KOLLER View 1/22

12 Preview of the Old Master & 19 th Century Drawings auction on 1 April 2022 The many roles of drawings Freely executed in pencil and brown and grey wash, Thomas Gainsborough’s ‘Homecoming from the solutions to problems of representation: studies of individual body parts such as hands and feet for ex- ample, or repeated portraits that attempt to capture 3 2 market’ (ill. 1) is presumably a composition after one of his own paintings. Henry Hoare of Stourhead bought it directly from the artist in 1773. Another drawing in the 1 April auction, from the circle of Peter Paul Rubens, 1617/1618, had a different purpose: it was probably a multi-figure preparatory work for Rubens’ painting ‘Le Christ à la Paille’, the central panel of a triptych for Antwerp Cathedral. Drawings can fulfil varied functions in the artistic pro- cess. They may be a first draft; a sketch of a composi- tion to be worked out in detail later. Drawings can also serve as a repository of ideas or as a repertoire of mo- tifs for a painter’s workshop. At the same time, draw- ing is an important tool in the artist’s search for im- ages and creative experimentation. In the next phase of the process, a drawing can serve as a preparatory work – as a study for a painting that will be created lat- er. At this stage, the general concept has already been formulated, but the artist tries out different variations of the composition before finally settling on a final ver- sion and applying finer nuances. Thus a single drawing or a series of drawings can provide the nucleus for a painting or an entire group of works. Detailed drawings also provide information about the artist’s pictorial 1