March 2025
Saturday, March 1
Trois Crayons (French, "three crayons") The technique of drawing with black, white and red chalks (à trois crayons) on a paper of middle tone, for example mid-blue or buff. It was particularly popular in early and mid-18th century France with artists such as Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. (Clarke, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms)
Coming Up
Greetings from Trois Crayons HQ.
For this month’s edition of the newsletter, we have a selection of current events from across the UK and around the world. Edina Adam, Assistant Curator of Drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Jamie Gabbarelli, Prince Trust Associate Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, discuss the intersections of drawing and printmaking in anticipation of their joint exhibition and catalogue. Axel Moulinier provides a fabulous Drawing of the Month by Jean-Antoine Watteau. The customary selection of literary and audio highlights is followed, as ever, by the ‘Real or Fake’ section.
We would also like to thank the Drawing Foundation, and all who participated and attended our partnership event in New York at the start of February. It was a pleasure to meet so many readers in person, and we are grateful to Sotheby’s for their generous hospitality.
For next month’s edition, please direct any recommendations, news stories, feedback or event listings to tom@troiscrayons.art.
SUMMER EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT
We are delighted to announce our return to Frieze at No.9 Cork Street in the summer of 2025, open to the public from 26th June to 5th July.
This summer’s edition will build on the success of our inaugural 2024 exhibition by increasing the quantity and range of master works on offer - with over 200 drawings from 30 international galleries confirmed so far.
We will continue to expand our programme of insightful talks with industry professionals and provide guests the opportunity to engage with the leading figures in the art world.
NEWS
In Art World News
In Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago has received a transformative gift of French art from Boston-based collectors Jeffrey and Carol Horvitz, a “300-year panorama of French art” which is unique outside of France. The gift includes nearly 2,000 drawings, 200 paintings, and 50 sculptures from artists spanning from the 1500s to the 1800s. The gift comes with financial support that will rank among the largest monetary gifts the institution has ever received. At Master Drawings, the esteemed Editor Jane Turner will retire in April after 22 years of service. To quote the journal’s President Chips Moore, “Jane's remarkable skill as a drawing connoisseur and her tremendous gifts as an editor have contributed to the outstanding success of the journal over the past two decades”. In Vinci, a project of research and restoration is soon to begin on an unpublished depiction of a winged dragon with a unicorn on its head, holding a coat of arms, considered by some to be by Leonardo himself. Time will tell. In the Netherlands, where the Witt Library's digitisation project is taking place, works from the German and American Schools are due to be published online in the week commencing March 11. In South London, the BBC have reported on a fun story of a drawing by George Romney which was discovered in a US wheelie bin. The drawing is due to be auctioned at Roseberys later this month.
In Art Fair News
In Maastricht, the art world descends on the riverside city for the 38th edition of TEFAF. The fair runs from March 15-20, with preview days on March 13-14. Amidst the 7,000 years of art history which the fair boasts, 21 exhibitors will make up the Works on Paper section. The following week, in Paris, the drawings world gathers in the French capital for the Salon du Dessin’s 33rd edition and the festivities of the ‘Semaine du Dessin’. The fair runs at the Palais Brongniart from March 26-31, features 39 exhibitors, and includes a special display of drawings from The Museum of Fine Arts of Reims. Also in Paris, the Paris Print Fair runs from March 21-24 at the Réfectoire du Couvent des Cordeliers, and Drawing Now Paris runs from March 27-30 at the Carreau du Temple. In London, The London Original Print Fair runs from March 20-23 at Somerset House.
In Gallery and Auction News
In Paris, several shows have already been announced to coincide with La Semaine du Dessin, including Galerie La Nouvelle Athènes which opens a new exhibition of 19th century drawings on March 6. Nicolas Schwed is hosting an exhibition of drawings from March 20 – April 1 at his gallery on rue Saint-Honoré, 346. Christie’s Paris presents its drawings sale, ‘Dessins Anciens et du XIXe siècle incluant une sélection de terres cuites. "La Pensée & le geste"‘, which is on view from March 21, with the sale on March 26 at 3:00 PM (CET). Den Otter Fine Art, Ubbens Art and Galerie Lowet de Wotrenge are teaming up for a group exhibition, ‘Maîtres du Nord’, at Galerie Hervé Peron from March 24-31. LM Galerie is hosting its second exhibition at Galerie Michel Descours, ‘De Stefano Della Bella à Olivier Debré’, from March 24-30.
