JOSEPH SOLMAN : EARLY DRAWINGS (1926 - 1930)
This gallery shows a small selection of early drawings. Most of the works are drawn on artists sketchpad paper but there are several examples on scraps of paper (backs of payslips, exhibition catalogues etc.) and several sketches on paper napkins! The works give a fantastic insight into the early development of the artist and many of the themes and styles he is using at this stage can be seen employed right the way through the long career of Solman.
The art of drawing was critical to Joseph Solman and remained the basis of much of his work. In an introduction he wrote to a portfolio of his works on paper…
“The drawings of Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Claude and other masters through Ingres, Delacroix, Degas, Seurat, Picasso and Klee are prized as works of art as are their paintings. How heartwarming for us to learn that in Rembrandt's own day a fine marine painter, one Jan van de Capelle, a friend of the master, had acquired no less than 400 drawings by him; while Govert Flinck, a pupil, also owned a notable collection. Watteau is said to have told his friends that his drawings were even dearer to him than his paintings. Drawings are , in the words of Graham Reynolds, Keeper of the Victoria and Albert Museum, "the sip of claret which gives the flavour of the whole wine."
There is probably no useful distinction to be made between the quality of a drawing produced for its own sake and that of a drawing which is a preparatory study for a painting, or a matter-of-fact recording of detail.”
The earliest period between 1925 - 1930, part of which time he was a student at the National Academy of Design, Solman has described as “the period of indefatigable, endless drawing” where he filled a great number of sketchbooks in trains, streets and libraries. Some of these drawings are presented here.
