Drawings by Writers
Henry Miller (1891-1980) spent as much time painting as drawing. When impoverish and living in Big Sur, California, he bartered his watercolours for food, clothing and fuel. He said: ”Paint as you like and die happy”.
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) made caricatures and sketches, many of which were self-portraits like the one above, drawn after smoking hashish.
Vladimir Mayakovsky )1893-1930) called this rare pen and ink drawing, done in 1928. MAN STRIDDING TOWARDS THE SUN.
Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) drew Arthur Rimbaud repeatedly during their two-year friendship. In 1873, drunk on absinthe, Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the hand. He spent several years in prison as a result and they never saw each other again.
Mikhail Bulgarow (1891-1940) made this drawing of the household devil, Rogash, in 1928.
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) “Love Letter” from DESSINS, first published in 1928.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) made this sketch in his diary, in 1924: “ I write this very decidedly out of despair over my body and over a future with this body…”
Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) made this drawing of Gertrude Stein although the two writers did not get on. Of their first meeting Barnes later wrote: “D’ you know what she said of me? Said I had beautiful legs. Now what does that have to do with anything?”
Federico García Lorca (1893-1936) drew, painted and made puppets; the inscription on this drawing, which shows the influence of surrealism, reads: “Only through mystery do we live, only through mystery.”
Jacques Prévert (1908-1977) made this drawing in payment for a meal at ‘Trois Canettes’ in Paris.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) illustrated and painted an enormous amount; this drawing (1910) accompanied a letter to his son William with an added P.S of “Wish you were here to share a bath with me”
James Thurber (1894-1961) was well-known as a cartoonist and writer. This drawing accompanies A PORTRAIT OF AUNT IDA, a story about a woman who loves catastrophes and has prophetic dreams of “tall faceless women in black veils and gloves”.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) became a painter at the age of sixty-seven when he found he could no longer simply cross out a word on a manuscript without the scribble becoming an elaborate design. He said: “My pictures are my versification in lines”.
Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), poet, actor, surrealist, artist made this portrait of Arthur Adamov in 1947, shortly after the playwright helped Artaud gain release from Rodez, the asylum where he had been held for many years.
H. G. Wells (1866-1946) kept a ‘burlesque diary’ in the form of humorous sketches; he made this ‘picshua’ in a letter to his brother in 1890: “What is this?. Why do the people in the tramcar shrink from his presence?… He STINKS.”
Mark Twain (1835-1910) made a burlesque map of the fortifications of Paris. Published in the “New York Herald” of Sunday, October 2, 1870. At this time the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war had just begun and newspapers the world over were filled with maps of Paris as is journalistic practice.
Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) taught art in a secondary school for boys; he made many drawings to accompany his collections of stories and for a short time before he was shot by a Nazi he was given protection by a Gestapo officer who liked his work.
Elizabeth Smart (1913-1986) made this drawing in a scrapbook about the birth of her first child. CHRISTOPHER’S BOOK is full of sketches, poems, details and photographs of the baby.
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) made ‘scissor fantasies’ to illustrate his own tales; he often made these paper cut-outs while telling stories to audiences of children.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) signed this drawing ‘1860, Oct.7-Villa Alberti Siena-My fig tree-E.B.Browning’. The second inscription is in Robert’s hand.
Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841)-painter and violinist as writer-was known as a savage wit and tease. He was killed in a duel by a man who did not like the way he was depicted in a caricature the poet had drawn at a party.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) made this drawing as a young officer stationed in the Caucasus; Tolstoy often drew on his manuscripts and the sketch above was found on his copy of YOUTH.
Nikolai Godol (1809-1852) originally intended to be a painter and often illustrated the covers of his own books. This drawing of Pushkin was done in the 1830s.
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) often sketched in the drawing room at Haworth with Emily, Anne and Branwell; this drawing shows the writer as an ugly duckling waving goodbye to potential suitors.
Emily Bronte (1818-1848) filled her diaries with drawings of family life; this diary paper shows herself and Anne working at the dinning room table.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) made this self-caricature in November, 1943, in the Wheatsheaf Tavern, London.