ground, looking up from the lower right corner. The artist signed his initials in black paint near the lower left: “WB.”
  • Made with mostly square or rectangular pieces of patterned paper in shades of asparagus and moss green, sky blue, tan, and ash brown, a man with brown skin sits in the center of this horizontal composition with a second person over his shoulder, in the upper left corner of this collage. The man’s facial features are a composite of cut-outs, mostly in shades of brown and gray, as if from black-and white photographs, and he smokes a cigarette. He sits with his body angled slightly to our right and he looks off in that direction, elbows resting on thighs and wrists crossed. His button-down shirt and pants, similarly collaged, are mottled with sky blue and white. One foot, on our right, is created with a cartoonish, shoe-shaped, black silhouette. The paper used for the other foot seems to have been scraped and scratched, creating the impression that that foot is bare. A tub, made of the same blue and white paper of the man’s suit, sits on the ground to our left, in the lower corner. The man sits in front of an expanse made up of green and brown pieces of paper patterned with wood grain, which could be a cabin. In a window in the upper left, a woman’s face, her features similarly collaged, looks out at us. One dark hand, large in relation to the people, rests on the sill with the fingers extended down the side of the house. The right third of the composition is filled collaged scraps of paper patterned to resemble leafy trees. Closer inspection reveals the form of a woman, smaller in scale than the other two, standing in that zone, facing our left in profile near a gray picket fence. She has a brown face, her hair wrapped in a patterned covering, and she holds a watermelon-sized, yellow fruit with brown stripes. Several blue birds and a red-winged blackbird fly and stand nearby. Above the woman and near the top of the composition, a train puffs along the top of what we read as the tops of trees. The artist signed the work in black letters in the upper right corner: “romare bearden.”

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