Master Drawings London Underlines Dealers’ Prominence In The Marketplace

Specially themed exhibitions by dealers will be among the highlights of Masters Drawings London from 5-11 July, an event which has gone from strength to strength since it was founded in 2001. It has reinforced London's position as an important centre for the international drawings market and now attracts collectors and museum curators from around the world. A total of 20 dealers will show works ranging from the 15th century to the present day in galleries within easy walking distance of one another in Mayfair and St James's. Master Drawings provides a rare opportunity to see the finest works offered by some of the world's best specialist dealers simultaneously in what has become the capital's most discreet blockbuster exhibition.

The exhibitions include:

Andrew Clayton-Payne will hold a loan exhibition of works by the Victorian artist Richard Dadd from the Royal Bethlem Hospital. The pictures, the only ones shown in Master Drawings London that will not be for sale, will include Dadd's sunset-bathed minarets from his travels in the Middle East and the eerie works that he created during his incarceration in the mental hospital.

Contemporary drawings by three artists will be on show at the John Martin Gallery in an exhibition entitled Drawing a Diversion. The dramatic abstract works of Pakistani-born Farina Alam, the playful drawings by the American Benjamin Jones, and British artist Chris Hipkiss' works in pencil will be evidence of the highly-individual directions that contemporary art follows.

Stephen Ongpin will exhibit three portrait drawings by David Hockney, one each from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They are in different media and all are of friends of Hockney's , one a dancer, another a poet and the third a fellow artist.

Master Drawings founder Crispian Riley-Smith will also host a contemporary exhibition, featuring botanical drawings by Evelyn Binns, Bridget Gillespie, and John Pastoriza-Piñol, who recently participated in 'The Highgrove Florilegium' publication. In recent years renewed world-wide interest in the field of botanical painting has ushered this long established art form into its Golden Age.

Trinity Fine Art will exhibit the lyrical drawings of Neapolitan artist Vicenzo Gemito. Known for his 19th century sculptures, Gemito produced his drawings with almost the same modelling and attention to detail as statues. The carefully-drawn lines in Portrait of a Young Woman (1919) precisely depict her hair and the shadowed depths in the curves of her body.

The British tradition of plein-air drawing will be on display at Lowell Libson, whose exhibition of works by early 19th-century watercolourist Robert Hills reflects the peacefulness and simplicity of the English countryside. Born in London, Hills travelled throughout the country to capture its nature in the muted palettes of his highly-finished works, ten of which will be on display from 1-11 July.

Day & Faber will exhibit French drawings from the 18th and 19th centuries at their Old Bond Street Gallery. In addition to several landscapes, the dealers will show a self-portrait by Eugène Fromentin, the celebrated author of Dominique. One of their highlights will be a François Boucher drawing of the heads of two girls.

A new feature of Master Drawings London this year will be afternoon Gallery Tours led by acknowledged experts. Patricia Allderidge, curator of the Richard Dadd Collection at the Royal Bethlem Hospital, will discuss the loan exhibition. Huon Mallalieu of Country Life magazine will lead a tour on English watercolours and drawings. Ann Marie Evans, who developed the Diploma Course in botanical painting at the Chelsea Physic Garden and led the selection panel for the Florilegium, will discuss the project at Crispian Riley-Smith's. While at Emanuel von Baeyer there will be two talks by art historians. Paul Spencer-Longhurst, who will discuss portraits, and Ann Dumas, who will speak about the dealer, collector and publisher Ambroise Vollard.

June 2008

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