TitleStudy of drapery for female figure "Hope" from stained glass programme "Hope and Memory" in Pittsburgh
Artist
Kenyon Cox
(American, 1856 - 1919)
Date1903
MediumGraphite
DimensionsSheet size: 19 15/16 × 15 in.
Mat size: 24 × 18 in.
SignedSigned in graphite at lower right: "Kenyon Cox/1903"
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Gift of the children of Kenyon Cox, Allyn Cox, and his brother and sister
Object number1981.138
Label TextWhen working on a mural or stained glass project, Cox would execute painstaking preparatory sketches of the composition and innumerable studies of separate subjects or models. He initially rendered figures in the nude to establish the configuration and structure of the underlying form; he added drapery later. Beginning in the 1890s, Cox developed a flatter and more abstract approach to drawing the figure, a style that closely emulated the decorative murals of the French painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. This drawing aided him in creating the stained glass window that he executed for the Third Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh in 1903.
