Drawn Together: Where Prints and Drawings Meet

I was in a virtual meeting with my friend and colleague Edina Adam, a curator of old master drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. While musing about projects we would like to undertake together, we came back to a broad question that had interested us for a while: Given how complex and pervasive the interconnections between drawing and printmaking are, why had their relationship never been the focus of an exhibition? 

In our daily experiences as curators, we are constantly reminded of these connections. Drawings and prints share a common support—paper—and much of their graphic vocabulary, such as line, hatching, and tone. They sometimes share their makers as well: many great draftsmen were also printmakers. And for centuries these works were collected and lovingly stored together.

As we dipped our toes into the available literature, we began to see probable reasons why a comprehensive exhibition on the subject had not yet been done. The topic as we had framed it—covering the period from the contemporary rise of drawing and printmaking in Europe around 1400 to the advent of photography around the mid-1800s—is truly vast. Information related to it, while abundant, was diffuse, scattered in a dense thicket of highly specialized case studies, lengthy monographs on individual artists, and unpublished dissertations. In some cases, we could not find satisfactory answers to our questions. This challenge, however, only whetted our enthusiasm and determination. It was clear that the only way to make the subject approachable was to present it in a way that would be both simple and comprehensive. So we decided to highlight the four main ways drawing and printmaking interacted in the premodern period. We would focus on preparatory drawings for prints, drawn copies of prints, printed imitations of drawings, and hybrid works that blur distinctions between the two media. 

To find answers to knotty questions regarding artistic process, we relied on the generosity and expertise of paper conservators in American and European museums who met with us to conduct detailed technical examinations of certain works. Here at the Art Institute, associate conservator Mary Broadway enthusiastically carried out experiments with period materials, trying to replicate visual effects seen in monotypes and counterproofs that we couldn’t fully explain. Her research revealed that artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione probably used an unconventional mixture of oil paint and printing ink to make The Creation of Adam—a rare, striking monotype that is among the highlights of the exhibition.

Starting with a smooth copperplate covered with that mixture, Castiglione used a combination of tools such as reed pens, brushes, sticks, pieces of folded paper, and other absorbent materials to remove the pigment and create his design by erasure. He then passed the plate through the press to transfer the composition onto paper. The use of a press grounds this work in printmaking, and the process of creating a design by drawing tools through a coated surface is akin to how etchings are made. But The Creation of Adam, like other monotypes, is a unique work and thus conceptually closer to a drawing than most other prints.    

At the Getty, head of Paper Conservation Victoria Binder conducted extensive technical imaging of an especially complex work by William Blake: the large, visionary Satan Exulting over Eve. It is one of 12 works that Blake referred to as “large prints … printed in colour,” but which are now usually called color-printed drawings. The paradoxical-sounding terminology used to describe them strives to convey the hybrid nature of these works, which combine aspects of monotype printing with extensive hand-coloring and even compositional variants between impressions. For a long time, Blake’s exact process remained a mystery complicated by the fact that different impressions of the same subject varied widely in appearance and detail. But sophisticated imaging techniques have allowed us to “see through” the printed and drawn layers of the work and shed light on Blake’s experimental hybrid technique, revealing which areas of the work were printed, where Blake introduced changes to the printed design, and even which pigments and materials he employed. The full results of Binder’s and Broadway’s research are included in—and greatly enrich—our exhibition catalogue, available in March 2025.

This collaboration seemed particularly appropriate for an exhibition dedicated to the idea of bringing closer together two fields—print studies and drawing connoisseurship—that in modern times have often, regrettably, drifted apart. Here is a telling example: One of the most exciting loans to the exhibition is a drawing of a right hand by the Dutch artist Hendrick Goltzius. With a breathtaking degree of control over that demanding medium, the artist executed this work in pen and ink in a style that mimics the appearance of a print. 

The elegant swelling and tapering lines, the disciplined cross hatching, and the artfully placed dots that soften tonal transitions are all hallmarks of Goltzius’s style of engraving. While the drawing is undoubtedly a demonstration of the artist’s “hand” and what it is capable of, it is also a reflection on Goltzius’s double role as a draftsman and engraver and on the connection between drawing and printmaking. The fact that he executed two almost identical versions of Study of a Right Hand—the second of which will also be in the exhibition—further supports the idea that in this work, he was reflecting on, and at the same time questioning, the characteristics of each medium. 

Drawings are traditionally thought to be unique works, as opposed to prints, which usually exist in multiples. But with this printlike multiple drawing, Goltzius reminds us that things are more complicated—that we need to keep both media in mind to fully understand his oeuvre (and not only his!). Like the fascinating works by Castiglione and Blake, Goltzius’s two versions of A Right Hand perfectly encapsulate the simple premise of the exhibition: that our knowledge and appreciation of works on paper are greatly enriched when we uncover and explore the connections between the germane practices of drawing and printmaking. 

—Jamie Gabbarelli, Prince Trust Associate Curator, Prints and Drawings

Sponsors

Major support for Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400–1850 is provided by the WOLFGANG RATJEN FOUNDATION, Liechtenstein.

Additional support is contributed by an anonymous donor.

Topics

• Exhibitions
• From the Curator
• Prints and Drawings