Although the theme of the artist at work is harder to find in Katrin Bellinger’s favourite area, 16th- and 17th-century Italian drawings, the collection does include some beautiful examples by Parmigianino, Pier Francesco Mola and Livio Mehus, among others. The 18th century is well represented, both in Italy, with drawings by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo, and in France, with Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Hubert Robert and Jean-August-Dominque Ingres. The subject’s omnipresence in the 19th century is reflected in the collection’s holdings, which include Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Paul Mathey, Georges Seurat and James Ensor. Self-portraits and studio scenes continue to proliferate in the 20th century, as shown by the works of Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth, William Orpen, Egon Schiele and Horst Janssen.

The Katrin Bellinger collection’s holdings offer a wide-ranging overview of the theme of the artist’s model, with examples spanning from the 18th century, with Giambattista Tiepolo’s Academy of the nude, to the present. While many works focus on the didactic aspect of the life class, others place the spotlight on the model as an individual, perhaps showing them in a moment of rest. Others still, like Thomas Rowlandson’s and Charles West Cope’s satirical images, poke fun at the obsessive pursuit of ideal beauty and the ever-present fear of immorality.

Drawing from life was the final stage in the three-part training prescribed for artists since the Renaissance. Young apprentices first had to train their hand by copying their master’s drawings and studying antique casts. French academies introduced the life class in the 17th century, admitting male models exclusively. From its establishment in late 1768, the Royal Academy of Art in London also prescribed several years of drawing the nude for its pupils. A comprehensive understanding of the workings of the male body was considered essential for any artist regardless of his future ambitions.

In the second half of the 19th century, with the rise of realism, the demand for models of both genders increased exponentially. Although female models were a common sight by that point, a certain uneasiness endured. A flurry of images exposes the unsettling relationship between the overwhelmingly male cohort of artists and the exposed body of the model. By playing with multiple levels of gaze, Georges Paul Leroux’s and Maxime Dethomas’s drawings blur the boundary between sanctioned practice and voyeurism.

Numerous 20th-century photographs capture the interaction between artist and model both in the studio and in the art school. Less well represented is the experience of women artists working from the nude model, a taboo that long outlived the restrictions imposed on women’s artistic education. It is refreshing to see Bill Brandt’s shot of a nude model posing for Brynhild Parker, showing her as a fine practitioner of the British figurative style.

The tradition of representing painting, sculpture and architecture as female figures – abstract entities guiding the (usually male) artist to glory –, emerged during the sixteenth-century. In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari described Painting, Sculpture and Architecture as the three Sister Arts all born from one father, Disegno, signifying both the act of drawing and the conceptual ideation of design. The ambition of Italian Renaissance artists to elevate the status of the visual arts from manual to intellectual activities thus resulted in their inclusion among the nobler Liberal Arts.

The sisterhood between the Arts is at the centre of Michel François Dandré-Bardon’s drawing and Daniel Berger’s print after Angelica Kauffman. While a light-hearted sketch by Pietro Testa adds a hint of irony to the traditional paragone, or rivalry, between painting and sculpture, by exaggerating the latter’s creative frenzy.

From the 17th century, the easily-blurred boundary between portraits of women painters and allegories of Painting allowed for ambitious affirmations of female agency in the arts. Much rarer is the representation of Design (in Italian, Disegno is a masculine noun) as a female artist intently studying a classical cast. In her ground-breaking work, one of her four Elements of Art painted for the ceiling of the Royal Academy’s Council Room in Somerset House, Angelica Kauffman reclaimed women’s proficiency in all realms of artistic creation.

While artists’ hands at work are a common sight within the Katrin Bellinger collection, this selection is devoted to works that thematise the hand as the primary object of investigation. The group features hands drawing, writing, painting, and sculpting, but also hands sharpening quills and cleaning brushes. Notoriously difficult to depict, hands have always been a challenging subject-matter for artists, often serving as a testing ground for their skills in representation. Even more testing is to draw one’s own hands. Just as, with the aid of a mirror, training artists turn to their own faces as a readily available subject, so they may also study their hands, as we see in Edgar Degas’ drawing of his right hand sketching his left.

Arguably the fundamental instrument of the artist, hands constitute a beguiling topic of investigation. Representing an individual’s hands may bring one closer to the origin of their creative powers. At times equated to portraits or self-portraits, depictions of hands can be as different as the motivations behind them. Vincenzo Gemito’s bronze cast of the hands of his mentor Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier is not only a tribute to the older master but also a proxy for the man himself, whose company Gemito sorely missed.

