Dying for art

Everything about the this ink drawing surprised me except for how good it is. Adam Elsheimer (1578--1610) is  known for his paintings on copper--not canvas or panel. They are usually small and often night scenes like the Flight into Egypt below. Always they are arresting; walking through a gallery and coming on one of these paintings, it is as if the museum's wall had suddenly opened up and I am looking directly into luminous, poetic Elsheimer's 's imagination. I am drawn deeper in and I like every minute of it. The drawing of "The Artist Despairing of his Poverty," took me somewhere less alluring but more compelling if also disturbing.

Drawn in ink when artist was about 25 years old this portayal of an artist bent over his work table while his child and the family pets scrounge around looking of a crust of bread, The composition is well judged; the lines confident and fluent which made the subject somehow more unnerving. It is very likely autobiographical; a work of art like the paintings but not so entirely a work, also, of the imagination. Elsheimer was only 34 when he died-- famous and borderline broke.

There are lots of good show in New York right now. The Metropolitan Museum of Art alone has Bellows and Matisse (both of which I've written about for The Economist.)  I very nearly didn'tgo to see the show  Old Master drawings from Munich at the Morgan Library and Museum. There just wasn't time. But someone who did told me I shouldn't miss it. When it comes to art, unlike many other things, I almost always listen to my husband's advice, so on the day we were flying back to London, I cycled up to the Morgan. It is a fantastic show. 

   With all the carrying on about last night's Sotheby's auction of a Raphael drawing for a hammer price of 29.5 million pounds you might think Raphael only did one or two.  Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich at the Morgan includes works often arresting works by Rembrandt, Rubens, Michaelangelo and Van Gogh. Things works are seldom on view. It probably is the one show in town not to be missed. Of all the treasures in it, it is the moving self-portrait of Elsheimer in despair that most moved me and stays all to clearly in my mind. When it comes to making art or trying to, despair is no stranger even when you have the money for the rent.