See also: Drawing conclusions (Quicktime, 1 min 45 sec)
Paul Pfotenhauer, producer; Ken Zukin, videographer
Thanks to an alumnus, students experience the craft of a master
Sketchpad in hand, first-year student Sara Kosoff trades glances with an image of an elegant woman in a hat. With careful strokes, she recreates the delicate shading of the woman's face, the simple grace of her sleeve, the aloof curve of her body in a chair.
"It's sort of intimidating at first, but you have to let yourself go," says Kosoff, who is visiting the UC Davis Nelson Gallery with an introductory drawing class taught by lecturer Bryce Vinokurov. "You realize it's just marks on a paper, and no matter how famous the artist is, you're trying to let yourself grow by recreating it."
That artist is James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), an American who spent much of his life in London and Paris, and who is best known for the painting popularly called Whistler's Mother.
Less well known are his lithographs, prints made from the transfer of a crayon drawing onto an absorbent stone. Sixty of Whistler's lithographs now grace the Nelson Gallery as a recent gift of late alumnus Jeffrey Ruesch.
Ruesch entered UC Davis with thoughts of studying medicine or becoming an English literature teacher, but emerged in 1969 with a degree in art history.
Doctorate at Columbia
Influences of the people he met here, including art professors Richard Nelson and Bob Arneson, changed his life. Ruesch carried his artistic impressions through a doctorate in art history at Columbia University, and later into a career as an art dealer and gallery owner in New York.
He purchased his first Whistler lithograph shortly after graduating from UC Davis, and developed his collection throughout the next 30 years. In 2002, he discussed a plan to eventually donate the prints to his California alma mater.
‘It enables students to be in the presence of great art, to see it not on a computer screen or slide.’
Renny Pritikin, director of the Nelson Gallery
The decision proved to be a prophetic one. Ruesch became ill and died of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in March 2003, at the age of 55.
Despite his premature death, Ruesch's love of art lives on to inspire a new generation of students. "He wanted the collection to go back to his roots, to his beginnings as an art collector, and that was UC Davis," says Assistant Dean Maureen Miller, who oversaw the acquisition of the prints.
"He wanted it to be used as a teaching collection, because he knew how he would have benefited from it as a student."
Professors help make the connection
Today, professors are helping to make the connection between this valuable new resource and their students, both the new and the experienced.
Like Vinokurov, painter and art studio professor David Hollowell gathered his upper division figure drawing class in the Nelson Gallery to observe Whistler's technique.
"What is he doing," Hollowell asks as they gather around a single print, "that, if you could grab onto it, would make you have an even greater relationship with drawing, with form?"
A thoughtful discussion follows as students comment on the way Whistler highlights a figure's face, how he directs the observer's focus, his dynamic variety of lines.
These nuances, says UC Davis art history professor Jeffrey Ruda, make Whistler's lithographs so difficult to reproduce, even in digital photographs, and so contribute to their obscurity.
The Winged Hat (1890)
Art history professor Dianne Macleod says that lithographs demonstrate Whistler's style and economy of line. "There is a real grace, a beautiful simplicity. He could have used many lines, but he says it all so simply."
Only by seeing the original
"To see this kind of subtlety of both technicality and expression, and how the two work together, is only something you can get by looking at the original," Ruda says.
One look at these originals reveals how Whistler exploited lithography to his advantage – the details of his touch flow across the print, almost revealing the movement of his hand.
Art history professor Dianne Macleod says that the lithographs give students insight into Whistler's artistic process.
"There is a real elegance, a beautiful simplicity," Macleod says. "In a painting, color distracts; you're not as conscious of the lines, the lyricism of it."
Indeed, by virtue of a simple line, almost a scribble, Whistler creates a sleeve or a staircase, breathes life into a chicken or a tree.
Beyond the monetary value of the 60 prints (which have been individually appraised from several hundred to several thousand dollars), the opportunity for students to experience the craft of a master is Ruesch's real gift to the university.
Objects have presence
"It enables students to be in the presence of great art, to see it not on a computer screen or slide," says Renny Pritikin, director of the Nelson Gallery. "We believe that objects have presence, and it is valuable."
On the home page: Detail of Needlework (1896), a lithograph by James McNeill Whistler. This portrait of Whistler's sister-in-law reveals his development of lithography as an art form. "Crayons give an enormous range of subtleties," says art history professor Jeffrey Ruda. "He uses crayons of different sizes, plays with shading. You can see every nuance in her face."
Pritikin also says that the current exhibit was arranged as per Whistler's characteristically unconventional tastes. For example, Whistler directed that these particular drawings be exhibited in a gallery with a yellow color scheme and artfully placed blue and white Chinese vases.
The pieces are hung in two rows, with the top and bottom edges aligned, creating uneven wall space between frames of different sizes. The resulting effect provides today's visitor with a pleasingly historic stroll through these images of timeless grace.
The Whistler exhibit runs through March 18. The Nelson Gallery is located on the first floor of the Art Building.