May 2012

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The Courtauld’s current temporary exhibition displays the best of its collection of Victorian drawings and watercolours, including works by Turner, Etty, Landseer, the Pre-Raphaelites and later pieces by Whistler and Beardsley. It is the first time a show has been devoted to this area of the collection, reflecting the growing interest in this field of art-historical study.

The diverse range of work includes preparatory studies for paintings, sculptures and stained glass to highly executed watercolours and gouache with gum varnish, producing the most vibrant of finishes. Highlights include Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s portrait study for his celebrated painting Venus Verticordia, c.1863-64 (see above). This is a soft and voluptuous picture drawn with graphite on paper depicting Venus as a powerful yet sensuous woman with an intriguing glaze across her eyes. Remarkably, Rossetti is said to have found his model, a cook, on the street. After a brief encounter he invited her into his studio to become his idealised Venus.

Also featured is Edward Burne-Jones’ intricate Study of a draped female figure for ‘The Garland Weavers’, c. 1866, his equally detailed stained glass window in the Victoria & Albert Museum, and Edwin Landseer’s Head of a Lion, c.1862, a coloured sketch of great intensity which he produced in preparation for the sculptured lions at the base of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square. Landseer’s evident awe of the beast, translated by his almost regal depiction of its profile, is aided by the fact that he drew this from life, he is said to have spent many a day sketching the lions at London’s Zoological Gardens.

John Millais’ The Parting of Ulysses, c.1862, is a watercolour copy of his own wood-engraved illustration and demonstrates the medium's increased popularity – he appears to have made the work purely to meet the art market’s demand for small-scale watercolours. The show concludes with Charles Conder’s previously unexhibited Les Incroyables, a stunning watercolour and gouache on silk of a decadent set of Parisian youths, emphasising the exciting variety of media and genre on display.

‘Life, Legend, Landscape’ reflects a change in time, when drawings and watercolours became regarded as significant works of art within their own right, moving away from being considered merely a form of study into a sought after market. At the very least, the Courtauld’s small but perfectly formed exhibition of landscapes, genre scenes and subjects from literature and legend by some of the greatest Royal Academicians and major artists of the Victorian age reminds us of the beauty of intimacy and immediacy that drawing can provide.

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