In London, Richard Nagy Ltd. & Stephen Ongpin Fine Art’s exhibition, ‘After Dust: Recent Drawings by Ofer Josef’ continues until March 7. Guy Peppiatt Fine Art’s exhibition of drawings and watercolours by Thomas Rowlandson continues until March 7, and Abbott & Holder’s ‘Exhibition of British Works on Paper’ continues until March 8. Karen Taylor Fine Art has published a new monographic catalogue and online exhibition, ‘Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming (1837-1924) A Lady of Adventurous Disposition’. The catalogue and exhibition details the recently rediscovered contents of a portfolio of nearly 100 watercolours which have remained with the artist’s family until now.
Jean-Baptiste Oudry, A tiger resting against a tree. Black and white chalk on green-blue paper, 254 x 452 mm. To be exhibited with Nicolas Schwed, Paris, 20 March – 1 April.
In Lecture and Event News
As noted in last month’s newsletter, the Gernsheim Study Days’ conference, ‘Mettere mano. Reworking Early Modern Drawings’ takes place at the Villino Stroganoff in Rome from March 4-7. The event can be followed live on VIMEO. In Weimar, a conference on Rembrandt connoisseurship, ‘Rembrandt in Weimar’ will take place at the Klassik Stiftung Weimar from March 20-21. Registration for attendance closes on March 7. In The Hague, a hybrid symposium on illuminated manuscripts, ‘Medieval miniatures from Byvanck to the RKD’, will take place at the RKD on March 18. Admission is free, but registration is required here. From March 26-27, the Salon du Dessin will host its 8th international symposium under the direction of Marco Simone Bolzoni, curator of Old Master and 19th century drawings from the Debra and Leon Black collection, New York. The conference is on the theme of ‘Travel Drawings’. A full programme and event registration is available here. In Paris, the Musée du Louvre will host two events this month at the Michel Laclotte Auditorium to celebrate the opening of ‘The Experience of Nature. Art in Prague at the Court of Rudolf II’. There will be a presentation of the exhibition at 12:30 pm on 26 March, and a round-table discussion at 7:00 pm on March 31. In New York, a graduate seminar, ‘Drawing Nature 1500-1900’, will take place at the Morgan Library & Museum on April 4. In Paris, a call for papers has been issued for an interdisciplinary workshop, ‘Working on Paper in 19th-Century Europe’, which will take place at American University of Paris on June 6. Applications close on March 15. In Cookham, the Stanley Spencer Gallery’s Annual Talk will be given by Rupert Maas this year. The event will take place on April 3 and tickets are available here for Rupert’s talk ‘To say Nothing of the Dog – Messing about in boats, in Spencer’s boyhood’.
In Literary and Academic News
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, has advertised a new vacancy, ‘Curator, Historic & Modern European Paintings and Drawings’. Applications are due by March 6. Master Drawings is now accepting submissions for the 8th Annual Ricciardi Prize of $5,000. The deadline is November 15, 2025. The award is given for the best new and unpublished article on a drawing topic (of any period) by a scholar under the age of 40. Bella Maniera has announced the 2nd edition of the Prix JRC, a prize worth 4,000€ for the support of a research project on French or Italian drawings from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Applications are open until April 25, 2025. Eric Pagliano’s epic ‘L’art du dessin: Les processus de création’ is due out later this month.
In Acquisition News
The Musée du Louvre has acquired an unpublished drawing by Baptiste Pellerin, as reported in La Tribune de L’Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired a drawing by Thomas Manby from Nonesuch Gallery. Artnet has reported on the sale of a group of previously unknown drawings by creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne.
EVENTS
Antonio Pisano, referred to as Pisanello, Allegory of the Luxuria (recto), around 1426. Pen and brown ink, traces of metalpoint or black chalk on reddened paper The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna © The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna.
This month we have picked out a selection of new and previously unhighlighted events from the UK and from further afield. For a more complete overview of ongoing exhibitions and talks, please visit our Events page.
UK
Wordlwide
Demystifying drawings
Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking 1400-1850
With Jamie Gabbarelli and Edina Adam
While often viewed and studied separately, drawings and prints have always been closely intertwined. They facilitated and generated the production of one another, and in some instances, clear distinctions between the two dissolved. Many artists created drawings specifically intended for translation into print, and an even greater number used prints as a training tool, copying from them to hone drawing skills. This reciprocal relationship goes even deeper, however, as innovative artists made fascinating hybrid works that blurred the boundaries between the two media, pushing against modern definitions and hierarchies.
