Studies of Lovers Embracing (recto) and A Suppliant Figure (verso)

James Jefferys

1779 · Pen and carbon black ink, brush and gray wash, graphite · Drawings and Prints

Drawings by Jefferys were long attributed to contemporaries such as James Barry or John Hamilton Mortimer. Following the discovery of a signed work by Jefferys in an English library in the 1970s, which provided a clear example of the artist’s style, he is now recognized as the chief contributor to the "Master of the Giants Album," a dispersed group to which this sheet belongs. Jefferys’s controlled, expressive style demonstrates admiration for Italian mannerists such as Baccio Bandinelli, whom he studied in Rome during the 1770s as part of a circle centered on Henry Fuseli. The figures express intense emotions, captured in the artist’s dynamic pen work, but the context that inspired their interactions remains mysterious.

Artist

James Jefferys

Date

1779

Medium

Pen and carbon black ink, brush and gray wash, graphite

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, Brooke Russell Astor Bequest, 2013