“In the beginning there was drawing.” Though tongue-in-cheek, this biblical riff encapsulates a core concept in the history and theory of western European art—one that continues to inform artistic pedagogy and academic training to this day. In the first century CE, the Roman author Pliny the Elder claimed that while the origins of painting were uncertain, “all agree that it began with tracing an outline around a person’s shadow,” thus describing line-drawing as the foundational pictorial act.¹ Many centuries later, the Florentine painter Cennino Cennini compiled his Libro dell’arte (Treatise on Art) around 1400, a time when drawing on paper was becoming widespread. He stated that “the foundation of art, and the starting point of all these works of the hand, is drawing and coloring.” ² Still later, in the 1560s, the painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574)—who inspired the founding of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (Academy of the Arts of Drawing), an ancestor of modern art schools—reiterated that “drawing [is] the father of our three arts: architecture, sculpture, and painting.” ³ In his understanding, the meaning of the Italian word disegno encompassed both the manual act of drafting and the intellectual activities of conception and design.

Western European art theory was grounded in the assumptions that drawing came first chronologically and was also the first conceptual step in most artistic creations. The correlative belief was that drawing should be the gateway to artistic training in any medium. This pedagogical conviction, embedded in the curricula of art schools for centuries, began to be questioned only in the latter part of the twentieth century. At RISD, drawing is still upheld as an artistic foundation: drawing is a focus of first-year studio classes, and students in any area can elect to pursue a drawing concentration beyond their freshman year. While the foundational view of drawing generally holds true in Western art—particularly in the traditional models of workshop practice and academic training—drawings have always served a broad range of purposes with varying degrees of connection to other media. Drawing is a tool for learning and planning, but also close-looking, visual thinking, communicating, entertaining, and simply provoking intellectual and aesthetic pleasure. The first four hundred years of drawing on paper also witnessed the growth of the medium into an independent artistic activity. Drawing has always been more than a prelude.

Drawing Closer, the exhibition and this accompanying digital catalog, is an invitation to look at drawings from multiple perspectives with a focus on what drawings were made of, why they were made, and what they look like. Seven interwoven sections highlight the most common drawing materials and techniques employed by artists during the early modern period (roughly between 1400 and 1800) and some of the purposes drawings served in both the artist’s studio and the world outside it. The four sections on pen and ink, brush and wash, chalk, and color explore the distinctive characteristics of each medium and the range of effects they produced when handled by different practitioners. Videos by Andrew Raftery further demonstrate the properties and characteristics of these different media and the steps involved in the creation of a drawing—from planning to execution. Sections on observation, process, and humor explore the making or function of particular drawings rather than grouping them by medium. Internal and external links facilitate interactive encounters with the works and information about them.

These drawings are dense, multi-layered creations, and many of them could easily be placed in a different section, changing the viewer’s perspective of the drawing’s significance in that new context. For this reason, both in the exhibition and publication, traditional sorting principles such as chronology or nationality have been eschewed in favor of material, aesthetic, or functional affinities. The seven chapters serve as an introduction to some of the many ways these drawings can be accessed, analyzed, and organized. But the physical installation and digital platform also encourage nonlinear exploration, iterative reinterpretation, and the discovery of resonant associations across categories. Drawing Closer aims to empower viewers to get closer to works that might otherwise feel distant or unfamiliar.

The traditional term “old master drawings,” which broadly refers to European drawings made between the 1400s and the 1800s, reveals long-standing biases that have shaped art instruction, production, and collecting for centuries. RISD’s collection of European drawings reflects nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collecting priorities, skewing towards revered names in the art-historical canon, whose protagonists—in the eyes of historians and collectors of the time—were predominantly formally trained male artists from western Europe. The effects of this limited purview endure to this day in art-historical scholarship and museum collections. As a result of centuries of restrictions placed on women to pursue an education and a career in art, there were undoubtedly many fewer professional female artists in the early modern period—and consequently fewer drawings by these artists on the market. The RISD Museum acquired its first drawing by an early modern woman, Elisabetta Sirani, only in 2018 (see Cat. 13). Though not unusual for American institutions, this statistic may seem particularly surprising for RISD, because the core of its drawings collection was shaped in important ways by women, chiefly Eliza Greene Radeke (née Metcalf), who served as president of the Board of Trustees between 1913 and 1931, and Helen Metcalf Danforth, who succeeded her as president from 1931 to 1965.⁴

