Beautiful art from Victorian times at The Frick Art Museum

“Victorian Visions”

Through April 18

The Frick Art Museum

7227 Reynolds Street

(412)… “Victorian Visions”

Through April 18

The Frick Art Museum

7227 Reynolds Street

(412) 371-0600

Museum artworks — whether in oil, pastel or clay — often have a feeling of polished finality and perfection that is staggering. But rarely do artists create their masterpieces in a successive brain-to-canvas-to-museum process. It often takes numerous detailed studies to create the perfect effects of color, line or form that the artist desires in the final piece. “Victorian Visions,” the current exhibit at The Frick Art Museum, contains remarkable studies, preparatory works and finished pieces on paper — in media such as pencil, charcoal and watercolor — from the Victorian period.

There’s just something about these works that speaks to both the beginning artist and the seasoned veteran, especially the preparatory sketches. Through them, you can nearly share the thought process of the artist by examining the movement of line and shading across the page. It allows you to begin where the artist began and seems to connect you to something more pure and spontaneous than the glossy surfaces of oil painting.

For example, in a study for the “Seed of David” altarpiece by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), the figure of David is rendered with beautiful modeling and naturalism in a shockingly low number of pencil strokes. His legs stand tensely, yet lightly, on the ground as he swings his arm to fell Goliath. That arm, however, appears twice in the work — Rossetti first drew it bent and raised above David’s head. But then he changed his mind and fixed it in the position of the downward arc of his swing, creating a stronger effect of line, without erasing the previous experiment. It’s remarkable to see the conception of both poses in the same sketch.

As you will learn from the educational material accompanying the exhibit, the Victorian period was a time when British artists were reaching back in history to the truthful representation of objects and careful observation that came before High Renaissance idealism. In the numerous works by Edward Poynter (1836-1919), that careful naturalism of observation is immediately evident in his beautiful attention to contour and shading.

In a series of six pencil studies of the female head, Poynter’s pencil seems to have barely touched the page, yet he has rendered remarkably modeled faces with subtle expressive nuances of pose. Some of Poynter’s works on exhibit are exactingly careful preparatory studies; a few even retain the artist’s grid used to transfer the work to a larger scale. In these works, Poynter favors chalk on dark paper, bringing highlights out of the background instead of recessing his shadows.

However, in “Portrait Study” Poynter uses charcoal on a grainy, cream-colored paper to create a face with all the sensual warmth characteristic of his style. The texture of the paper allowed him to accurately capture the feel of skin and hair, though the pensive expression of his subject is purely his vision. And although it appears a finished work, there is evidence that this was perhaps a preliminary study for the head of Christ for an unrealized scheme to decorate the ceiling of a cathedral.

John Singer Sargent’s (1856-1925) “Figure Study” of 1900 is the standout watercolor work of the exhibition. His swirling application of watercolor — and some pencil — gives the reclined male figure vitality in its transparent ability to depict every nuanced sinew of flesh or fold of drapery. The overall green-and-blue tonality of the work gives it a unified feeling of early-morning light, and the diagonal of the staircase in the background emphasizes the languid pose of the model.

Also notable is “Tintern Abbey,” a sketchy, yet detailed, charcoal and body-color study of architecture by William Collingwood (1815-1887). The corner view of a Gothic abbey places the viewer as if standing a few yards from the soaring facade of the building. Its impressive stained-glass windows and ivy-covered arches are rendered with both deep blacks and stark white highlights before fading off at the edges. It feels spontaneous, yet inspired and thoughtful.

However, this exhibit has much more to offer than these few works. There are 66 drawings and watercolors in all, including works by such artists as Albert Goodwin, Walter Crane, Frederic Leighton and William Morris, the leader of the British arts-and-crafts movement. If you have any palate for works on paper, or the raw beginnings of the artistic process, this exhibit is a must-see. There is a conversation to be had with the artists of these pieces through their honest, basic studies that seem to reveal the very roots of artistic creation.