Plumbago drawings are graphite drawings from the 17th and 18th centuries. There was a group of artists whose work in plumbago is remarkable for their portraits drawn with finely pointed pieces of graphite and on vellum. These works were initially prepared as the basis of an engraving. Eventually they would be produced as works in their own right.
One of the earliest of this group of workers was Simon Van de Pass (1595–1647), and his pencil drawings were probably either for reproduction on silver tablets or counters or for engraved plates. The earlier miniature painters also drew in this manner, notably Nicholas Hilliard in preparing designs for jewels and seals, and Isaac Oliver and Peter Oliver in portraits.
A few pencil portraits by Abraham Blooteling, the Dutch engraver, have been preserved, which appear to have been first sketches, from which plates were afterwards engraved. David Loggan (1635–1700), a pupil of Van de Pass, also left a few portraits, as a rule drawn on vellum and executed with dexterity.
These works were not always prepared for engraving. There is one representing Charles II, set in a gold snuff box, which was given by the King to the Duchess of Portsmouth, and which went to the Duke of Richmond, and a similar portrait of Oliver Cromwell which was in the possession of Lord Verulam; and there are no engravings corresponding to these.
William Faithorne (1616–1691) derived much of his skill from the time he spent with Robert Nanteuil, whose style he followed. There are drawings by him in the Bodleian Library, at Welbeck Abbey and at Montagu House, and two fine portraits in the British Museum. Thomas Forster (c. 1695–1712) was one of the major draughtsmen in this form of portraiture, on vellum and on paper. His work was at Welbeck Abbey, in the Holburne Museum at Bath, in the Victoria and Albert Museum and elsewhere.
Robert and George White, were English artists, father and son. The former (1645–1704) was a pupil of Loggan and a prolific engraver, and most of his drawings executed on vellum were for the purpose of engraving. George White (c. 1684–1732) was taught by his father, and finished some of his father's plates. Forster and the two Whites signed their drawings and dated them. By Robert White there are portraits of John Bunyan and Sir Matthew Hale in the British Museum, and his own portrait at Welbeck; and by him and his son there are other drawings, depicting Sir Godfrey Kneller, Archbishop Tenison and others.
The two John Fabers, John Faber the Elder (c.1660–1721) and John Faber the Younger (1684–1756), were Dutch; they usually added drawn inscriptions, often found within circles around the portraits and occasionally extending to many lines below them. The son was the more significant artist, known for mezzotints. The portrait painter Jonathan Richardson (1665–1745) executed many drawings in pencil, examples of which can be seen in the British Museum.
The Scot David Paton was working in 1670. Most of his drawings belonged to the Earl of Dysart and were at Ham House; examples of his portraiture were in the possession of the Daizell family. Paton was attached to the court of Charles II, when the king was in Scotland; at that time he drew his portrait of the King. There are drawings of the same character as his, the work of George Glover (d. 1618) and Thomas Cecill (fl. 1630), but they were evidently studies for engravings. A Swiss artist, Joseph Werner (b. 1637) drew in pencil, adopting brown paper as the material on which his best drawings were done, and in some cases heightening them with touches of white paint.
Later miniature artists, including Nathaniel Hone, Grimaldi, Bernard Lens and John Downman, also drew in plumbago. Other exponents of this art were Thomas Worlidge (1700–1766), F. Steele (c. 1714), W. Robins (c. 1730), G. A. Wolffgang (1692–1775), George Vertue the engraver (1684–1756), Johann Zoffany (1733–1810), and the Swede, Charles Bancks (c. 1748).
Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, erasers, markers, styluses, and metals. Digital drawing is the act of drawing on graphics software in a computer. Common methods of digital drawing include a stylus or finger on a touchscreen device, stylus- or finger-to-touchpad, or in some cases, a mouse. There are many digital art programs and devices.
A pencil is a writing or drawing implement with a solid pigment core encased in a sleeve, barrel, or shaft that prevents breaking the core or marking a user's hand.
