Anita Sganzerla

Explores the theme of the artists’ studio, featuring previously unpublished works and essays Magic and Mess: The Artist’s Studio Revealed explores the myth and reality of the artists’ studio in Europe through the long nineteenth century. Featuring works from the unrivalled Katrin Bellinger Collection and Leighton House, this richly illustrated catalogue features both famous and little-known artists and includes essays by leading scholars. Through essays and catalogue entries, the book explores the role of the studio, as both a practical space for artmaking and a constant source of inspiration to artists and writers. Themes covered include the opulent and humble studio; the palette and pigment sets as symbols of the artist; the rise of the female model; the use of plaster casts, mannequins, prints, photographs and drawings; the contrast between the romantic fires of inspiration and the cold bohemian stove; innovations in window design and lighting; the emergence of the corner of the studio as a privileged zone, taking inspiration from Émile Zola’s cult of the corner, and from Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s In My Studio (1893), which belonged to Frederic Leighton and has recently been acquired by Leighton House.

This selection of drawings from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, mainly from the Katrin Bellinger Collection, illustrates the variety of ways in which artists have represented themselves and others making art. Accompanies an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London. Artists have long taken pleasure in representing themselves at work, in their studios or academies, out and about in a landscape or recording their own likeness. Immersed in nature, artists are often shown almost lost in the geographical vastness they are recording. Depictions of the artist in the studio are about creative concentration and introspection and, like self-portraits, are reflections on practice and identity. The care taken in recording the studio apparatus of easels, palettes, or assistants grinding pigments, indicates their significance for practitioners. The studio might be the everyday workshop of dirty brushes and sculptural debris, but it is also the place of allegory and myth where artists perform or dream.