Acquisition by the Art Institute of Chicago…November 17, 2014 Greetings, once again,
The Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings houses a distinguished collection of works on paper ranging in date from the 15th century to the present, with holdings of 11,500 drawings and 60,000 prints. The collection includes particular strengths in French 19th-century prints and drawings as well as British, French, and Italian Old Master drawings and prints The Department of Prints and Drawings has completed a major renovation of its facilities, and the Jean and Steven Goldman Study Center reopened on September 17, 2002. The renovation addressed the pressing need in the department for expanded art storage, updated facilities in the print study room, and improved spaces for offices, matting and framing, and paper conservation. This space is adjacent to the newly opened Jean and Steven Goldman Prints and Drawings Galleries in the Richard and Mary L. Gray Wing. Designed by Kulapat Yantrasast, six galleries totaling 3,500 square feet of gallery space offer visitors the chance to experience a dynamic and comprehensive overview of the department's holdings. The Art Institute of Chicago was founded as both a Museum and School for the fine arts in 1879, a critical era in the history of Chicago as civic energies were devoted to rebuilding the metropolis that had been destroyed by the Great Fire of 1871. The Art Institute found its permanent home in 1893, when it moved into a building, constructed jointly with the city of Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition and is located at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street. If you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
Hilton Head Island Art Auction…October 22, 2014 Greetings, once again, I am very pleased to have been invited to be in the upcoming Hilton Head Island Art Auction, which will take place on November 8, 2014, at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina. This year’s auction will consist of a select collection of fine art by renowned American painters and sculptors, both living and deceased, and will include works by Clark Hulings, William Redfield, Arthur Meltzer, and others. The Hilton Head Art Auction is a premier fine art auction which has been produced for over fifteen years by the Morris & Whiteside Auctions, LLC. The Arts Center of Coastal Carolina is located at 14 Shelter Cove Lane, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. For more information about the upcoming Hilton Head Island Art Auction contact J. Ben Whiteside at: Or by phone at: 843-842-4433. In addition, the Hilton Head Island Art Auction’s website is at: www.hiltonheadartauction.com If you have any questions, comments, or if you would like to know what artwork I will have in the auction, I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
The Art Institute of Chicago…October 2, 2014 Greetings, I am greatly honored by an invitation to give a lecture at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago on my research into the unique nature of the traditional drawing materials and techniques used by the old masters. My lecture will accompany an exhibition entitled, Strokes of Genius: Italian Drawings from the Goldman Collection, which opens at the Art Institute of Chicago on November 1, 2014 and will run through February 1, 2015. Focusing on the periods of Mannerism and the early Baroque, this exhibition showcases over 80 masterpieces of Italian draftsmanship which emphasizes the art of composition by displaying drawings from the late 15th to the mid-17th century according to their intended function. Most were executed as preparatory or working drawings to develop compositions for paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts. Unique to this collection is the unusual opportunity to display more than one drawing for a single project; the multiple preparatory sheets for one painting allows viewers to witness the thought process of the artist as he searches for his form, rejecting and changing ideas. My presentation is entitled, Natural red chalk in traditional master drawings, and is scheduled for November 10th, 2014. Natural red chalk was one of the naturally-occurring chalks that were highly-valued drawing materials used by European master artists for more than four centuries. It was a geologically unique material that was quarried from the earth and required no further processing than to be simply sawn into drawing sticks. Natural red chalk was widely-used by many artists including da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt, and countless others. My lecture will cover the historical descriptions of the traditional use of natural red chalk, its geological formation and sources, its chemical composition, and will also include several field emission scanning microscopic images that demonstrate its important particle size and morphology, traits which are responsible for its unique optical and working properties. Unfortunately, the use of natural chalks as a drawing material was lost to the artistic community when they were gradually replaced by commercially-manufactured tempered fabricated chalks beginning in the early 1800s. Over the years, the information on the naturally-occurring chalks has become scarce, especially concerning their geology, chemical composition, methods of quarrying, how they were processed for use, and the traditional techniques by which they were used for drawing purposes. In addition, the curators and conservators at the Art Institute of Chicago have worked with me to secure a loan of traditional drawing materials, including raw blocks of four different types of natural chalk, traditional drawing inks and quills, a traditional silver-point, and several other traditional drawing materials from my collection to be included in a display case as an integral part of the Strokes of Genius: Italian Drawings from the Goldman Collection exhibition. The Art Institute of Chicago was founded as both a Museum and School for the fine arts in 1879, a critical era in the history of Chicago as civic energies were devoted to rebuilding the metropolis that had been destroyed by the Great Fire of 1871. The Art Institute found its permanent home in 1893, when it moved into a building, constructed jointly with the city of Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition and is located at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street. In keeping with the academic origins of the institution, a research library was constructed in 1901; eight major expansions for gallery and administrative space have followed, with the latest being the Modern Wing, which opened in 2009. The permanent collection has grown to nearly 300,000 works of art in fields including master drawings and paintings. Together, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago are now internationally recognized as two of the leading fine-arts institutions in the United States. More information about the upcoming exhibition, Strokes of Genius: Italian Drawings from the Goldman Collection, can be found on the Art Institute of Chicago’s website at: If you have any questions or comments I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
