Something Beautiful

Mira calligraphiae monumenta (Getty Museum)

These are very well done, although perhaps a little strange to the modern sensibility -- seven sets of facing pages from the Mira calligraphiae monumenta, c. 1595, by Joris Hoefnagel (watercolors, gold paint, silver paint, ink on parchment and paper).

You can read about Herr Hoefnagel here. 

Kawase Hasui

Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) is my favorite among the many excellent Japanese printmakers of the 19th and 20th centuries.   Here are two of his best works, imo --

Taishō Pond in Kamikōchi (color woodblock print).

Snow at Funabori, Edogawa, 1932 (color woodblock print).

Both are at the Los Angeles County Museum site, where many other Hasui prints can also be found. 

Interior of a Barn (with a Family of Coopers)

This drawing strikes me as very appealing -- Interior of a Barn with a Family of Coopers, c. 1763, by François Boucher (black and white chalk on light tan paper)

Ernest C. Peixotto

I think that many of these drawings by Ernest C. Peixotto (1869-1940) are quite wonderful.   They are nearly all depictions of historic sites, made during the short period between 1892 and 1898. 

Here are six that I particularly liked --

Cambridge,  1892 (lithographic pencil)

Cliveden,  1896 (ink and ink wash)

Birmingham Meeting House, 1897 (ink wash) (personal favorite)

 

Herkimer,  1897 (ink wash) 

West Point Revolutionary Relics,  1897 (ink wash)

Yorktown,  1898 (ink wash)

 

There is some information about the artist here.   He seems to have been an unusual man.

Six 19th-century drawings

Six nineteenth-century European drawings, from a Getty Museum exhibition of last year.

I like several of these but my favorite is unquestionably The Discouraged Artist,  1895, by Henri Fantin-Latour (black lithographic crayon on tracing paper) .

Landscape with bare tree and plowman (drawing)

Here is a drawing that seems to me quite exquisite -- Landscape with a Bare Tree and a Plowman, 1864, by Léon Bonvin (Pen and brown ink, watercolor, and gum arabic) 

Drawings: Portraits (modern)

One of my recurring interests is "drawing," in the sense of drawings that might interest a collector or a museum.   Recently I came across a page on Eye Contact: Modern American Portrait Drawings from the National Portrait Gallery, a touring exhibition. 

My particular interest is, I suppose, drawings made with as few materials as possible.   Below are some portraits done in graphite, charcoal, ink or ink wash. 

Graphite --
Milton Avery
Truman Capote
Ornette Coleman
Hart Crane
Stuart Davis
W. C. Fields
Jamie Wyeth

Charcoal --
Paul Haviland
Edward Hopper
Henry James
John Steinbeck
Igor Stravinsky
John Twachtman

Ink --
Rico Lebrun,
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Bill Robinson (Bojangles)

Ink wash --
Harold Rosenberg

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Drawings done in gouache, pastel, or watercolor seem to me almost a different genre, because the image receives so much assistance from the color media.   

Gouache --
Alice B. Toklas

Pastel --
James Baldwin
Countee Cullen
B. Delaney
Frances Perkins
Everitt Shinn

Watercolor --
Mark Strand

Claude Monet (portrait in charcoal)

This won't be to everyone's taste, but I think it very fine -- Claude Monet, 1890, charcoal on paper, by American artist Theodore Robinson.  At the Seattle Art Museum.

Ken Trevey Print Collection

You are sure to find one or more works you like at this page on a UCSB exhibition of American prints of the 1930s. 

Drawing (Cranach the Elder)

I think this a very handsome drawing -- Portrait of a Man,  ca. 1530, by Lucas Cranach the Elder (pen and black ink, black chalk, and oil paint).