Works on Paper Study Group

The Works on Paper Study Group is dedicated to exploring the creative and material processes and practices involved in the production, display, and collecting of works on paper. Our goal is to enable individual members to develop a deeper understanding of all aspects of the graphic arts through structured first-hand study of these works, and through discussions with experts in the field. We explore questions which are object-based as well as theoretical, ranging from the identification and appreciation of techniques and materials in works on paper, to the more conceptual investigations of the graphic mark-making as a discourse and a form of visual communication.

The group holds two meetings every term, with one event generally taking place at the Institute and one at a different venue in London or the South East. Each meeting has a thematic focus, exploring topics like the cultural meaning and function of red chalk, methods of attribution, or strategies of collection building.

Activities are organised by the team of Courtauld graduate students who work as Print Room Assistants in the Prints and Drawings Study Room of the Courtauld Institute.

Dr. Ketty Gottardo, Martin Halusa Curator of Drawings, is the group’s supporting patron.

Membership is open to PhD students, early career academics, and early career art world professionals with an interest in the graphic arts. To join the Works on Paper Study Group, please e-mail: PrintRoom.Assistants@courtauld.ac.uk, including a very brief outline of your specific interests in works on paper.

Event summaries

16 February 2016

Organised by Tatiana Bisolatti

Accompanied by the exhibition curators Dr Stephanie Buck and Dr Dagmar Korbacher, the group explored the process of selection and display of thirty drawings by Botticelli for Dante’s Divine Comedy shown alongside a selection of illuminated manuscripts including the Hamilton Bible. Discussion raised issues of the collection and sale of the Botticelli works made famous when Lord Hamilton relinquished them in 1882. Our conversations with the curators also considered the unique curatorial challenges faced when exhibiting works on paper in a variety of formats and according to the demands of conservation.

18 May 2016

Organised by Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings

On a visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum Print Room, Gill Sanders, Senior Curator of Prints at the V&A, selected for the group a set of recent acquisitions of contemporary prints. Sanders facilitated discussion of the challenges of collecting prints within major national museums in the twenty-first century. Ranging an appreciation of practical issues such as budgets and storage to aesthetic concerns regarding the representation of different printing techniques within the collection, the session shed light on the professional and institutional processes at work behind the public gallery walls.

2 July 2016

Organised by Austeja Mackelaite

Accompanied by Jonathan den Otter, Junior Specialist of Old Master Drawings at Christie’s, the group previewed a selection of works due for sale at Christie’s. In his presentation Jonathan shared his insights on the practical challenges faced by drawings specialists working in the environment of the auction house, including the attribution of unsigned or previously unpublished works. The session also considered the general methodological concerns surrounding connoisseurship today.

20 October 2016

Organised by Camilla Pietrabissa

How do artists and architects render place on paper? How is the abstract space of the sheet drawn, inscribed, or handled in order to visualise a real or imagined place? What are the practical tools and the technical devices used to evoke the experience of cities, gardens or rural areas? In raising such questions, this event aimed to create a dialogue on the ways in which drawings and prints have been used as tools of knowledge, invention, and design. The program included three case studies for discussion: architectural drawings which re-imagined public space in France around the turn of the nineteenth century, presented to the group through a guided tour of the exhibition in the Courtauld’s Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery A Civic Utopia: Architecture and the City in France 1765-1837 by its curator Nicolas Olsberg; the drawings and prints of Kew Gardens whose production was overseen by William Chambers, discussed in a paper presented by Matthew Storey (Historical Royal Palaces); and the drawings of the vernacular architecture and picturesque sites in the Parisian countryside, discussed in a paper presented by Camilla Pietrabisa (Courtauld).

24 February 2017

Organised by Imogen Tedbury

In a private tour of the new Courtauld Gallery display ‘Reading Drawings’, Dr. Rachel Hapoienu, curator of the display & IMAF Project Drawings Cataloguer for the Gallery, narrated the curatorial process behind the exhibition. The visit was followed by a session in the Prints and Drawings Study Room, where we looked at those artworks that were considered for inclusion but ultimately cut. Through discussing the full arc of the exhibition from inception and initial research to realisation in the gallery space we learnt much from Dr. Hapoienu’s problem-solving selections as well as the challenges she faced in bringing to life works through marginal inscriptions and collector’s marks.

