4 July -10 July 2009
Master Drawings 2009Master Drawings London has become an important and significant event in the international art market calendar. This year it will take place for the ninth consecutive year from 4-10 July. Both national and international drawings dealers will hold individual gallery exhibitions throughout Mayfair and St. James’s. The works on sale will date from 15th century to the present day, showing a broad expanse of themed or monographic exhibitions as well as an opportunity for dealers to expose drawings new to the art market. There will be a strong roster of exhibitors this year demonstrating the breadth of the market and showing the very best of what can be acquired. New exhibitor, Trinity Contemporary will be showing recent drawings by British born artists. In Between the Lines, will show works by Gavin Turk, Gary Hume, Tim Head, Siàn Bowen, Claude Heath and Tracey Emin. There will also be significant pieces by younger artists such as Kate Atkin (born 1981) and Juliet Haysom (born 1978) whose drawings have already been acquired by the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Trinity Contemporary will also be showing an unusual collection of ‘sculptural drawings’ commissioned especially by the gallery. This will include James Brooks’s Seamingly different, yet seemingly the same [2009], of a baseball and a cricket ball, primed in gesso, drawn on in small pencil circles, and mounted together in a Perspex box on wooden plinth. Newcomers to Master Drawings this year include New York based dealers Hill Stone, Inc, specialists in Old Master and modern works on paper; as well as Sphinx Fine Art who will be exhibiting drawings by Old Masters as well as Russian drawings. Madrid based dealer José de la Mano will also be exhibiting for the first time as will Florian Härb. Event organiser Crispian Riley-Smith will show a fine selection of botanical Old Masters alongside contemporary botanical works by the renowned watercolourist Evelyn Binns. He will also show 18th century Dutch drawings. Specialists in British 18th- and 19th- century watercolours and drawings, W·S Fine Art/ Andrew Wyld will be unveiling a highly important discovery: a large and dramatic watercolour by the great Norwich School painter, John Sell Cotman (1782-1842), which depicts a derelict interior. Lowell Libson who also specialises in this area will be showing an interesting selection of drawings and watercolours including a rare group of four drawings of London by Michel van Overbeek, drawn c.1663; an exceptional watercolour of Ambleside by Francis Towne; as well as fine examples of works by Alexander Cozens, Thomas Gainsborough, William Henry Hunt, Edwin Landseer and Edward Lear, among others. Stephen Ongpin Fine Art will show over fifty drawings by Italian, French and British artists dating from the 16th to the late 20th century. Particular highlights this year will include a significant pastel drawing of Waterloo Bridge by Claude Monet which was drawn in 1901 during the artist’s final stay in London. It will be the first time that the picture has been seen in public for over sixty years. Ongpin will also show a rare charcoal study of a reclining woman by Lucian Freud as well as a superb chalk drawing by Egon Schiele of his four-year old nephew which has never before been exhibited, nor published. Important French and English drawings and watercolours from the 18th and 19th centuries, including two very rare drawings by Samuel Scott and a beautiful study by Gericault will be shown by Agnew’s. Theobald Jennings will return this year with a superb exhibition of 20th century master drawings including fine examples by two of Germany's most renowned artists, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel. They will also be devoting an entire room of their newly extended gallery to a group of drawings from the Estate of German artist George Grosz whom they represent in this country. A watercolour and pencil drawing by Paul Signac (1863-1935) entitled Quai de Passy, 1900, will be exhibited by Stoppenbach & Delestre. Primarily known for his paintings, Signac started using watercolour in around 1892, he is quoted as saying (in 1910), “Oil painting is a serious battle, watercolour a playful game”. April 2009 For further information and images: Fiona Chipchase/Diana Cawdell Archive
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