19th Century European School

Study of the Apollo Belvedere, Graphite Sketch, 19th Century

Graphite on paper Image size: 13 x 10 1/2 inches (33 x 27 cm) Mounted This is a delicate 19th century academic graphite drawing of a seated female nude in the neoclassical style. A...

Red chalk on paper Image size: 9 x 7 inches (23 x 17.75 cm) Acid free mount The Greek god Attis was the spouse of Cybele, the fertility goddess.  He was from Phrygia, a kingdom in c...

Graphite on paper Image size: 22 x 26 inches (56 x 66 cm) Mounted and framed William Dring Dring was born with the forenames Dennis William, but was known colloquially as John. He was the brother of the artist James Dring. He married the painter Grace Elizabeth Rothwell...

Evelyn de Morgan Study of a Standing Female Nude 1855 - 1917 Black chalk and pastel on grey paper Image size: 12 ½ x 19 inches (48.2 x 31.7 cm) Pre-Raphaelite style frame Provenance J.S. Mass & Co., Ltd., London, J.X. Reynolds & Co., Ltd. Once she had graduated from the Slade School of Art, Evelyn continued to draw every day for the rest of her life. Her drawings are enlightening not only for their skill and subject matter, but also for their ability to teach us her working process. From loose compositional sketches, Evelyn swiftly progressed to detailed life studies for the figures in her paintings. Choosing to draw mainly on a grey wove paper in pencil and pastel, Evelyn produced hundreds of figure studies. Her rigorously-examined double studies of clothed and nude figures are particularly fascinating and underline the artist’s obsession with the human form and her desire for accuracy. A deep understanding of anatomy is obvious in this drawing and looking at the work you feel as though you can reach out and feel the muscle and bone under the skin, that you could feel the pulse of life through the soft skin. Evelyn de Morgan Born into a landowning family, from an early age Evelyn De Morgan, née Pickering, demonstrated a precocious artistic talent and a passionate desire to pursue a career as an artist, writing in her diary on her seventeenth birthday ‘Art is eternal, life is short… I have not a moment to lose’ (Evelyn De Morgan’s Diary, 30 August 1872, De Morgan Foundation Archive). Her maternal uncle, the artist John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope encouraged her talents and accompanied her on her first formative journeys to Italy where she discovered the Renaissance masters, particularly Botticelli. Overcoming initial parental opposition, Evelyn enrolled at the newly formed Slade School in 1873, one of the first women to do so. The Slade revolutionised women’s artistic education by allowing female students to study the nude from life alongside their male counterparts. Whilst at the Slade she began to submit work under her middle name Evelyn, rather than her Christian name Mary, as its gender ambiguity offered a chance for her work to be judged on its own merit. One of her tutors, Edward Poynter...

A pencil study of a young nude satyr playing a flute. He is leaning against a tree, which is draped with an animal skin. This iconographic type is found in numerous exemplars; howeve...

Johann Heinrich Meil (1730 Gotha - 1820 Berlin), Male Nude, 1807. White heightened, occasionally wiped charcoal drawing on brownish paper, 51 cm x 39.5 cm, signed “J.[ohann] H.[einri...

A finely detailed graphite study of a statue of Marcellus, nephew of Emperor Augustus who founded the Roman Empire. The statue is held in the Louvre. The drawing features subtle whit...

Life study drawing original atelier drawing by the French artist, Jeanne Nachat (1898-1984) Nachat attended the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts in Pa...