Lines of Connection charts these historical and geographical continuities for the first time by bringing together works on paper of superb quality, foregrounding issues of artistic process and collaboration, technical innovation, and creative ingenuity. Featuring over 170 prints and drawings by such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Parmigianino, Hendrick Goltzius, Maria Sibylla Merian, Rembrandt van Rijn, and William Blake, this catalogue is a rich narrative introduction to the compelling, yet understudied, relationship between drawing and printmaking.
Hendrick Goltzius, Study of a Right Hand, 1588. Teylers Museum, Haarlem, N 058
Like the relationship between draughtsman and printmaker, this catalogue has been a collaborative effort between two specialists with intertwined skillsets. How did this collaboration enhance your understanding of the subject and what new lines of enquiry did it open?
[JG] Collaborating with each other made us constantly look at the material from a different perspective and reevaluate our initial ideas. For instance, I’ve spent a lot of time learning and thinking about printmaking techniques, their challenges, temporality, and the types of physical movement they involved, but I hadn’t devoted as much attention to how they compared or related to drawing. Including that perspective was eye-opening in both ‘directions’.
As a reference point for the project, which work most succinctly encapsulates the complexity and reciprocity of the relationship between drawing and printmaking, and how does it underscore the importance of discussing the two artforms together?
[JG] There are many great works we could choose! The two drawings of a hand by Hendrick Goltzius are perhaps the most emblematic of the complex relationship between these two media. Goltzius made a calligraphic drawing of a right hand using the visual vocabulary of engraving, and not just any type of engraved hatching, but the elegant system that he himself developed for his technically refined prints. We think that the drawing is Goltzius’s meditation on the intersection of his two principal artistic practices: on the close visual correspondence they can achieve, and at the same time on the profoundly divergent physical experience of producing similar marks in different media. As a supremely talented draftsman and innovative engraver, Goltzius was in the ideal position to reflect upon this relationship. And of course, we love that the drawing exists in two almost identical versions, because the two sheets challenge the conventional understanding of drawing as a unique work. [EA] But let’s not forget about the drawing after Lucas van Leyden’s engraving of a pilgrim family, which was created as a substitute for the impression of the print already rare in the seventeenth century. To approximate the model, the draughtsman behind this work, not only copied its model line by line, but also ran the sheet through a press to create a plate mark. As a result, the drawing was mistaken for a print multiple times, and until very recently it was accessioned as an engraving in the Rijksmuseum.
You adopt the vocabulary of translation studies to describe the relationship between printmaking and drawing. Could you unpack the significance of this choice and how it allowed you to recontextualise the relationship?
[EA] Translation studies allowed us to think about the topic in a holistic manner. For one, treating the process of turning a drawing into a print and vice versa, a translation emphasises the move from one medium to another and underscores the changes that take place in the process. We also borrowed some basic concepts from translation studies, including different modes of translation and types of correspondence to characterise the relationship between individual objects. Already Roman orators differentiate two basic approaches to translation: one that focuses on formal correspondence and another that strives for a functional one. When looking at a pair of objects, let’s say, Van Sichem’s woodcut after Goltzius’s Portrait of a Man in the Getty, we see the printmaker-connoisseur attempting to formally match his source, instead of interpreting the draughtsman’s shorthand indicating the background architecture or the mantle’s fur trim, he makes his marks identical to the drawn ones. In contrast, Anton Maria Zanetti, the 18th-century collector and amateur printmaker, created chiaroscuro woodcuts after Parmigianino drawings that he owned, but took a great deal of liberty in his translations, filling in and ‘completing’ sketched compositions and experimenting with colour palettes that were foreign to the early sixteenth century.
Peter Paul Rubens and Paulus Pontius, The Assumption of the Virgin, about 1624. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 98.GG.14
Edina, you note that 19th century notions of ‘originality’ led to the emergence of a hierarchy which prioritised drawings over prints. To readdress this comparatively modern phenomenon, you propose to exchange loaded terms such as “reproductive prints” with more neutral ones like “interpretative modelli”. Could you expand on the significance of language and this semantic rebalance.