George Vertue was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.
Music engraving is the art of drawing music notation at high quality for the purpose of mechanical reproduction. The term music copying is almost equivalent—though music engraving implies a higher degree of skill and quality, usually for publication. The name of the process originates in plate engraving, a widely used technique dating from the late sixteenth century. The term engraving is now used to refer to any high-quality method of drawing music notation, particularly on a computer or by hand.
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolor, or enamel. Portrait miniatures developed out of the techniques of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, and were popular among 16th-century elites, mainly in England and France, and spread across the rest of Europe from the middle of the 18th century, remaining highly popular until the development of daguerreotypes and photography in the mid-19th century. They were usually intimate gifts given within the family, or by hopeful males in courtship, but some rulers, such as James I of England, gave large numbers as diplomatic or political gifts. They were especially likely to be painted when a family member was going to be absent for significant periods, whether a husband or son going to war or emigrating, or a daughter getting married.
A figure drawing is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures using any of the drawing media. The term can also refer to the act of producing such a drawing. The degree of representation may range from highly detailed, anatomically correct renderings to loose and expressive sketches. A life drawing is a drawing of the human figure, traditionally nude, from observation of a live model. Creating life drawings, or life studies, in a life class, has been a large element in the traditional training of artists in the Western world since the Renaissance.
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about 10 inches tall, and at least two famous half-length panel portraits of Elizabeth. He enjoyed continuing success as an artist, and continuing financial troubles, for forty-five years. His paintings still exemplify the visual image of Elizabethan England, very different from that of most of Europe in the late sixteenth century. Technically he was very conservative by European standards, but his paintings are superbly executed and have a freshness and charm that has ensured his continuing reputation as "the central artistic figure of the Elizabethan age, the only English painter whose work reflects, in its delicate microcosm, the world of Shakespeare's earlier plays."
Stephen Alonzo Schoff was an American engraver and etcher in New York and Boston.
William Austin was an English artist, drawing-master, engraver and caricaturist. A rival of Matthew Darly, he used a distinctive grainy, woodblock-like style.
David Loggan (1634–1692) was an English baroque engraver, draughtsman and painter.
Martino Rota, also Martin Rota and Martin Rota Kolunić was an artist, now mainly known for his printmaking, from Dalmatia.
John Romney was an English artist in printmaking and watercolour who lived and worked in London and Chester. Much of his work consisted of reproductions of the work of other artists, but he produced some original prints, paintings and drawings. Like the great majority of contemporary printmakers he worked in both engraving and etching, often on the same plate, and descriptions of his prints as being in one or the other technique should be taken loosely. His best known original prints are series of views of the Chester area and his part of one on the antiquities in the British Museum. He was apparently not related to the famous portraitist George Romney (1734–1802).
Charles Turner was an English mezzotint engraver and draughtsman who specialized in portraiture. He collaborated with J. M. W. Turner on the early plates of the same's Liber Studiorum.
Johan Faber, anglicized as John Faber, commonly referred to as John Faber the Elder, was a Dutch miniaturist and portrait engraver active in London, where he set up a shop for producing and marketing his own work. His son John Faber the Younger was also active in this field.
Samuel William Reynolds was a mezzotint engraver, landscape painter and landscape gardener. Reynolds was a popular engraver in both Britain and France and there are over 400 examples of his work in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
John Swaine, was an English draughtsman and engraver.
John Coney (1786–1833) was an English architectural draughtsman and engraver.
Robert White (1645–1703) was an English draughtsman and engraver. A Londoner, he was a pupil of David Loggan, and became a leading portrait engraver. White was celebrated for his original portraits, drawn in pencil on vellum in the manner of Loggan. He died in reduced circumstances in Bloomsbury Market, where he had long resided, in November 1703.
George White was an English mezzotint engraver.
Christian Richter (1678–1732) was a Swedish miniature-painter and copyist, active mainly in England.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Williamson, George Charles (1911). "Plumbago Drawings". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 855.
