Fine line

Drawing Attention
Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 17 January

Last chance to see a really excellent selection of works on paper from the Art Gallery of Ontario in Canada. It’s a relatively new collection, begun in 1969, but despite that it includes many of the great names of Western art. From the Italian Renaissance to 18th-century France via England and the Netherlands, from German Expressionism to international abstraction, not forgetting a group of works by some of Canada’s finest, the collection maintains a hearteningly high standard.

In the first room are the Italians, so good it’s difficult to know where to start. Stroll round the room a couple of times and see what particularly catches your eye. I was much taken by Guercino’s crumbly-faced witch accompanied by two bats and a demon in flight. What economy of line and character evoked — there’s more humour here than evil. Another memorable drawing is ‘Satyrs and Satyresses in a Landscape’ by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (son of the more famous Giambattista), done in pen and brown ink with brown and grey washes. The compressed energy of the line is entrancing. A very different mood is captured by the beautifully balanced black chalk drawing ‘The Death of Hector’ by Gaetano Gandolfi. There’s also a lovely tough little brown ink drawing by Salvator Rosa (a foretaste of the solo show Dulwich is giving Rosa in the autumn) called ‘A Poet Seated by a Tree’, c.1640. The poet, with twigs in his hair (not laurel, but perhaps rosemary, for remembrance), labours at his task in the midst of nature.

Among the earlier French drawings in the second room are Boucher’s ‘Young Country Girl Dancing’, in chalks, a very charming and excellent example of draughtsmanship, and Charles-Joseph Natoire’s pleasingly theatrical ‘Park at Arcueil’.