Drawing

V

History

Drawing has existed since prehistoric times, either as an independent expression or ancillary to other art forms.

A

Stone Age, Ancient, and Medieval Drawing

During the Old Stone Age in Africa, Asia, and Europe, realistic animal drawings with religious associations were incised in bone and painted on rock faces and cave interiors, as at Altamira, Spain and Lascaux, France.

In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus and pottery fragments carved with sketched figures and designs served as models for painting and sculpture, as did carved drawings on clay tablets in Mesopotamia. Marked at first by strict frontality and exaggeration of forms, such drawings in time gave way to naturalistic impulses—as in the art of the reigns of Akhenaton in Egypt and Ashurbanipal in Assyria.

A few Greek or Roman preparatory drawings—on wood panels, parchment, metal, stone, or ivory—remain. Finished drawings, as seen on Greek vases, indicate the development from stylized archaicism to classical idealization of nature, and eventually to naturalistic treatment of human form. Roman drawing, although continuing to show Greek influences, was generally realistic.

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In the monasteries of medieval Europe, religious texts were inscribed on parchment, then embellished with initial letters, decorative borders, and miniature scenes. In Romanesque Europe, drawings served as models to be copied for such manuscript illumination and also as cartoons (see Cartoon), or studies, for frescoes, sculpture, and other arts. Subjects were usually treated as stylized symbols of religious truths. This viewpoint was countered in the Gothic period; the change was reflected in the silverpoint and pen drawings of the Flemish artists Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, who sought veracity in their study of nature.

B

Renaissance, Baroque, and 18th-century Drawings

During the Renaissance the humanist rediscovery of Greco-Roman classicism, the invention of printing, and the availability of paper and a wider range of tools encouraged artists to draw. Whether meant to serve as preparatory studies for paintings or sculptures or—for the first time in the West—intended as independent works of art in their own right, the master drawings of these artists reveal an understanding of natural forms and their idealization. Outstanding Italian drawings in chalk, silverpoint, and pen include the anatomical and scientific drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and the figure drawings of Michelangelo and Raphael. The drawings of Tintoretto and of the Mannerists Jacopo da Pontormo and El Greco are more personally expressive. Those of the Flemish artist Hieronymus Bosch are surrealistic. Perceptive realism characterizes the line drawings of the Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and the Germans Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger.

In the 17th century the calligraphic brush, pen, and wash drawings of Rembrandt and the chalk and crayon portrait figures of the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens tend to have a baroque drama and energy. In contrast is the calm architectural order of some pen-and-wash studies of the French artist Nicolas Poussin.

In 18th-century France, the brush-and-wash drawings of Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean Honoré Fragonard were typical of the rococo style, while the neoclassical approach is typified in the strong chalk and charcoal figure studies of Pierre Paul Prud'hon. Further stylistic contrast is found in a comparison of the quiet, realistic drawings of everyday subjects by Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin and the line-and-wash drawings satirizing war and injustice by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya.

C

19th- and 20th-century Drawing

The increased tempo of political and economic change in the modern period is reflected in a variety of art styles primarily emanating from Paris. Resurgent neoclassicism, as seen in the taut, linear figure and portrait drawings of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, vied with the romantic tonal drama in drawings of Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault. Gustave Courbet used hatched tones to assert his aggressive realism. Honoré Daumier often drew satiric caricatures. Realism also pervades drawings by such Americans as Gilbert Stuart, George Catlin, John James Audubon, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Eakins, as well as those by the Canadian artists Paul Kane and Cornelius Krieghoff.

Anticipated by atmospheric tone drawings by the English landscapists John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, the French impressionist Claude Monet originated a drawing style characterized by loosely meshed line texture to define objects as blurred masses. Using parallel strokes, the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh achieved a more open pattern than the flat masses of his colleague, the French painter Paul Gauguin. Paul Cézanne employed a broken line to establish structural planes. The charcoal drawings of Georges Seurat take full advantage of the paper's texture and achieve a misty ambiance.

In the 20th century, the analytical cubism of the still-life and portrait drawings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque eventually led to more abstract constructivist and minimalist drawing. French surrealism and American abstract expressionism inspired more spontaneous, open drawings. There were also explorations in texture, grids, and collage. At the same time, interest in traditional contour drawings continued. The realist point of view is exemplified in the drawings of George Bellows and Edward Hopper in the United States, and of the social realists Käthe Kollwitz in Germany and Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros in Mexico. Drawing in the late 20th century had enormous variety and was inventively combined with printing techniques.

D

Non-Western Drawing

In China, Japan, and Korea, drawing, painting, and writing are fundamentally one. Each ideograph (see Alphabet) is both symbol and design abstracted from nature. Although early drawing, usually of religious figures, shows uniform lines, later landscape and other secular drawing often has calligraphic strokes that allow more modulation of form. Color is considered only a decorative accessory. Monochrome “ink-splash” painting was an intuitive technique developed by Zen Buddhist monks such as the 13th-century Chinese artist Muqi.

Early Islamic artists (see Islamic Art and Architecture), influenced by Arabic calligraphy and prohibited from the use of representational forms, achieved consistent and intricate floral and geometric abstractions. Later drawing, especially in Persian book illumination, was influenced by Chinese styles and European realism and depicted figural scenes. These in turn inspired 16th- and 17th-century Turkish and Indian drawing.

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