Sir Francis Seymour Haden’s series of prints of his own hands, variously drawing, etching, dry-pointing, or painting are a true catalogue of his skills. Photographer Nicola Bensley said of the resting hand of Frank Auerbach that it was ‘the hand of a master painter…truly.’ Georg Baselitz’s both haunting and powerful prints of his own hand belong to a broader personal investigation of the human form. Finally, the hand-prints collected by Marianne Raschig, signed and dated by each artist, stand as compelling testimonies of direct contact as well as being instruments through which Raschig developed her influential theories on palm-reading.

The German Romantic drawings now include Carl Julius Milde’s intimate portrait of Julius Oldach and Erwin Speckter in their studio in Munich, of 1826; inscribed in red pen by Speckter ‘Mr Jul: Oldach and I and our Friedel in the workshop / for my dear mother.’ Given both friends’ untimely death before the age of 30, this youthful image is a precious testimony of their companionship and shared aspirations.

Also datable to the mid-to-late 1820s is a jewel-like painting by Carl Gustav Boerner, in typical Biedermeier style and a rare example of the famous art dealer’s artistic talents. The room is embellished with all the usual paraphernalia of the painter’s studio and a mannequin in a toga looks over the artist’s shoulder.

Another notable addition to the paintings collection is an intriguing view of Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema’s studio at Townshend House by the artist’s sister-in-law, Emily Epps Williams. The panel belongs to the set of forty-five which originally formed part of a decorative scheme in the hall of Alma-Tadema’s remodelled house on Grove End Road.

The depictions of female artists at work now feature Katherine Read’s masterful pastel portrait of her niece, Miss Helena Beatson, a child prodigy. Described as possessing ‘a most astonishing genius from Drawing’, Helena is portrayed having just completed a tender image of a mother and child. Our pastel was displayed at the Society of Artists in 1767 and translated into a mezzotint by James Watson the following year.

A new technique was introduced to the collection with a Gothic revival stained-glass panel by Clayton & Bell representing an allegory of the visual arts enclosed within a floral frame.

The fast-expanding prints collection now includes an iconic self-portrait by Jean-Etienne Liotard; an expressive aquatint by Emile Nolde; and Pablo Picasso’s Sculpteur songeant, Modèle aux Cheveux noirs et Bol avec trois Anémones from his sought after Suite Vollard.

Amongst the recently acquired photographs, a rare albumen print showing the sumptuous Roman studio of Mariano Fortuny senior (1838-1874), the leading Spanish painter of his day and father of Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo. Produced with the technically complex ‘wet collodion’ process, it is a testament to the fine details and deep rich tones that the method allows.

In the past year the collection has also expanded considerably into the contemporary, with both established and emerging artists. Celia Paul’s Artist in her Studio (with man painted out) attests to her deeply personal reflection on the studio as a space of her own. While in his blue watercolour Ali Kazim relies on his own likeness to blend painstaking miniature painting techniques and highly individual imagery informed by past visual culture.

The practice of working out of doors to create landscape sketches and studies to be later worked up in the studio is a long established one. An early example from the Katrin Bellinger collection is Lambert Doomer’s draughtsman sketching by a tree of circa 1660, where he captures a colleague working out of doors. An Italian drawing, Remigio Cantagallina’s artist walking and sketching in a landscape, is another early example.

From the late 18th century onwards sketching excursions with fellow artists became common practice, as shown in the drawings and prints of Friedrich Preller the Elder, Johann Adam Klein and Wilhelm von Kobell. Thomas Rowlandson’s Artist travelling in Wales shows an elderly artist heavily laden with painting-materials in the pouring rain, making a witty commentary on the trials of the touring painter.

 Indeed, although drawing implements, watercolours and sketchbooks are easily transported, the equipment available to artists before the 19th century limited their ability to produce a finished painting in nature. Pigments had to be ground and mixed with linseed oil to obtain colours, and a pig’s bladder was needed to carry them outside the workshop. This changed with the introduction of paint in tubes (invented in 1841) and of lightweight portable easels, contributing to the rise of plein air painting. The method became more widespread from the 1860s and was made famous by the impressionists who advocated the need to capture the quality of natural light and its effect on both landscape and figures.