Through the efforts and generosity of collectors Eliza Greene Radeke, Helen Metcalf Danforth, and a third important donor, Ellen Dexter Sharpe, the RISD Museum acquired some of its most cherished works on paper. Their choices and priorities were guided not only by what was available but also by what was generally considered “important,” both as a worthy example for art students to emulate, and as the bedrock of graphic arts holdings that could compare to authoritative institutions. Their ambitious purchases and gifts established a drawings collection of high caliber, but with a specific focus. Among others included in the exhibition, the dramatic black chalk study by Anthony van Dyck (Cat. 35) and the superb red chalk portrait by Edme Bouchardon (Cat. 24) were gifts of Radeke and Danforth respectively. From Ellen Dexter Sharpe, who served on RISD’s board between 1894 and 1900, the museum received an exceptional group of works on paper, including Luca Cambiaso’s Descent from the Cross (Cat. 15).

In addition to this foundational, canonical core, however, RISD’s collection of early works on paper is also rich in drawings by lesser-known or still-unidentified artists that are particularly interesting in terms of process, aesthetic and material qualities, and function. Intriguing examples include Antonio Gionima’s compositional sketch jotted on the back of a letter (Cat. 58) and a painstaking preparatory design for printed fabric (Cat. 57) acquired by the museum in 1936.

All these holdings are central to the mission of a museum founded within the heart of a school of art and design. The collection remains a living, developing resource used to teach and inspire the next generations of artists and makers. In a classroom context, European drawings at the RISD Museum are often closely examined through the lenses of materials and making, always keeping in mind how these two forces come together in creating form and meaning. As a collection, they continue to be a powerful source of instruction, inspiration, and wonder. This publication and the exhibition it accompanies attempt to enable further intimate, observation-driven encounters with these works for students and visitors in our galleries and a broader, worldwide public. | JG

Line, a graphic mark interrupting the blank expanse of paper, is one of the basic elements of the visual vocabulary of drawing. Until the nineteenth century, the principal tools of linear drawing in Europe were the reed pen, used since antiquity, and the quill pen, a versatile instrument made from a bird feather. In the early modern period, drawing inks were water-based liquids colored either by suspended pigments (such as carbon particles or wood soot) or by natural chemical properties (such as the tannic acid of oak trees in iron-gall ink or the dried ink sacs of cuttlefish in sepia).

Lines drawn in pen and ink vary in thickness and intensity according to the width of the nib, the pressure applied, and the amount of ink in the quill. Once dry, ink marks are stable, durable, and—unlike marks made in chalk or graphite—cannot be smudged. By the same token, ink is impossible to erase and difficult to correct, making pen and ink perhaps the most technically demanding drawing medium of all.

From the 1400s, when ink drawing on paper became common, there was a progression toward ever more complex uses of the pen. These ranged from simple outlines to hatching (parallel shading) and cross-hatching (crisscrossed shading) to more personal forms of mark making. Akin to handwriting, drawing in pen and ink came to be perceived as inextricably linked with the “hand” and the identity of a singular artist. During the period in which the drawings in this section were made, the display of bravura and individuality using pen and ink increasingly became an end in itself, and the quality of line took on its own aesthetic valence.

To increase both the tonal richness and plasticity of their drawings, early modern artists often brushed on ink diluted in water to create fields of tone in a variety of subtly different shades. While hard to control, the application of liquid washes on paper provided a swifter way of shading than the laborious construction of shadows with parallel lines or cross-hatching.

As artists became more interested in the convincing depiction of three-dimensional volumes, wash also proved to be an effective medium for the continuous modeling of form, with the fluid medium mimicking the appearance of real shadows pooling around curved forms. In more ambitious compositions, skillfully applied wash also enhanced the illusion of a coherent space by suggesting unified lighting. A small number of artists even used wash independently of pen marks to create entire compositions that were striking for their monochromatic painterliness.

