Drawing Is Thinking

Welcome to a 3D virtual gallery you can walk through in your browser, exploring drawing as the art form where thinking becomes visible.

Humans drew before they wrote. Cave paintings date back around 30,000 years, making drawing older than written language itself. Yet drawing has never been mere preparation. In 17th-century Holland, finished drawings of landscapes were bought and sold as independent works of art, not sketches for something else.

Older Than the Written Word

Drawing preceded writing. Around 30,000 years ago, humans made cave and rock paintings depicting objects and abstract concepts. These pictograms were eventually stylised into symbol systems and then into early writing. Before paper reached Europe, monks drew on vellum and parchment. In 1609, Galileo used drawings to explain the phases of Venus. Drawing has served as a tool for discovery across science, religion, and daily life.

The Quarrel Over Colour

In the 17th century, a debate called the Quarrel of Colour divided artists and enthusiasts. One side championed colour. The other championed drawing, understood not as a technique but as the contour lines of a subject, independent of medium. Leonardo da Vinci had already made this distinction: line versus coloured surface. The argument helped establish drawing as an autonomous art form, not merely preparation for painting.

Surfaces That Came to Hand

Jean-Michel Basquiat drew on doors, clothing, refrigerators, walls, and baseball helmets. He used ink, pencil, felt-tip, marker, and oil-stick. His practice reflects a long tradition: artists once reused wooden tablets, monks drew on parchment, and today's tools include digital pens and graphics tablets. Drawing persists because it needs so little. Any mark on any surface can hold an idea.

Works in this exhibition

The Holy Family Resting on the Flight into Egypt
Jacques Bellange, 1610/17
Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, with charcoal, heightened with white gouache, over black chalk, on cream laid paper · France
Helen Regenstein Collection · Jacques Bellange on Wikipedia
Weeping Tree
Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Reed pen and black-brown ink, with black chalk on off-white wove paper · Netherlands
Gift of Tiffany and Margaret Blake · Vincent van Gogh on Wikipedia
The Woodcutters
Gustave Courbet, 1860
Charcoal and black chalk, with stumping, scraping, and erasing, on buff wove paper, altered to tan · France
Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection · Gustave Courbet on Wikipedia
Sheet of Sketches: Architectural and Erotic Drawings
Pierre Antoine Mongin, n.d.
Black chalk and graphite on cream laid paper · France
Gift of William H. and Frederick G. Schab in honor of Harold Joachim
The Fisherboy
François Boucher, n.d.
Black chalk with stumping, heightened with white gouache, on blue laid paper · France
Helen Regenstein Collection · François Boucher on Wikipedia
Magdalene in the Wilderness with Two Putti
François Perrier, n.d.
Pen and brown ink, with brush and brown wash, over black chalk, on blue tinted laid paper, laid down on card · France
The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
Academic Nude, Seen from the Back
Paul Cezanne, 1862
Charcoal and black chalk, with stumping and erasing, and graphite sketches and notations, on tan laid paper, laid down on heavy tan wove paper · France
Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection · Paul Cézanne on Wikipedia
Portrait of Julie Manet
Berthe Morisot, 1890
Transfer drawing in charcoal and red chalk, on light tan tracing paper, laid down on white wove paper, wrapped around millboard · France
Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection · Berthe Morisot on Wikipedia
Georg III Thurzo of Bethlendorf
Aegidius Sadeler, II, 1607
Pen and black ink, over black chalk, with red chalk and touches of white chalk, on paper prepared with an opaque gray ground · Flanders
Gift of Mrs. Benjamin F. Stein
Holy Family with the Infant Saint John
Valerio Castello, n.d.
Pen and brown ink, with brush and pale brown wash, over red chalk and brush and red chalk wash, on ivory laid paper, laid down on ivory wove paper · Italy
Gift of Marie Louise Pritchard · Valerio Castello on Wikipedia
Bust of Caroline Bonaparte, Princess Murat, Queen of Naples
Jacques Louis David, c. 1810
Charcoal on off-white laid paper, tipped onto cream wove paper · France
Helen Regenstein Collection · Jacques-Louis David on Wikipedia
Half-Length Praying Figure
Style of Carlo Cignani, n.d.
Black and white chalk, on blue laid paper, tipped onto cream wove paper · Italy
The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
Viola Surviving the Shipwreck off the Coast of Illyria, from “Twelfth Night”
George Romney, c. 1776
Black chalk and charcoal on ivory laid paper, edge mounted on ivory laid paper · England
Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
Standing Academic Male Nude (recto); Sketch of Upper Arm (verso)
Eugène Delacroix, 1816
Black chalk and charcoal with stumping, heightened with white chalk (recto), and black chalk and charcoal with stumping (verso), on dark tan laid paper · France
Gift of Austin Hills · Eugène Delacroix on Wikipedia
Study for Cosimo I Reorganizing the Tuscan Troops
Ludovico Buti, 1589
Pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash, heightened with lead white, over traces of black chalk, on tan laid paper, laid down on ivory laid paper · Italy
The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection · Ludovico Buti on Wikipedia
Assumption of the Virgin
Mauro Gandolfi, c. 1780
Pen and brown ink, with brush and brown wash, over black chalk and charcoal, on ivory laid paper · Italy
The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection · Mauro Gandolfi on Wikipedia