DOI issue:
No. 344 (November 1912)
DOI article:Tryon, Gerard: An exhibition of drawings at the British Museum
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21393#0216
DRAWINGS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
" LANDSCAPE." TINTED DRAW-
ING BY GOVAERT FLINCK
The Rembrandt drawings are too well
known to need reproduction here. a
Very sympathetic is the Portrait of a
Young Woman by Rubens, and it is inter-
esting to study a drawing of a head by the
Flemish master in which the eyes them-
selves are not shown ; so much of the
vitality of his portrait drawings depends on
his wonderful understanding of the eye. a
A few drawings here and there give one a
vivid, if momentary, insight into the every-
day life of the period. Among these,
Domenico Feti's drawing of a man being
shaved by torchlight is amusing, and
200
Pisanello's six impersonal little studies of
hanged men give one a rather horrified
feeling that hanged men were an everyday
sight, and that Pisanello went out sketching
them in much the same way as a modern
painter makes notes of cows in a field. 0
This sketching in the modern sense
seems to have been a very rare occurrence
with the old draughtsmen—one might
almost say they didn't do it. I have often
heard artists and critics discuss " the
things the old masters did not paint," but
for me, at least, Mr. G. K. Chesterton in
his brilliant little essay," A Piece of Chalk"
" LANDSCAPE." TINTED DRAW-
ING BY GOVAERT FLINCK
The Rembrandt drawings are too well
known to need reproduction here. a
Very sympathetic is the Portrait of a
Young Woman by Rubens, and it is inter-
esting to study a drawing of a head by the
Flemish master in which the eyes them-
selves are not shown ; so much of the
vitality of his portrait drawings depends on
his wonderful understanding of the eye. a
A few drawings here and there give one a
vivid, if momentary, insight into the every-
day life of the period. Among these,
Domenico Feti's drawing of a man being
shaved by torchlight is amusing, and
200
Pisanello's six impersonal little studies of
hanged men give one a rather horrified
feeling that hanged men were an everyday
sight, and that Pisanello went out sketching
them in much the same way as a modern
painter makes notes of cows in a field. 0
This sketching in the modern sense
seems to have been a very rare occurrence
with the old draughtsmen—one might
almost say they didn't do it. I have often
heard artists and critics discuss " the
things the old masters did not paint," but
for me, at least, Mr. G. K. Chesterton in
his brilliant little essay," A Piece of Chalk"