As the drawings in this section show, the visual qualities and effects of wash can vary dramatically depending on the color of the inks employed, the degree of dilution, the combination or superimposition of different shades, and whether they were applied with a wet brush or a dry brush. Underlying all of these approaches, however, is their potential to mimic and visualize the ephemeral, seductive interplay of light and form.

The faithful imitation of nature has not always been an aim for visual artists. In fifteenth-century Europe, however, artists began to prioritize the ability to depict three-dimensional spaces, human and non-human animals, and even light in ways that would cause viewers to suspend disbelief and think of the picture in front of them as an extension of the world they inhabited. With few notable exceptions, the importance of the mimetic Renaissance tradition went virtually unquestioned until the late 1800s, particularly in the context of academic training.

Drawing on paper was a catalyst of this artistic shift, and observation from nature its principal strategy. Drawing and observing are intertwined in complex ways. The greater availability of paper—a light, durable, relatively affordable, and replaceable support compared to its predecessors (parchment or waxed tablets)—enabled artists to both sketch and experiment more and to gain greater facility at transcribing what they saw. Striving toward ever more effective graphic strategies to reproduce the thing seen, artists explored different materials, including ink, chalk, graphite, and watercolor, thereby expanding the visual and aesthetic range of the drawing medium.

The effects of this process went far beyond the purely aesthetic. Accurate depictions of natural specimens and artifacts sparked wonder for nature and human ingenuity while also enabling the visual exchange of knowledge that is at the basis of modern sciences. More faithful portraits fed and buttressed a more individualized sense of identity, which in turn increased the cultural importance of self-fashioning and self-presentation. In different ways, all the drawings in this section are related to observation: they range from academic exercises to documents of precise, intimate moments to painstaking and staggering displays of illusionistic prowess.

Chalk, a term encompassing a variety of colored earths, was one of the most common drawing media in the early modern period. A dry, friable material whose particles are rubbed off by the texture of the paper, chalk was particularly appreciated in the early modern era for its versatility. When sharpened to a point, it could be used for detailed linear drawing; a blunter tip would convey broader, blurrier strokes; and when rubbed with a finger or a stump, it created continuous, modulated areas of tone. These material qualities, which enabled seamless transitions between line and tone, made chalk an ideal material for the exploration and graphic rendition of three-dimensional volumes and the effects of light on complex surfaces such as faces, muscles, or draperies.

Until the late 1700s, the most common hues of chalk, frequently used in combination, were black, red, and white. Black chalk, a natural stone formed of clay and carbon, was used by the Italian painter Cennino Cennini around 1400 and became a more common drawing tool by the late 1400s. Normally used for drawings that demanded strong tonal contrast, it could also be easily erased, which made it a popular choice for delicate preliminary underdrawings.

Red chalk, sometimes called sanguine, is a mixture of clay and hematite (red iron oxide). Known since antiquity, it became a common drawing medium in the 1500s, with Leonardo da Vinci being one of the first artists to use it extensively. As opposed to black chalk, red chalk cannot be erased with ease, and its marks are more prone to smudging and offsetting (a quality that enabled counterproofing)—all factors that make its handling more challenging. When wet with a brush, it could be turned into a bright red wash. Its variety of warm tones and great chromatic strength made it a popular choice for the depiction of human flesh. In the 1700s, it became the favored medium in drawing academies, to the point where all natural sources of the material were exhausted by the end of that century. All modern red chalks are manufactured synthetically.

Usually applied in combination with black and red, white chalk, made primarily of calcium, is distinguished by both its brilliant white tonality and its softness. It was most frequently employed to add white highlights on toned papers or colored drawings.

For professional artists, the act of drawing is often synonymous with exacting practice and serious work, but it can also be a fertile source of diversion and relaxation. This selection of works places the spotlight on drawings that were made for fun: from sketches made for individual pleasure to those meant to elicit laughter to works parodying or decrying the foibles of society. Because of its intimate, informal nature, drawing has traditionally been the medium of choice for the exploration of humor in its many forms.