19 April 2017

Organised by Camilla Pietrabissa

With George Richards, Curatorial Assistant at the UCL Art Museums, the group viewed a selection of twenty drawings by John Flaxman (1755-1826). We spent two hours in UCL’s Strang Print Room, considering the invention of the ‘Neoclassical outline drawing’. The visit took the form of an eighteenth-century erudite conversation, starting with 15 minutes of silent examination of the works. There was no formal presentation on Flaxman, and the group was encouraged to share their impressions based on the sustained observation of the drawings. UCL holds a preeminent collection of Flaxman’s work, which provided an ideal foundation for a discussion of the development of his drawing style and its relationship with other mediums, primarily ceramics and prints.

13 June 2017

Organised by Albert Godycki

To round off the academic year the group travelled to Oxford to visit the Ashmolean Museum’s major exhibition of Raphael’s drawings. The show’s curator, Angelamaria Aceto, introduced and guided the group around the exhibition triggering a lively discussion of Raphael’s development through his career and the range of process at the draughtsman’s disposal. Metal point, chalks, graphite, and pen and ink were all well represented in masterworks that proved a fitting conclusion the group’s activity over the past year.

6 November 2017

Organised by Rachel Hapoienu

This short seminar in the Courtauld’s Prints and Drawings Room was the occasion to discuss the works of Frederick Walker (1840-1875) and other artists of the period held in the collection. Donato Esposito, who recently published the first comprehensive study on Walker and the group of the Idyllists (London, 2017), led the seminar in conversation with Rachel Sloan.

12 December 2017

Organised by Camilla Pietrabissa

To mark its tenth event, the group organised a visit to the landmark exhibition on the history of European printmaking at the British Museum (Room 90), with its curator Antony Griffiths, who was Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the museum for 20 years. Antony explained the relation between his comprehensive book The print before photography (published in 2017) and the exhibition; then, the group focussed on the section ‘Collecting Prints’, which made a compelling visual argument about the meaning of prints for collectors throughout the Early Modern period.

19 February 2018

Organised by Charlotte Wytema

Focussing on medieval works on paper and parchment from Western Europe, the group visited Sam Fogg, a renowned London gallery specialised in the art of the Middle Ages. Medieval specialist Matthew Reeves showed us a selection of medieval illuminated manuscripts, as well as fifteenth-century drawings from the Southern Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain, and the group discussed the challenges of attribution and the art market for medieval works on paper and parchment. Hereafter we had the special opportunity to carefully handle and examine the pages of an illuminated manuscript under the circumstances it could have been created and viewed: in candlelight.

20 April 2018

Dr. Emilia Terracciano, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, led a group discussion about a number of works on paper by the Bengali artist Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938) in the South & South Asian collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, courtesy of V&A Curator Divia Patel and Assistant Curator Anita Nathwani. A selection of anti-colonial satirical colour lithographs and ink and watercolour drawings were considered in conjunction with the chapter on Tagore from Emilia’s book Art and Emergency: Modernism in Twentieth-Century India (I. B. Tauris, 2018).

29 June 2018

Organised by Lukas Hall and Charlotte Wytema

On a visit to Christie’s, Jonathan den Otter, Associate Specialist in Old Master Drawings, introduced the group to a selection of works from the 3 July sale, sharing some of his insights from researching and cataloguing the drawings. In order to learn more about the practical challenges faced by drawings specialists in attribution and dating specific works, as well as the dilemma of recognising possible forgeries, Jonathan led us through a round of ‘Fake or Fortune’, putting our connoisseurship to the test. Jonathan’s presentation was followed by that of Tim Schmelcher, International Specialist in Prints, who showed us the rare first state of Rembrandt’s Ecce Homo drypoint, about to be sold in the Old Masters Evening Sale on 5 July.

