Portrait of a girl 1885

Anton Ažbe’s ‘Portrait of a Girl,’ is a beautiful example of academic drawing, rendered with charcoal on paper. Charcoal is an unforgiving medium, demanding both control and a sensitivity to the subtle gradations of light and shadow. Ažbe coaxes a full range of tonalities out of the material, from the soft highlights on the girl's face to the deep, velvety blacks of her hair. What's fascinating is that the academic tradition, in which Ažbe was trained, valued drawing as the foundation for all other art forms. It was about mastering the fundamentals of observation, and the skilled rendering of form, but it was also tied to social mobility. Drawing skills were essential for artisans and designers as much as fine artists. In his studio in Munich, Ažbe taught many artists of different social classes, and his portrait drawings reveal the labour-intensive processes of artistic production, and its relationship to larger economic and social structures.