Gray ink and gray wash on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 9 1/8 × 10 inches (23.2 × 25.4 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Inscribed on back in graphite, upper left: "3 1/4"; in graphite, upper center: "9 1/2"; in graphite, upper right: "3/14"; in graphite, center right: "8 3/4"; in graphite, lower left: "[...]"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29)An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Royal Academy of Arts, 2007-10-20 - 2008-01-27)Paul Mellon's Legacy : A Passion for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29)The Line of Beauty : British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century (Yale Center for British Art, 2001-05-19 - 2001-08-05)The Fuseli Circle in Rome - Early Romantic Art in the 1770s (Yale Center for British Art, 1979-09-12 - 1979-11-11)
Publications:
John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, p. 272, no. 63, fl. 63, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)David Bindman, John Flaxman, R.A, Catalogue of an Exhibition Held at the Royal Academy of Arts, 26 October-9 December 1979 , Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1979, p. 31, NJ18 F615 B55 1979 (YCBA)Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 2, no. 63, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Nancy L. Pressly, The Fuseli circle in Rome : Early Romantic art of the 1770s, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1979, p. 132, no. 135, N6425 .N4 P73 (YCBA)The critique of reason : Romantic art, 1760-1860 : March 6-July 26, 2015, Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 2015, [pp. 14, 16], fig. 24, V 2574 (YCBA)Scott Wilcox, Line of beauty : British drawings and watercolors of the eighteenth century, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2001, pp. 46-47, no. 35, NC228 W53 2001 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Although John Flaxman’s reputation is as an artist who took his inspiration from the ancient world, he argued in his lectures at the Royal Academy in London that “there are more suitable artistic subjects to be found in the Old and New Testaments than in pagan mythology.” In this dramatic drawing, the aggregate mass of God and his angels flies upward, cutting a diagonal swath across the darkened paper. Sidestepping the problem of representing the Creator’s visage, Flaxman depicts God and the angels from behind, their forms simplified into a few strokes of watercolor. Gallery label for the Critique of Reason: Romantic Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)