Deaf, Dumb And Brillant : Johan Thopas, Master Draughts - Couverture souple

Ekkart

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1907372679 ISBN 13 : 9781907372674

Editeur : Paul Holberton Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

Until recently, the Dutch draughtsman Johan Thopas, who was born in 1626 both deaf and dumb, was only known to a small group of connoisseurs, dealers and collectors. However, his remarkable, subtle and technically refined portrait drawings on parchment deserve a wider audience. This handsome publication, the first devoted to his work, will prove to be an eye opener for any art lovers.Beginning with his earliest works (two beautiful miniatures of 1646 in the Fondation Custodia in Paris), Thopas produced incredibly refine drawings, usually with lead point on parchment. He had an almost magic control of the lead point, and his sense of texture and the way he was able to achieve this with minimal means is astounding, setting him apart from other draughtsmen in the Dutch Golden Age. Thopas was also able to capture brilliantly the characters of his sitters such as the sulky husband and trouser-wearing wife in the 1684 companion pieces in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Apart from lead-point drawings, Thopas made several drawings in color, on parchment and on Japanese paper. In most cases these drawings were done after life, although we do know that the large commission he received from the Bas-Kerckrinck family in Amsterdam included several drawings that were done after existing portraits. Furthermore, he produced at least one brilliant copy after a painting by Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, Venus, Mars and Cupid, and even a painting, portraying a dead child. He must have made more paintings and certainly more drawings than the seventy we know today (all of which are catalogued and illustrated here). In this exhibition his only known painting and the one mythological drawing are accompanied by thirty of his most beautiful portraits, from private collections in the US, Canada, United Kingdom and the Netherlands, as well as well-known museums and print rooms, such as the Albertina in Vienna, the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, the Stadel in Frankfurt or the Victoria & Albert

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

To discover an unknown is the dream of anyone connected with the arts and in Johannes Thopas (c.1626 to 1688/95) we have just that. This book catalogues the exhibition now transfering from Aachen to the Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam (12 July to 5 October). The curator is Rudi Ekkart, who discovered Thopas s meticulous lead-pencil (plumbago) drawings on parchment as an art-history student in the early 1970s, when he had unlimited access to the University of Leiden s famous drawing collection. After that he kept a record of everything to do with the artist, which now finds formal acknowledgment .... The pencil portrait on parchment was a significant genre in Holland, especially in Thopas s lifetime. Judging by the comparisons offered he can rightly be called the equal of his peers. Some glaring disproportions lend a naïve charm and his only surviving painting, of a dead child (another genre), is heart-wrenching without resorting to sentimentality. --THE SPECTATOR, 21 June 2014

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Paul Holberton Publishing
• Date d'édition: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1907372679
• ISBN 13: 9781907372674
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 200