Darnley Fine Art Nude Drawings and Watercolors

Evelyn de Morgan Study of a Standing Female Nude 1855 - 1917 Black chalk and pastel on grey paper Image size: 12 ½ x 19 inches (48.2 x 31.7 cm) Pre-Raphaelite style frame Provenance J.S. Mass & Co., Ltd., London, J.X. Reynolds & Co., Ltd. Once she had graduated from the Slade School of Art, Evelyn continued to draw every day for the rest of her life. Her drawings are enlightening not only for their skill and subject matter, but also for their ability to teach us her working process. From loose compositional sketches, Evelyn swiftly progressed to detailed life studies for the figures in her paintings. Choosing to draw mainly on a grey wove paper in pencil and pastel, Evelyn produced hundreds of figure studies. Her rigorously-examined double studies of clothed and nude figures are particularly fascinating and underline the artist’s obsession with the human form and her desire for accuracy. A deep understanding of anatomy is obvious in this drawing and looking at the work you feel as though you can reach out and feel the muscle and bone under the skin, that you could feel the pulse of life through the soft skin. Evelyn de Morgan Born into a landowning family, from an early age Evelyn De Morgan, née Pickering, demonstrated a precocious artistic talent and a passionate desire to pursue a career as an artist, writing in her diary on her seventeenth birthday ‘Art is eternal, life is short… I have not a moment to lose’ (Evelyn De Morgan’s Diary, 30 August 1872, De Morgan Foundation Archive). Her maternal uncle, the artist John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope encouraged her talents and accompanied her on her first formative journeys to Italy where she discovered the Renaissance masters, particularly Botticelli. Overcoming initial parental opposition, Evelyn enrolled at the newly formed Slade School in 1873, one of the first women to do so. The Slade revolutionised women’s artistic education by allowing female students to study the nude from life alongside their male counterparts. Whilst at the Slade she began to submit work under her middle name Evelyn, rather than her Christian name Mary, as its gender ambiguity offered a chance for her work to be judged on its own merit. One of her tutors, Edward Poynter...

Graphite on paper Image size: 22 x 26 inches (56 x 66 cm) Mounted and framed William Dring Dring was born with the forenames Dennis William, but was known colloquially as John. He was the brother of the artist James Dring. He married the painter Grace Elizabeth Rothwell...

Ink on paper, signed and dated '34 lower left Image size: 9 3/4 x 15 inches (24.75 x 24.5 cm) Mounted and framed A unique drawing, this work is typical of Brodzky's early nudes with its economy in the use of the line and the seemingly relaxed, informal pose of the model. The spontaneous feel of many of Brodsky's drawings does in a way indicate that the works, such as the present drawing, are purely sketches and studies. In fact, Brodsky was known for making perhaps twenty or thirty drawings at a sitting and of those he preserved perhaps only a handful, only those that 'pass his rigorous censorship sum up qualities resulting from the perfect collaboration of hand and eye and sensibility' (Forty Drawings by Horace Brodsky, by James Laver, 1935, p.15). Laver continued to write that 'Brodsky preferred a pose that showed the body from an unexpected angle, daringly foreshortened or with the weight of the various parts freed from the monotony of the standing pose. He liked to see his models from above, the limbs relaxed, and.... he made many of his drawings from a step-ladder drawn up close to the platform on which the model is lying'. Horace Brodsky Horace Ascher Brodzky (30 January 1885 – 11 February 1969) was an Australian-born artist and writer most of whose work was created in London and New York. His work included paintings, drawings and linocuts, of which he was an early pioneer. An associate in his early career of many leading artists working in Britain of his period, including Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Mark Gertler, and members of the Vorticism movement, he ended his life relatively neglected. Brodzky was born in Kew, Melbourne in 1885 to the Australian journalist Maurice Brodzky (a Jewish immigrant to Australia from Poland), and his wife Flora, née Leon. In his youth he assisted his father in the production of the magazine Table Talk. Brodzky studied initially at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. In 1904 his father was bankrupted after exposing corruption, and Horace moved with his family to San Francisco. In 1908, Brodzky went to London where he studied during 1911 at the City and Guilds South London Technical Art School. He became an acquaintance and follower of Walter Sickert. Amongst his friends was Henri Gaudier-Brzeska who created in 1913 a portrait bust of Brodzky (now in the Tate Gallery, London), and whose biography he wrote in 1933. Brodzky is said to have been so engrossed in talk when he visited Gaudier-Brzeska's studio in the King's Road, that he missed the last bus to Herne Hill where he lived. Brodzky travelled to Italy with the poet John Gould Fletcher and this led to his first London exhibition, "Paintings and Sketches of Italian and Sicilian Scenes" (c. 1911), of which one painting was selected for the 1912 Venice Biennale. He was in fact the first Australian to be exhibited at the Biennale. In 1914 his work was exhibited along with that of other Jewish artists, including Mark Gertler and David Bomberg, in the Whitechapel Gallery. Brodzky became a member of The London Group. During this period he was a pioneer of the technique of linocut, in which medium he has been said to have "excelled". His early oils reveal the influence of both Gertler and Bomberg. Among his works of this period are portraits of Jacob Epstein and Jacob Kramer. In 1915 Brodzky moved to New York, with an introduction to the art patron John Quinn. There he worked as a poster artist and an arts journalist, and in 1917 helped Quinn organize a New York exhibition of Vorticist artists. In 1919 he married Bertha Greenfield; they were to have three sons. In 1920 Egmont Arens...

Graphite on laid paper, signed verso and paper watermarks and atelier stamp Image size: 23 ¾ x 16 ¾ inches (60.25 x 43.5 cm) Gilt Whistler frame Leon Bellemont Born on August 20, 1866, in the family home on rue du Grand-Cloître, Léon Bellemont studied from 1875 to 1883 at the Diderot college, where he was an excellent student. At the same time, he joined the municipal drawing school, where his exceptional predispositions were very quickly noted. In 1884, at the age of 18, Léon Bellemont left Langres to join Paris and its National School of Decorative Arts, then the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. There, he followed the teaching of Léon Bonnat, a renowned portraitist, and obtained his first rewards and several prizes. It was in 1892, however, that his artistic career took off, with his first participation in the Salon des artistes français, where he exhibited until 1956. A landscape and impressionist painter, particularly impressing marine worlds, Léon Bellemont stayed more and more regularly in Brittany at the beginning of the 20th century, where he painted numerous paintings. His notoriety grew, as did the profits from his sales, and the State itself ended up placing a few orders with him. His work “The Breton Faith” was, for example, acquired by the museum in Buenos Aires (Argentina). Subsequently, always in search of inspiration, Léon Bellemont travelled extensively. He was in Bruges from 1907 to 1909, then traveled across France for several years participating in exhibitions. During the First World War, he settled in Algiers where he remained for several years. He then returned to Paris, worked extensively there and achieved great fame. A socialite, he frequented salons and regularly received his friends Jules Adler...

Graphite on paper Image size: 13 x 10 1/2 inches (33 x 27 cm) Mounted This is a delicate 19th century academic graphite drawing of a seated female nude in the neoclassical style. A...

Graphite on paper Image size: 13 3/4 x 26 inches (35 x 66 cm) This is most likely to be a drawing from an Academy student, executed as part of their academic training. The academic ...