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drawing
Drawing is the act of making a mark by pulling a medium across a surface. It is the oldest and most
widespread art form since it is the mode of (non-performance) artistic expression that requires the
least preparation and the simplest materials. Cave paintings (or rather, drawings) are the earliest
examples of fine art of which we have a substantial corpus, and their reductive vocabularythe
outline and the profilerecurs throughout human visual expression.
A drawn line, of finite width, is usually the representation of the infinitesimally narrow boundary
between surfaces, tones, or colours, and is thus abstract to some degree. Nonetheless our
continual exposure to such representations at every level of schematization allows us to interpret
instantly drawings of a remarkable range of complexities: an Egyptian pictogram, a figurated Greek
vase, a Chinese scroll painting, and a MATISSE line drawing are all equally, immediately legible
without the need to learn a visual-cultural language. Further, some drawings we react to
instinctively: a baby will smile at a face comprised merely of two circles and a line; fledglings cower
below the silhouette of a hawk.
This sensitization to linear structure is central to our visual perceptions, and in the RENAISSANCE
drawing became fundamental to the creative processes of the visual arts, both practically and
theoretically (the Italian disegno, design as well as drawing, is applied to all aspects of
representation, including the three-dimensional). Prior to the Renaissance the principal design tool
had been the pattern book, a collection of careful drawings of heads, figures, animals, and so on.
Artists could combine these standard images into a composition as required (with appropriate
improvisation), allowing the workshop assistant to know what to paint, in the required style, and the
patron to know what to expect. But during the 15th century developing humanistic attitudes among
patrons increasingly esteemed the creative contribution of the individual artist, and the emphasis of
contracts shifted from those skills necessary to construct the artefact, to those necessary to devise
the composition.
The PATTERN BOOK tradition thus gradually gave way to a method whereby the elements of a
composition were devised for one specific commission, and this required more preparatory work in
the form of drawings. The supply of PAPER rapidly increased during the 15th century and its cost
dropped; whether this was a consequence of artists drawing more, or merely a coincidence, paper
soon became the favoured support for drawing, supplanting both parchment (expensive) and
wooden tablets coated with a renewable preparation (ephemeral).
The free sketch allowed an artist to evolve an image in an individual and semi-automatic way, each
new line a largely instinctive response to the patterns already present on the paper. But despite this
personalization of the planning of a composition, the artefact itself continued to be a complex
physical product. Assistants remained essential for all large-scale projects, and the working drawing
became the medium for controlling and harmonizing the members of the studio. This regulation of
the creative process through drawings can be seen developing in the larger workshops of the later
15th century (such as that of GHIRLANDAIO), though the very poor survival rate of drawings from this
period makes generalization hazardous, especially outside Italy.
Around 1500 the range of drawing seems to have expanded dramatically. This was partly due to
The Oxford Companion to Western Art
drawing
technical advances, in particular the exploitation of natural CHALKS, simple to use and versatile in
character, which rapidly displaced the labour-intensive and exacting METALPOINT. More profoundly,
two highly influential individuals, ALBRECHT DRER in Germany and LEONARDO DA VINCI in Italy,
realized the potential of drawing for all aspects of visual research. Hammering out a composition in
a tangle of lines; studying the nude model or the fall of drapery; recording the finest details of
animals and plants; codifying human proportion or anatomy, military fortification, or the movement of
water; capturing a personal impression of a landscape or the memory of a dream; producing a
drawing to be appreciated as an independent work of art: almost all the modes of draughtsmanship
of subsequent centuries were prefigured in their works.
Both artists were gregarious, generous, and itinerant. Personal contact and the dispersal of their
drawings (and, crucially, Drer's prints, which captured the vitality and range of his drawings)
disseminated their innovations throughout Europe. Leonardo's years in Florence after 1500
revolutionized the artistic scene there, and his example was fundamental to the development of his
two great successors, MICHELANGELO and RAPHAEL.
Raphael's pragmatic use of drawings allowed him to cope with a deluge of work in his later career
and direct a large and changing band of assistants. A distillation of current practices yet also
endlessly innovative, his workshop methods were reduced by later generations to a formula:
compositional sketches to determine the general form of the work; the elaboration of individual
figures, usually from the model; and their subsequent integration and enlargement to the scale of
the finished work. This essentially mechanical task could be delegated to assistants, an increasingly
prevalent practice in BAROQUE art as the scale of major commissions increased and expectations of
meticulous finish declined.
