Study

About

A study sits between a quick sketch and a finished work. Artists make one to solve a particular problem: the position of a hand, the fall of drapery, the colour of an evening sky. Renaissance workshops relied on them. Raphael drew figures nude before clothing them for the Disputa (c. 1509–10), and Albrecht Dürer's watercolour Young Hare (1502) records fur almost hair by hair.

Academies later built training around studies from plaster casts and life models. John Constable painted oil sketches of clouds on Hampstead Heath in 1821–22, noting time and weather on the back, and Théodore Géricault studied severed limbs and heads while preparing The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19). John Ruskin drew rocks, leaves and feathers with scientific patience. Many studies are now admired as much as the works they served. Look for repeated attempts, written notes, squaring lines and passages left unfinished.