Born a little over a hundred years apart, Jonathan Richardson and John Constable both used drawing to pursue projects of intense introspection. Richardson made a sequence of self-portraits in which he explored the process of his own ageing with pathos and wit, while Constable parted from his family home in Suffolk with a series of intensely emotional drawings of significant places. In this lecture Susan Owens will look at drawing’s role in soul-searching and taking stock.
Susan Owens is the author of 'The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art', which won the Apollo Book of the Year award in 2024
Milein Cosman
Milein arrived at the Slade in 1939, just as war broke out, as a Jewish refugee from Düsseldorf in Germany. She was interviewed in the Slade’s imposing building in London, but by the time she started her studies the Slade had been evacuated to Oxford, where it was temporarily amalgamated with the Ruskin School of Drawing. Milein spent a magical few years in Oxford, where her studio became a gathering place for poets and musicians as well as artists — an imaginative haven from the loss and destruction of the war.
This event is organised jointly by The Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust and the Slade School of Fine Art.
We are grateful to The Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust for supporting this lecture and The Milein Cosman Scholarship for Drawing at the Slade School of Fine Art.
Drawing: Jonathan Richardson the Elder, 1667–1745, Self-Portrait, ca. 1733, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.4333.