In the early modern period, paper, while relatively affordable, was by no means a cheap material, so it is perhaps somewhat surprising that a remarkable number of drawings survive that seem to have no other function than the amusement of their maker. Envisaging a somewhat wider audience, humorous drawings such as caricatures often served sophisticated social functions, such as strengthening bonds between members of the same community or political group. A double-edged sword, caricature is also inextricably linked to the sometimes-merciless cruelty with which it attacks its targets. Just as the boundaries between the informal depiction of human types and the caricature of specific individuals are porous and difficult to define, so the line between amusement and abuse is often labile or hard to draw.

The humorous core of more complex compositions showing multiple figures—whether obviously caricatured or not—often lies in class parody, moral and social commentary, or biting political criticism. The drawings in this section showcase some of the most common humorous strategies: the insertion of “low” scatological details (frequently related to bodily functions or excesses), the juxtaposition of perceived opposites (class, age, sex), or the scrambling of traditional categories (human vs. animal, real vs. imaginary) for comedic effect. In the most accomplished examples, humorous drawings not only deploy complex communication strategies, but also provide a source of escapist relief that, centuries later, continues to attract, amuse, and delight.

Whether highly finished or barely sketched out, all the drawings in this eclectic selection constituted but one stage in a longer creative unfolding. Some provide insights into their makers’ processes while others feature unusual materials or techniques. Many were clearly models made in preparation for a painting, a print, a stage set, or a printed textile. In the period covered by this exhibition, drawings created as finished, independent works of art represent a small fraction of the number of sheets artists drew to practice their hands, to record what they saw, to invent compositions, to work out solutions, or to communicate and collaborate with other makers.

Since the early Renaissance, art theorists have traditionally discussed drawing as the foundation of the visual and plastic arts—the unifying activity and principle behind artistic creation in all media. In Italian, the language in which early European theories of art were formulated, the term for drawing—disegno—encompasses a variety of nuances absent from its English equivalent. At the most basic level, disegno refers to a drawn sheet of paper, but it also encompasses the meaning of design, both in its acceptation of plan or blueprint and its more abstract sense of idea or conception. Fittingly, for the works selected, disegno can also mean aim, intention, or purpose.

In the often-messy generative journey from invention to realization, drawings were manipulated in a striking variety of ways. They were left unfinished, painstakingly completed, or impatiently reworked; cut up or patched up; handled, annotated, or developed by different people; passed through a press, copied, and traced; and even folded up, sealed, and sent as letters. The examples shown here celebrate both the versatility of the medium and the protean ingenuity of their makers.

The use of color has often been thought of as separate, if not antithetical, to “pure” drawing, strictly defined as a graphic (i.e., linear) and monochromatic medium. A lingering trace of this narrow understanding can be detected in the habit of discussing watercolors as a slightly different category from other drawings. While the extensive use of multiple colors was a relatively late development in the history of European drawing, graphic artists have always made use of color to fulfill their heuristic and aesthetic aims.

The increase in the use and variety of colors in drawing is the result of multiple factors, such as changes in taste, the availability of new materials—for instance, commercially produced pastels and watercolor boxes or wove papers better suited to the application of watercolor —and the rise of the category of the finished drawing as an independent work of art. Although oil paint was occasionally used on paper, most drawings in color (and all the ones in this section) were executed with either colored pastels or watercolor. Pastels are fabricated colored crayons composed of pigments and a binder. Once mixed into a paste, molded into sticks, and dried, they could be sharpened and used exactly like a piece of chalk. Known since at least the 1400s, pastels were occasionally used during the sixteenth century, but much more commonly employed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

As its name suggests, watercolor is a medium consisting of pigments suspended in water and colorless colloid substances (such as gum arabic or egg white) that cause the medium to adhere to paper when applied with a wet brush. Depending on its composition, watercolor can be transparent or opaque. Transparent watercolor allows light to shine through the medium and reflect off the white of the underlying paper, producing delicate, glowing chromatic effects. The addition of lead white or chalk to the solution produces opaque watercolor (also called gouache or bodycolor), which evenly covers the paper and does not allow light to reflect through, approaching the saturated visual qualities of tempera. Whether small sketches or highly finished works, watercolor drawings are distinguished by a radiance and luminosity that vies with, and often surpasses, that of paintings.