The Ratjen Collection III: Miscellaneous Figuration

I don't have so much of an organized thesis for this third installment of the series begun here and here. Do we always need a thesis? Sometimes it is good to just stroll along, as it were, and see what we see. Does that work for you? These are some more drawings I liked from the Ratjen Collection, and as long as the National Gallery was good enough to pass them along, I thought I'd like to share them with you. I do have a thesis for the fourth and final part of the this series - so check back in a few days.

Moving right along -

Hans Thoma, German, 1839 - 1924
A Man Bending Over, 1886
black chalk heightened with white, squared for transfer with graphite,
with scattered touches of red and yellow paint, on brown wove paper
Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund

What a wonderful figure! How much like the simplicity and vitality of Degas!

Degas

Consider Thoma's hunch - his correct hunch - that a thick line is what this image wants. His shapes are simple, his lines are thick, he rapidly brushes in lines where light is striking cloth and skin. How wonderful the tension of the body, the motion, the transitory nature of it - and yet how utterly solid and present. We all ought to hope for such grace and unity in our drawings!

Speaking of:

Franz von Stuck, German, 1863 - 1928
Nude Woman Lying on the Ground, 1896
black chalk and graphite heightened with white on bluish-gray laid paper
Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund

This Von Stuck fellow, he knows his flesh. I came across more than one drawing in this show about which I thought to myself: I am going to steal this pose for a painting. This was one of them. Again a similarity to Degas, and to Lautrec. The foreshortening is so beautifully handled, and the pose fills the space so wonderfully - so wonderfully, in fact, that it does this, as if you needed it pointed out:

Now let's turn our gaze away from geometries and consider different ways of looking at the world:

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, German, 1794 - 1872
Ruth and Boas, 1825
pen and brown ink over graphite on laid paper
Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund

This is a design sketch for a painting (a far inferior painting - you can look it up if you like). But there is something just wonderfully creepy about the drawing. If you or I stumbled on such a scene, the people would no doubt seem to be occupied in different tasks, and to be different people. But all these people are utterly harmonized. They are all part of a single scene; they all think the same thought, even that threshing-woman on the right. There seems to me to be an eerie threat of violence about this synchrony. I didn't know the artist before, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. But he was quite a guy. Look at what he does with dry leaves:

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, German, 1794 - 1872
A Branch with Shriveled Leaves, 1817
pen and black ink over graphite on wove paper
Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Purchased as the Gift of Ladislaus and Beatrix von Hoffmann

The explanatory text in the show suggests that Schnorr and his art student buddies basically had a contest going to see who could do a more bitchin' leaf study. The other entries in this art-student competition are not included, but I am going to speculate that von Carolsfeld won hands down. What an unmatched interest in the minuscule, the passing-away, the soon-to-be-forgotten! The show includes some portraits he drew as well; he had an unfailing sensitivity of line and ability to slightly idealize faces while maintaining a convincing individuality. Except, of course, in his spooky Ruth and Boas picture, which is interesting for entirely different reasons.

Carl Wilhelm Kolbe the Elder, German, 1759 - 1835
A Seated Young Woman Wearing a Fashionable Hat, 1800/1803
black chalk on very light green laid paper
Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund

Rad cloth!

Carl Wilhelm Kolbe the Elder, German, 1759 - 1835
A Fashionable Young Woman Seen from Behind, 1800/1803
black chalk on very light green laid paper
Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund

More rad cloth!

Seriously, though, what I like about these is that I do a million little doodles like them - interesting configurations of cloth and limb. I think everybody does when they're thinking through paintings. Most of them don't amount to anything; they're just ways of working out the kinks in your mind, moving toward an idea that is worth making something from. These instances, of course, are finished drawings, and to my eye, spectacularly, dreamily weird.

Well, thanks for sticking with this little experiment in a different style of post. I'll get back to you soon with the last of the things I learned from the Ratjen Collection.