Ever since she started collecting, Katrin Bellinger has sought representations of female artists at work, as counterparts to the overwhelming majority of portraits and self-portraits of male artists. Despite the difficulties and limitations historically encountered by women wanting to pursue a career in the arts, women are shown making art in a variety of images ranging vastly in date and geographical provenance, as the present selection demonstrates. The earliest in the collection is a woodcut illustration from Boccaccio’s 14^th-century De Mulieribus Claris (Concerning Famous Women), which shows the Roman artist Marcia. The most recent is a 2019 piece by London-based South African artist Lisa Brice.

While some of the works are self-portraits, others were made by the artists’ teachers, husbands, and fellow art school students. Aside from a few exceptions, their identity is unknown and from the manner in which they are portrayed it is not always possible to ascertain if these women were professionals or amateurs. Up to the 19th century, young women wishing to learn how to draw were usually taught by a family member or an established artist, as illustrated in Francesco Bartolozzi’s and Arthur Pond’s drawings.

In the second half of the 19th century, access to formal training became progressively more open to women, with private art schools first seeing the benefits in admitting female pupils. Rose Marie Guillaume’s watercolour is set at the renowned Académie Julian in Paris, where she trained and taught, in a separate studio reserved for female students only. Larger institutions slowly followed suit. The London Royal Academy of Arts began admitting women in 1860 – although they could not attend life-drawing classes there until 1893 – and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris finally opened its doors to female students in 1897. Late 19th-century self-portraits with palette and brushes symbolize the ambitious and self-confident woman artist. The struggle for access and recognition continued throughout the 20th and 21st centuries and arguably up to the present day, with the self-portrait and the studio view still acting as powerful vehicles for the negotiation of women’s artistic identity.

Although not as numerous as those of painters and draughtsmen, representations of printmakers at work form a notable group within the Katrin Bellinger collection. Executed in a variety of media, these images range in date from the 17th century to today. As a group, they show the continued fascination with the tools and craftsmanship required to realize printed images. They also shed light on how the status of the artist-printmaker was negotiated through the genres of self-portraiture and the studio scene.

Abraham Bosse’s famous prints focus on the commercial printmaking workshop and have an informative function. Pierre Baquoy’s later example shows an atelier teeming with assistants, each tasked with a different step in the printing process. In the right foreground, the master engraver inspects an impression. Over his workspace, a light diffusing screen is deployed to soften the light hitting the reflective surface of the plate. This device, seen in several of the works in this group and still in use today, allows the artist to create subtle values undisturbed by the glimmer of the metal.

Most images focus on the figure of the painter-etcher working in his studio in solitude. This format is, at least in part, inspired by Rembrandt’s self-portraits and by the mystique surrounding his persona. As well as promoting his skills in his innovative prints, the Dutch master also cultivated his own image, becoming the quintessential artists’ artist. The 19th-century cult of Rembrandt is exemplified by Paul-Adolph Rajon’s etching after a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, Rembrandt biting an etched plate (now lost). With the foundation of the Sociéte des Aquafortistes in 1862, the scene was set for the etching revival, which took hold in France, England and the United States. Images of artists making etchings, as well as engravings, woodcuts and lithographs, proliferate in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Artists have always enjoyed depicting their tools and workspaces. Whether for didactic purposes or as means of self-expression, tools such as pens, brushes, ink pots, paint boxes and paper constitute a captivating subject for artists working across media and styles. This varied selection from the Katrin Bellinger collection exemplifies well the fascination with studio miscellanea and the tools of the trade.

While artists’ tools feature in nearly all of the collection’s works, in this group they are allowed to take centre stage. Whether arranged in a still-life composition or shown as if only momentarily relinquished, representations of artists’ tools offer insights into the intimate space of the workshop. For artists across periods, such as François Bonvin and John Sergeant, their palettes, brushes, pencils and portfolios became favourite subjects to be lovingly and meticulously portrayed. Typical of his lively sketches of everyday objects, Adolphe von Menzel’s witty drawing brings his spectacles, penknife and quill to life.

From the early 1960s, American artist Jim Dine deployed his paintbrush and studio tools as markers of his persona, in what he called an ‘autobiography through objects’. Contemporary Norwegian printmaker Erling Valtyrson also self-identified with his tools and exotic collectables by titling his mezzotint, Self-portrait.

Related blog article: Pens and mahl sticks: in the drawn world of John Sergeant