Stephen Farthing RA
10 works | 12:15 minutes
Artist Stephen Farthing RA had a solo show, The Back Story, at the RA in 2010. He was the Rootstein Hopkins Professor of Drawing at the University of the Arts London from 2004-2017.
Dame Laura Knight RA
This drawing demonstrates just how skilled Laura Knight was at looking at something and then making, not a copy of it, but an interpretation of what was going on.
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1. Laura Knight's study of a model
George Dance RA
Van dreamt of having taken a dose of physic in Van Diemen's Land
As a drawing, the important thing is that Dance imagined it all, but then he put in this big shadow that runs through the middle of the drawing, which gives it a physical credibility.
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2. George Dance's dreaming Van Diemen
Richard Doyle
Page from the catalogue of the 1850 Royal Academy exhibition, with drawings , 1850
Drawing doesn’t have to be some big demonstration of skill, it can be drawn onto any convenient surface as an aid to memory, or literally as a way of amusing oneself.
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3. Richard Doyle's exhibition catalogue
Sir John Gilbert RA
Drawings of heads for 'Field of the Cloth of Gold' , June 1873
This drawing was made as part of the preparation for a large picture called ‘The Field of the Cloth of Gold’. It’s looking not only at the shape of an individual’s head but how a crowd of heads might form.
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4. John Gilbert's drawings of heads
Gerard van der Gucht
The fifth lowest rib, for Cheselden's Osteographia , by 1733
Here we have a draughtsman staring at a bone and trying to draw it as accurately as he can. It has little or nothing to do with the imagination or art, it’s somebody practising the craft of drawing.
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5. Gerard van der Gucht's fifth lowest rib
Angelica Kauffman RA
A scene from the story of Rhodope and King Psammetichus of Egypt , 1780
It’s a rather carefully, beautifully made drawing that’s made by combining the imagination with a knowledge of the way things really are.
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7. Angelica Kauffman's Rhodope
Henry Hugh Armstead RA
If you start to look at drawings not as a series of lines on paper but as a meeting of a series of lines and a white metaphysical space, I think you get a better idea of what a drawing is.
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8. Henry Hugh Armstead's floating female figures
Thomas Banks RA
Portrait of John Malin , ca. 1768-69
This drawing has been so heavily drawn that it has ceased to be a drawing, because the paper is no longer playing an active part in our understanding of the drawing, it is merely a support.
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9. Thomas Banks's portrait of John Malin
Tracey Emin RA
Trying to Find You 1 , 2007
I suspect it’s not really a painting. I think it’s a drawing. What is a drawing? It’s an idea. Drawings are full of ideas, they’re not necessarily full of resolutions.
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10. Tracey Emin's painting – or is it a drawing?
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