[EA] Print scholarship is bedeviled by terms that both reflect and reinforce historical prejudices and value judgements in ways that we thought hinder fresh reinterpretations. So we made a conscious effort to avoid terms that reinforced perceived hierarchies and use a more nuanced vocabulary to describe the phenomena we were observing. For instance, we introduced the term “interpretative modelli” for drawings like Paulus Pontius and Peter Paul Rubens’s Assumption of the Virgin to differentiate them from drawings that are created to protect the modelli in the process of transfer. Scholarly literature, like Michael Bury’s excellent catalogue The Print in Italy, uses the term “intermediary drawing” to describe these two types of objects. We settled on the term “interpretative modelli” to acknowledge that these drawings themselves are translations–they take a painted, a sculpted source and transform them into a drawn model that can facilitate the making of a print.
Jamie, you chart the evolution of prints which were made to mimic the appearance of drawings and serve as indexes for those specific objects. What significance do these kinds of prints hold for the history of drawings and drawings collections?
[JG] The topic of printed imitations of drawings is huge, but delving into it made me fully appreciate just how important this genre of prints was to early modern connoisseurs and collectors. Nowadays, in our seamlessly photographic age, prints after drawings are mostly thought of (it at all) as a technical curiosity, a niche subject in the history of printmaking. But this type of print developed in lockstep with the collecting of drawings: they were mutually sustaining phenomena. Prints after drawings made information about works in private collections available to a broad audience, and enhanced the prestige of collectors (the famous, deluxe Cabinet Crozat is just one example), introducing at the same time the notion of the value of provenance. They allowed collectors and amateurs to remotely discuss questions of style, contributing significantly to the growth of connoisseurship (for instance Gabburri correctly questioned the attribution of a drawing he knew only through its translation in print). In some cases they brought together multiple examples of drawings by the same artist in ways that were not possible in a single collection, thereby solidifying the notion of an artist’s oeuvre. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first illustrated histories of art in Europe contain printed translations of drawings. These prints not only played a significant role in the development of art history, but were also intimately involved in artistic training, in both a formal academic context and in private practice. Crayon manner prints produced in Paris, for example, were sent to drawing academies in smaller centres, while artists avidly collected prints after drawings as materials for their training – to learn from and engage with the works of past masters.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Saint Jerome in Penitence, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Clarence Buckingham Collection
Jost Amman after Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Penitent Saint Jerome, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 2008
Edina, you dedicate an entire chapter to ‘Drawings from Prints’, and a subsection to imitations as deception. How did the educational practice of imitating prints potentially feed into more nefarious practices by artists and later owners.
[EA] Imitating a print was a popular way of displaying one’s skills as a draughtsman. In the exhibition we have Jost Amman’s The Penitent St. Jerome after the woodcut by Lucas von Cranach the Elder. Amman, who was in his late teens when he executed this work, carefully traced Cranach’s composition then replicated the linework in pen and ink. While the drawing might have briefly deceived the viewer, the budding artist included small details that distinguished his drawing from the print (such as the coats of arms in the upper left) and called attention to his authorship (his monogram in the open tome). Forgeries were usually created using the same method but in contrast to virtuoso copies their ‘success’ depended upon the viewer never realising the deception. An exciting example we cite in the catalogue is a drawing from the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest that was made after facsimile of the so-called Buxheim Saint Christopher, a 15th-century woodcut, a printed imitation of which was published in a journal in 1776. But how do we know that this drawing is a “nefarious imitation” and not a substitute for a rare impression like the Rijksmuseum’s drawing after Lucas van Leyden? For one, it was sold to the collector Nicholas Esterházy as a print shortly after it was made. The counterfeiter also used a sheet that bears a common fifteenth-century watermark.
Jamie, you provide an overview of the elusive topic of ‘hybrid’ works, where monotypes, touched-up counterproofs and hand-coloured prints defy neat categorisation and blur the boundaries between the two media. How did these creative experiments foster invention and artistic expression?
[JG] The section on hybrids is both broad and diverse. I think one of the takeaways for me from the study of these works was that early modern artists didn’t necessarily think of their practice in terms of strict categories. Great artists are often curious and attracted to explore the expressive potential of the tools and materials they have at their disposal. We still don’t know why exactly Castiglione started making monotypes (a type of object for which there was little or no precedent, and for which there was no obvious market), but we can understand how this new type of work arose in the studio of a radically experimental draftsman with access to a printing press. Draftsmen who worked in the proximity of printmakers began to make counterproofs very early on, embracing a new technique that took on a life of its own, stimulating innovation and experimentation (the complex use made of it by Hubert Robert and Jean-Robert Ango is emblematic). On the other hand, some artists intentionally created hybrid works as statements on intermediality. In this context, I see Joseph Wright’s Self-Portrait in black and white chalk as a profound reflection on his personal relationship to print, and in particular to mezzotint – the medium responsible for shaping his public reputation as an artist.