This systematization of the creative process through drawing was central to the methods of the
formal ACADEMIES OF ART. These were established as the guild system declined in importance and
the status of the painter rose inexorably from craftsman to liberal artist. Beginning with the explicitly
named Accademia del Disegno in Florence in 1563, and reaching their apogee under LE BRUN in
Paris in the late 17th century, the academies aimed to provide (in parallel with the practical
workshop apprenticeship to a master) an intellectually based education, almost always based on
drawing.
The simplicity of drawing allows the pupil to concentrate on form alone, without being distracted by
the physical demands of the medium, and therefore has consistently been the basis of art training. It
teaches discipline and control, being a faithful record of the movements of the hand, and an initial
emphasis on copying from other works of art inculcates an approved style in the young artist. In the
academies students usually drew first from casts of Antique sculpture or of the human body,
progressing to drawing from the posed model (in time these life drawings were themselves called
academies), before being permitted to work on independent compositions.
This teaching method remained virtually unchanged (however outdated) in the academies until well
into the 20th century, although few artists of any note ever adhered strictly to an orderly progression
of working drawings for their own compositions. It is true that those artists closer to a classical ideal
were generally more productive and methodical draughtsmen, such as DOMENICHINO, MARATTI, and
INGRES, but some artists with very strong elements of disegno in their work (CARAVAGGIO is the
prime example) relied little on drawing. In the Low Countries, artists' drawing habits rarely
conformed to the academic ideal. REMBRANDT drew incessantly, and made the activity the
foundation of his pupils' tuition, yet relatively few of his sheets were in direct preparation for
paintings; RUBENS'S drawings were usually preparatory studies, but, like Raphael, he was
continually adapting his methods to answer specific needs.
From the late 15th century onwards highly finished drawings had been produced sporadically for
collectors as objects of virtu, such as the chalk portrait heads of northern Italy, Michelangelo's
presentation drawings of the 1530s, or GOLTZIUS'S pen works around 1600. More significant was
the growth in the collecting of preparatory drawings, by those who were not artists themselves, as
pure manifestations of artistic inspirationa product of the increasing concern with the creatively
intellectual content of a work of art, and the use of drawing as the vehicle for this creativity. It is
Copyright Oxford University Press 2007 2014.
apparent (though little documented) that many types of studio drawings in the 16th century were
produced with an eye on the collectors' market or recycled from the studio, such as BAROCCI'S
pastel heads. The growth of a broad collecting class in the Netherlands during the 17th century led
to the large-scale production of explicitly independent, marketable drawings of many types,
especially landscapes and genre scenes, often with the addition of watercolour to the usual
preparatory materials.
The 18th century saw the entrenchment of many of the trends of the previous 200 years, with the
ACADEMIES dominating most major art centres. The production of drawings for sale was a significant
part of many artists' work, especially in Venice (PIAZZETTA, TIEPOLO, CANALETTO); in England,
WATERCOLOUR emerged as an autonomous activity midway between drawing and painting, and
pastel portraits enjoyed a great vogue across Europe. But the tensions between the conservatism of
academic routines and the practices of the avant-garde were becoming insuperable, and in the 19th
century there was a marked fragmentation of graphic purpose among the artistic communitythe
aims and methods of TURNER, DELACROIX, INGRES, and MENZEL, for instance, were fundamentally
different.
Drawing was to become increasingly free of its role as a preparatory activity, a process that reached
its conclusion in the 20th century. The subservience of drawing to the more traditional finished
media (oil on canvas, sculpture, architecture, and so on) has disappeared, and the final blow to its
essential design role since the Renaissance has now come with the development of Computer-
Aided Design programs, which have replaced manual drawing for all large-scale projects. The
versatility of drawing has made it a vital aspect of the work of nearly all experimental artists, most
notably PICASSO, and a much higher proportion of works executed for sale (excluding prints) are
made on paper. The growth of the exhibition industry, a decline in classical and religious education,
and the individualism of the latter half of the 20th century have led to an appreciation among the
general public of drawing as a prime expression of creative genius.
Martin Clayton
Bibliography
Meder, J. , The Mastery of Drawing, trans. and rev. W. Ames (1978).
Monnier, G. , and Rose, B. , History of an Art: Drawing (1979).
Rawson, P. , Drawing (2nd edn., 1987).Sciolla, G. C. (ed.), Drawing (19913).