Grey Matters: Graphite at The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Drivetime, 2003 © Christopher Cook

Grey Matters: Graphite
29 November – 11 March

• Famous artists on show including William Blake, Degas, Toulouse Lautrec and Burne-Jones
• Display showing the wide range of forms graphite can take, from the raw mineral to pencils, batons and even powder
• Boundary-pushing contemporary works: graphite ‘painting’ and a performance video of exploding graphite balloons

Portrait of Captain John Wood, John Brown (1752-1787) © The Fitzwilliam Museum

The latest exhibition from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge explores the creative power and versatility of the pencil and its raw material graphite, from the first 17th century drawings on paper and vellum to the latest in contemporary art.

In the UK today relatively little is widely known about the history of the pencil and its graphite core, but Britain was in fact the world’s first supplier of graphite. Before the 17th century the material was little-used, the main drawing materials being metalpoint, then chalk, ink and charcoal. The first high quality graphite mine was discovered in Cumbria in the early 1500s, and through British export graphite, and its later form in pencils, became the most widespread artistic tool in the known world.

The mineral graphite is named from the ancient Greek ‘to draw/write’ and is one of the most common materials used in drawing today. It is also one of the most versatile, allowing the artist to exploit a vast range of effects, from a needle-sharp contour line to the velvety depths of soft pencil shading, sometimes worked into a gleaming, metallic-like sheen. Grey Matters: Graphite explores these techniques through four centuries of graphite drawings, from incredibly detailed miniatures and architecture drawings, to first sketches and softly shaded portraits.

The extraordinary range of ways in which the material has been used will be shown through a case of graphite samples, from raw minerals and powder, to graphite batons and pencils used to create infinite shades of grey.

Mr and Mrs Joseph Woodhead and Mr Henry Comber in Rome, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres © The Fitzwilliam Museum

Finished drawings, studies and sketches by renowned artists form the heart of the exhibition, demonstrating their amazing skill in creating fine detail and dramatic shading just with the graphite pencil as their only tool.

These include:
• First ideas on paper by artist and poet, William Blake, usually known for his highly coloured
printed work
• Sketches by Impressionist artist Degas, showing this modern master’s knowledge of
Renaissance drawing techniques
• Drawings by George Romney from the Fitzwilliam’s collection of over 650 works, the largest
collection of his drawings in the world. Known as a painter of portraits, these show a new
dimension of his work.
• Compositional drawings by Pre-Raphaelite artist Burne-Jones of figure studies drawn in the
1870s and 80s, inspired by Florentine Renaissance painters

In contrast, the exhibition will also show how contemporary artists have pushed the medium to its extremes. Artist Christopher Cook uses a ‘primal soup’ of graphite powder, oil, resin and solvents to create enigmatic imagery that blurs the boundaries between drawing, painting, and photography. Artists James Eden and Olly Rooks have created a performance video in which balloons filled with graphite powder explode over a paper surface: in these, the artists’ hand unleashes the potential of the medium to create its own, mysterious, forms.