As a closing note, what do you hope readers will take away from this catalogue, and how do you hope future scholars might take these ideas forward.
[EA] This is just a first attempt at thinking about the relationship between drawing and printmaking in a more comprehensive and equitable manner. We hope that the exhibition and the catalogue will serve as a broad introduction to the topic, sparking conversations within the field and encouraging curators, art historians, and collectors to consider the two media inseparable rather than treating them in silos.
This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at The Art Institute of Chicago from March 15 to June 1, 2025 and at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center from July 1 to September 14, 2025.
DRAWING OF THE MONTH
Dr Axel Moulinier, collaborator on A Watteau Abecedario, catalogue raisonné of the paintings by Antoine Watteau, under the supervision of Pr. Emeritus Martin Eidelberg, has kindly chosen our eighteenth drawing of the month.
Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)
Tête de femme tournée vers la gauche portant un collier
Red, black and white chalks, 10 × 8.5 cm, Paris, private collection
Among previously known paintings and drawings that have never been presented to the public, the exhibition Les Mondes de Watteau at the musée Condé in Chantilly (March 8, 2025 - June 15, 2025) presents a new drawing by Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Since the publication of the catalogue raisonné of Watteau’s drawings in 1996, very few sheets by the artist have reappeared. Yet this drawing of the head of a woman, which had not been seen since the 1850s, came up for auction in 2021. The research conducted for the exhibition catalogue (with Louna Commans and Baptiste Roelly) has allowed us to document the provenance of the drawing.
The first element to be noted is the collector’s mark of the miniaturist Peter Adolf Hall (1739-1793, L.1285). Hall purchased several lots at the sale of the painter François Boucher (1703-1770), held on February 18, 1771. This head of a woman might have been part of lot 346: “sept autres desseins de Watteau dont deux contrépreuves” [“seven other drawings by Watteau including two counterproofs”]. Subsequently the drawing was sold at Hall’s anonymous auction on November 15, 1779, where it was bought by the —rather undocumented— dealer J. Desmarest.
The drawing becomes more difficult to trace during the 19th century. Fortunately, a coloured lithograph after the drawing, executed by Charles Damour (1813-1860), bears the date “1855” in graphite and indicates: “L’original appartient à M. Saint-Ange Chasselat, peintre” [“This original drawing belongs to M. Saint-Ange Chasselat, painter”]. One can tentatively suggest that the drawing went for auction after the death of Henri Jean Saint-Ange Chasselat (1813-1880) on May 5, 1880, as part of lot 36, composed of “nombreux dessins anciens” [“many drawings by the Old masters”]. It was then acquired by the dealer and framer Jacquinot (active 1859-1887). An inscription on a label on the verso of the backing board reads: “Mons. H. Porges”, which identifies Henri Porgès (1828-1901), collector of miniatures and brother of the diamond dealer Jules Porgès (1839-1921). In 1885, Henri Porgès sold part of his collection, and this drawing was paired with another one (“Têtes de jeunes femmes. Deux dessins aux trois crayons, dans le même cadre. Haut., 13 cent. ; larg., 16 cent.” [“Heads of Young Women. Two drawings in trois crayons, in the same frame…”]). After losing its pendant —which remains to be found—, this drawing only reappeared at auction in 2021, when it was sold by Couteau-Bégarie & Associés on June 29, 2021. It was then acquired by a collector who enthusiastically accepted to lend the drawing in its ornamented frame to the exhibition in Chantilly.
This head of a woman seen in lost profile encompasses the technical subtlety and the infused beauty of Watteau’s drawings of heads. She is looking down, her eyelids semi-closed, perhaps caught in the act of reading. She wears a delicately delineated pearl necklace, tied with a velvet bow. The brief, rapid and skilful use of the red chalk to draw the flesh, complemented by black chalk to draw other elements, such as clothing and hair, finally highlighted in white chalk, makes this sheet one of the most recognizable and appealing heads of women by Watteau. Displayed in the first section of the exhibition dedicated to self-portraits, portraits, and stock types, this anonymous head belongs to the type the artist created to use in his fêtes galantes, in which women absorbed in various activities added to the dreaminess of these long-celebrated paintings.
