“The Root of Everything”: Drawing in Europe from the Renaissance to the Modern Period
On campus
Dr Rachel Sloan, Dr Rachel Hapoienu and Kate Edmondson
Monday 15 – Thursday 18 April 2024
The Learning Centre and Prints and Drawings Study Room at Somerset House
£495
This course is now full; please email short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk if you would like to join the waiting list.
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 2024.
Course description
Based on examples from The Courtauld’s world-class graphic collections, this course investigates the essential building blocks of drawings: the media and supports which artists have used across the centuries. We shall explore the material properties of different papers and media, their changing use from the Renaissance to the modern period, and the ways in which materials have been chosen to convey meaning. These object-study sessions in the prints and drawings room are complemented in the classroom by lectures and seminars that look at the role of drawing in the wider history of European art. Topics covered include the changing status of drawing within an artist’s oeuvre; the role of drawing in artists’ education; the practice of selling, collecting and exhibiting drawings; the development of new media and techniques, and the emergence of drawing as an autonomous art form.
This course is co-taught by specialists in different historical periods and aspects of works on paper: an art-historian, a curator and a paper conservator, and includes hands-on sessions exploring media and materials.
N.B. This course will take place at Somerset House, in the Learning Centre and the Prints and Drawings Study Room. All other on campus courses will be at Vernon Square.
Lecturers' biographies
Dr Rachel Sloan is Associate Curator for Works on Paper at The Courtauld. She earned her PhD from The Courtauld with a thesis on Symbolism and artistic exchange between France and Britain. Rachel 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) and Helen Saunders: Modernist Rebel (The Courtauld, 2022-23).
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 worked in previous curatorial positions for the Katrin Bellinger collection in London and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. She curated Reading Drawings (2017) 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. From 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.