This trans-historical exhibition was held in The Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery at The Courtauld Gallery (3 May – 15 July 2018). Selected principally from the Katrin Bellinger Collection, the display spanned from the 16^th to the 20^th centuries and focused on representations of studios—symbolic, actual and religious—as well as artists’ depictions of themselves or others at work. Art historians have interpreted these themes variously as a means of elevating the social and economic status of artists; of illustrating the marriage of intellectual knowledge and practical skill proposed by academic theorists; or as sophisticated allegories of the philosophical significance of visual art. Even at the most pragmatic level of recording the clutter of the everyday studio, drawing human models or antique casts in an academy, or sketching in a landscape, works with these subjects are imbued with layers of meaning.

The exhibition was curated by the late Deanna Petherbridge (The Primacy of Drawing: Histories & Theories of Practice, Yale University Press, 2010) in collaboration with Anita V. Sganzerla. Both curators also co-authored the catalogue.