This drawing is currently on display at the musée Condé in Chantilly (France) in Les Mondes de Watteau, until June 15, 2025.
Real or Fake
Can we fool you? The term “fake” may be slightly sensationalist when it comes to old drawings. Copying originals and prints has long formed a key part of an artist’s education and with the passing of time the distinction between the two can be innocently mistaken.
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
At first glance these two drawings might appear to be by the same artist, depict the same model and originate from the same life drawing session. The drawings share the same black chalk outlines, white hatching on the body, and the same level of near completion. On closer inspection, however, one drawing begins to fall apart, and alarm bells start to ring. Although both drawings were given to the Harvard Art Museums by Grenville L. Winthrop in 1943, one has been identified as a forgery, made to mimic the other, which is an original by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. But which was which, and what gives it away?
Scroll to the end to reveal the answer.
Resources and Recommendations
to listen
For those who wish to learn more about the history of paper, understand what a watermark is and how paper has been made since the Middle Ages, Les Enluminures’ podcast episode from 2022 offers an ideal point of entry. Paper makers in Fabriano developed the use of wire-made signs as identifying marks in the Middle Ages. These impressions, imbedded in the paper, are today known as “watermarks” and served as the papermakers’ logo and calling card. Find out how these marks can help in identifying the provenance and production of medieval manuscripts and drawings.
TO watch
Behind The Canvas - S1E3 - Graphic Conservation Company
America’s favourite paintings restorer, Julian Baumgartner, visits the Graphic Conservation Company for a tour of the studio and an introduction to some paper restoration techniques. Julian discovers how torn, discoloured and seemingly hopeless paper can be rescued and restored. Be advised, do not try these techniques at home!
to read
Memories of Rome. Drawings as Souvenirs around 1800
The Bibliotheca Hertziana’s exhibition at the Palazzo Zuccari, ‘Memories of Rome. Drawings as Souvenirs around 1800’, may have just closed, but an excellent digital record of the show is well worth a read. The online exhibition pairs the Hertziana’s album of copies of views of Rome and the Roman Campagna with the originals by Franz Caucig (1755–1828). Drawings of these places were in great demand with Grand Tourists, and, knowingly or not, tourists hoovered up original and copied works alike
answer
The original, of course, is the upper image. As pointed out to me in New York last month by a loyal reader, I should clarify that the ‘of course’ is a tongue-in-cheek Britishism, and the answers to the Real or Fake questions are by no means obvious!
Although a monogram or inscription on an old drawing is no guarantee of authenticity, and numerous unsigned, unmonogrammed, drawings by Whistler do exist, this forger did not attempt Whistler’s “butterfly”. In addition to the missing monogram, however, various stylistic and anatomical shortcomings reveal the forger’s hand. Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., former curator of American art at Harvard, commented on these shortcomings in 2004:
“Whistler was a very good draftsman when he made his drawing and understood the figure beautifully,” says Stebbins. “The way that the right arm and elbow come around the model’s head, and the way that her left hand is folded under her face, are convincing. The arm by the faker is not convincing. The left leg by Whistler you believe is folded underneath. The left leg by the faker looks cut off, a stump without musculature, a piece of spaghetti.”
The faker has also revealed a small misunderstanding of the master by including an horizon line, which Whistler would not have done in any drawing of this sort.
“The whole figure by the faker is sexier and flimsier than Whistler’s,” says Stebbins, “and looks a little like the pinups of the 1930s or early 1940s, the Betty Grable pinups that the soldiers had. Whistler’s nude is not a pinup at all.” Stebbins believes that the fake was probably made in the 1930s.
“Forgeries tell you what period they are,” he says. This is an important characteristic of many forgeries and is seen again and again in the history of fakery—they reflect the aesthetic of their day and of the forger, rather than that of the artist being forged, and they con experts who are the forger’s contemporaries. The fakes look incongruous only later, to those with a different aesthetic. For that reason, the late Agnes Mongan, curator of drawings, held that the life of a fake was one generation.”
See: Christopher Reed, "Wrong!", Harvard Magazine (Cambridge, MA, September 2004-October 2004), vol. 107, no. 1, pp. 50-51.