9 November 2018

Organised by Charlotte Wytema

Before the visit, curator Edward Payne suggested that the group read excerpts from the catalogue for ‘Ribera: Art of Violence’. Payne led the group through each gallery room, focusing on a select few works to bring out the challenging themes of the exhibition. The group discussed the significance of Ribera’s activity as a graphic artist and draughtsman, and considered the relationship between Ribera’s paintings, drawings and prints.

18 February 2019

Organised by Saskia Rubin

Following the success of The Courtauld Gallery’s ‘Artists at Work’ exhibition, the group visited Katrin Bellinger’s collection of works on paper. Curator Dr Anita Sganzerla led the visit and presented a selection of fascinating works from the collection, such as drawings by Parmigianino, Guercino, Rembrandt, Watteau, Daumier, Schiele and Freud. Everyone was welcome to share their impressions of the works, which were collected by Bellinger over her lifetime. Her experience as a dealer of Old Master Drawings shaped Bellinger’s diverse collecting focus.

19 March 2019

Organised by Heather Nickels

Curator Mary Doyle invited the group on a talk and walk through of the Drawing Biennial 2019 at Drawing Room. The exhibition and auction included over 200 drawings and showcased the most exciting artists working today. The group considered drawings by Richard Deacon, Huma Bhabha, George Shaw and Kathy Prendergast, which opened up discussions about the centrality of drawing to all spheres of artistic production.

17 May 2019

Organised by Heather Nickels

The group visited Draw Art Fair London, which took place at Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea. It was the first fair in the UK dedicated to modern and contemporary drawing, presenting all facets of drawing as a fundamental practice. The walkthrough introduced the group to rare works by modern masters and recent works from the 21st century, which were displayed side by side. Up to sixty galleries and exhibitors from such diverse cultural hubs as Russia, US, Iran, South Korea, Paris and Belgium were asked to curate individual exhibitions in a museum-style context.

1 July 2019

Organised by Jasmine Clark

On a visit to Sotheby’s, Cristiana Romalli, Senior Director in Old Master Drawings, introduced the group to a selection of works from the 3 July sale. Works examined included drawings by Luca Penni, Rosso Fiorentino, Raphael, Agostino Carracci, Jean Antoine Watteau and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Romalli shared some of her insights into the research and cataloguing processes, as well as raising issues that face drawings specialists such as attribution and dating. Following this tour, the group were introduced to the sale of British Watercolours and Drawings 1550-1850 by Jasmine Clark, Print Room Assistant, who discussed the collection of miniatures and the techniques used to achieve such portraits.

10 February 2020

Organised by Charlotte Wytema

Curator Isabel Seligman led the group on a tour of ‘Pushing Paper: Contemporary drawing from 1970 to now’, the British Museum’s first display dedicated solely to contemporary drawing. The exhibition examined why drawing has endured as a method of making art. Seligman discussed with the group a range of works from well-known artists including Rachel Whiteread, Richard Deacon and Anish Kapoor, as well as emerging artists such as Rachel Duckhouse and Adel Daoud. She explained her curatorial decisions in terms of concept and selection, after which the group looked closely at several drawings in the show.

23 January 2020

Organised by Saskia Rubin

The group was invited to a tour of ‘Bridget Riley’ in its final days, the acclaimed retrospective at the Hayward Gallery. Archivist Dr Alexandra Tommasini guided the group around the exhibition, providing a unique insight into the selection of canvases, prints, drawings, and preparatory materials on display. She also discussed with the group the working practices of this leading British artist.

7 April 2021

Organised by Charlotte Wytema, Saskia Rubin, and Jasmine Clark

The virtual seminar, ‘Paper Talks’, invited members to give a talk on their fascinating research. We had two talks on the agenda which promised to take us on a journey to Antwerp, quite the proposition in times of restricted travel. Dr Brecht Deseure, Post-doctoral Research Associate at King’s College London, presented the paper: ‘A visual testimony of the French Revolution: Realism, iconography and artistic inspirations in Pierre Goetsbloets’ Tydsgebeurtenissen”’. Maarten Bassens, Getty Paper Project Curatorial Fellow at The Courtauld, presented the paper: ‘To the letter: A re-examination of textual additions in the graphic work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’.