Although the theme of the artist at work is harder to find in Katrin Bellinger’s favourite area, 16th- and 17th-century Italian drawings, the collection does include some beautiful examples by Parmigianino, Pier Francesco Mola and Livio Mehus, among others. The 18th century is well represented, both in Italy, with drawings by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo, and in France, with Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Hubert Robert and Jean-August-Dominque Ingres. The subject’s omnipresence in the 19th century is reflected in the collection’s holdings, which include Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Paul Mathey, Georges Seurat and James Ensor. Self-portraits and studio scenes continue to proliferate in the 20th century, as shown by the works of Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth, William Orpen, Egon Schiele and Horst Janssen.

The practice of working out of doors to create landscape sketches and studies to be later worked up in the studio is a long established one. An early example from the Katrin Bellinger collection is Lambert Doomer’s draughtsman sketching by a tree of circa 1660, where he captures a colleague working out of doors. An Italian drawing, Remigio Cantagallina’s artist walking and sketching in a landscape, is another early example.

From the late 18th century onwards sketching excursions with fellow artists became common practice, as shown in the drawings and prints of Friedrich Preller the Elder, Johann Adam Klein and Wilhelm von Kobell. Thomas Rowlandson’s Artist travelling in Wales shows an elderly artist heavily laden with painting-materials in the pouring rain, making a witty commentary on the trials of the touring painter.

 Indeed, although drawing implements, watercolours and sketchbooks are easily transported, the equipment available to artists before the 19th century limited their ability to produce a finished painting in nature. Pigments had to be ground and mixed with linseed oil to obtain colours, and a pig’s bladder was needed to carry them outside the workshop. This changed with the introduction of paint in tubes (invented in 1841) and of lightweight portable easels, contributing to the rise of plein air painting. The method became more widespread from the 1860s and was made famous by the impressionists who advocated the need to capture the quality of natural light and its effect on both landscape and figures.

Among the Old Master drawings, significant acquisitions were Giovanni Battista Pace’s St Luke Painting the Virgin and Thomas Rowlandson’s An Artist Travelling in Wales. The nineteenth-century French holdings now include two drawn portraits by Paul Mathey and Emile Friant.

The paintings collection was enriched by a flamboyant Biedermeier self-portrait by the little-known Kassel artist Heinrich Ahrens as well as an intimate Self-portrait reading in the studio by Friant, which joins other examples by the artist, making an already good group even stronger.

Notable additions to the depictions of female artists at work were Thomas Worlidge’s etching after a self-portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola (Lancut Museum, Poland) and Felix Bracquemond’s La Terrasse, which shows the artist’s wife portraying an elegant lady with a parasol.

Recently acquired photographs include Serge Vandercam’s portrait of Jean Arp posing by his easel, and Albrecht Fuchs’ shot of John Baldessari in his Los Angeles studio. We were pleased to also add some contemporary works: Antony Gormley’s watercolour The Origin of Drawing VIII (2008) and Michael Craig-Martin’s print Savarin Can (2018).