Drawing Conclusions: Sketching as a Connoisseurship Exercise

After Winslow Homer, Art Students and Copyists in the Louvre Gallery, Paris.  Published 1868.  Wood Engraving.  National Gallery of Art.  Print Purchase Fund (Rosenwald Collection) 1958.3.7

In the grand old tradition of copying in art galleries, Winterthur students are frequently found curled up in some corner of the house with a pencil and paper. In our case, sketching is encouraged not to improve our draughtsmanship skills —although this can be an unintended result – but to train our eyes to look slowly and carefully at a variety of objects, contributing to our bank of visual memories as connoisseurs. Between Summer Institute, Material Life in America, and Furniture and Metals Connoisseurship, first years have been charged with executing over a dozen object sketches thus far, with various permutations to the assignment.

Metals Block called for a high volume of sketching, a requirement that had us exploring the house on a regular basis, trawling for eye-catching examples of silver, copper, brass, and the like. We were encouraged to record our questions and observations directly onto our drawing paper.

 

Sketches from Metals Connoisseurship Block, WPAMC Class of 2017

In Material Life in America, we each sketched the objects we would be writing research papers about (soon to be posted on this blog). Professor Ritchie Garrison encouraged us to spend at least an hour with our objects, as Harvard art historian Jennifer L. Roberts has required her students to do. (For an interesting article by Roberts on the topic of looking, which we read in Summer Institute, see http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/11/the-power-of-patience.) Spending this extended time observing and copying guided the direction of our research.

For Furniture Connoisseurship, we were tasked with creating scale drawings, a painstaking exercise that required some special tools: a measuring tape, graph paper, and a good eraser. Striving to achieve such a high level of detail gives the sketcher a deep understanding of an object’s proportions and symmetry…or lack thereof. Drawing this tea table in the Queen Anne dining room called my attention to an instance of damage that I might not otherwise have noticed (note the loss on the left side of the apron).

    

Tea Table, Boston 1750-1760. 1963.0619.  Sketch by Emelie Gevalt

Delving into the painted patterns on this Robert Crossman chest, I connected firsthand with the maker’s intricate compass-drawn designs.

    

Chest with Drawers,  Robert Crossman, Taunton, MA, 1742

Although not all of us would take up pencils with zeal on a voluntary basis, assigned sketching has proved to be a surprisingly pleasant and even meditative activity. This trove of pewter in the Fraktur Room provides a peaceful, sunny spot for a quiet hour of drawing, offering a welcome change of pace from intellectual analysis.

 

By Emelie Gevalt, WPAMC ‘17