“The Root of Everything”: Drawing in Europe from the Renaissance to the Modern Period
On campus
Media, Materials, and Methods
Dr Rachel Sloan, Dr Rachel Hapoienu and Kate Edmondson
Monday 31 March – Thursday 3 April 2025
The Learning Centre and Prints and Drawings Study Room at Somerset House
£495
You may also be interested in our course Revolutionary Tool and Artistic Medium: The Print in Europe from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Day, which runs on campus in September 2025.
Course description
Employing the resources of The Courtauld’s world-class graphic collections, this course investigates drawings and draughtsmanship from the Renaissance to around 1900.
Face-to-face with notable examples from our collections, we shall study the traditional media and supports artists have used across the centuries. This daily object study in the prints and drawings room will be complemented by class-room sessions that look at the role of drawing in the wider history of European art. Our discussions will include the use and functions of drawings in the workshop and studio; the role of drawing in artists’ education; the practice of collecting drawings and tracing their provenance; the development of new media and techniques in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and the emergence of drawing as an art form in its own right.
This course is co-taught by specialists in different historical periods and aspects of works on paper and includes hands-on sessions exploring media and materials.
N.B. This course will take place (as noted above) at Somerset House, in the Learning Centre and the Prints and Drawings Study Room.
How to book
To book your chosen course(s) please use the book now button below and you will be taken to our booking system where you can book and pay (Visa / Mastercard / GooglePay / ApplePay).
At checkout, you will be prompted to login (if you have previously booked gallery tickets) or to register and create a new account.
(Please note: this ticketing login is not the same as your Short Courses VLE login if you have one).
Please note that in the EU new VAT rules for online courses are coming into effect. This means that from 1 January 2025 we will be required to charge EU participants their local VAT rate. VAT-inclusive prices for EU students will be displayed at check-out.
If you have any questions please email us at short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk
Lecturers' biographies
Dr Rachel Sloan is Associate Curator for Works on Paper at The Courtauld. She earned her MA and PhD from The Courtauld, and worked at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art before returning to The Courtauld in 2012. She has curated numerous exhibitions and displays including, most recently, Impressions of Modern Life: Prints from the Courtauld Collection (Royal Holloway, University of London, 2020), Helen Saunders: Modernist Rebel (The Courtauld, 2022-23) and Vanessa Bell: A Pioneer of Modern Art (The Courtauld, 2024).
Dr Rachel Hapoienu is Assistant Curator of Works on Paper at The Courtauld, and was previously the Drawings Cataloguer at The Courtauld from 2016-2023. She has an MA and PhD in History of Art from The Courtauld. She curated Reading Drawings (2017), Drawn to Blue: Artists’ use of blue paper (2024-25) and co-curated Art and Artifice: Fakes from the Collection (2023) at The Courtauld.
Kate Edmondson studied paper conservation at Camberwell College of Arts, London. Since 1988 Kate has worked in many museums, galleries and private conservation studios in London including the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Natural History Museum before joining The Courtauld as Conservator of Works on Paper in 2011.