Trustees’ Purchase Award National Museum of Wildlife Art…September 1, 2014 Greetings, once again,
I am humbled and greatly honored by this award and acquisition coming from such a prestigious museum. This museum received official designation as the “National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States” by order of Congress and it has an internationally acclaimed collection whose purpose is to inspire public appreciation of fine art, wildlife, and humanity's relationship with nature. My painting that won the award was a large oil painting of an osprey in a natural osprey nest atop a tree overlooking, The Grand, which is the tallest peak in the Grand Tetons range. The painting is entitled, Room with a view, and was based on a small drawing in natural black chalk and an en plein air oil painting both of which were done on location. Both the drawing and the small preparatory painting were then used by me in the studio to create the large oil painting. If you have any questions or comments I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
National Museum of Wildlife Art – Western Visions Exhibition…August 12, 2014 Greetings, once more, I am greatly looking forward to being in the upcoming 27th annual Western Visions exhibition at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. The Western Visions exhibition includes a wide variety of events at the Museum’s award-winning facility to ensure that there is something for every artistic palate, and is one of the signature events of the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival. . Western Visions routinely draws an international crowd to this critically-acclaimed exhibition and the Museum is a major hub for art lovers, wildlife and outdoor enthusiasts, and serious art collectors. More than 200 paintings and sculptures by the world’s top artists will be included this year. The Museum is deeply committed to making important changes to keep Western Visions in the forefront of major museum exhibitions, continually improving the quality of the show to make it the best venue for artists and collectors to meet. In order to include larger works of art, this year’s Western Vision has pared the number of invited artists down to 100 of the very best, who are designated as the Wild 100. This year’s show will run from August 17 to September 22, 2013This year’s show will run from August 17 to September 22, 2013This year’s event runs from August 30th to September 21, 2014. On Thursday, September 11, 2014 there will be a social hour followed in the evening by the Wild 100 West Artist Party in which patrons have an opportunity to view the art, place bids, and mingle with the artists before the sale occurs. On Friday, September 12, 2014 the doors will open at 3:30 pm for an evening of refreshments and beverages with the final opportunity to bid prior to the drawing that determines who is going home with a beautiful new work of art. I am planning to couple this important exhibition with some extra time for some serious field studies of the charismatic megafauna in the Greater Yellowstone Region and plan to return home with many new drawings and small en plein air oil paintings to use as valuable references in the studio to create new oil paintings over the coming year. The National Museum of Wildlife Art is located at 2820 Rungius Road in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.For more information on Western Visions please contact the Museum at 800-313-9553, or visit the Western Visions’ website at: If you have any questions, comments, or if you would like to know what artwork I will have in the exhibition, I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
Woodson Art Museum’s Birds in Art exhibition…August 4, 2014 Greetings, once again, I am very pleased and honored to announce that I have been invited to be in the internationally renowned Birds in Art exhibition at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. Since 1976, the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum has organized the Birds in Art exhibition as an annual event to present the very best artistic interpretations of birds and their related subject matter. Three simple words – birds in art – took on a life of their own when they became a prestigious Woodson Art Museum exhibition title. Over the years, Birds in Art has grown into what is recognized around the world as the exhibition that sets the standard internationally for avian art. The artists invited to exhibit in this years’ Birds in Art exhibition were selected from several countries including France, Holland, Sweden, England, Scotland, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, India, South Africa, Italy, Australia, Canada, the USA, and others. The rare invitation to be part of this prestigious exhibition is indeed a treasured event. My entry in the exhibition is a drawing entitled,Frontal study of a long-billed curlew, which was drawn using the four traditional natural chalks that were used by the old masters. This drawing was one of several preparatory drawings of long-billed curlews, which I studied during their winter migration to prepare for a series of oil paintings. During the 17th and 18th century a complex traditional natural chalk drawing technique that used by artists such as Rubens and Watteau was known as aux trois crayons (with three chalk pencils) and involved the combined use of natural black, red, and white chalks in a single drawing. For my drawing, natural yellow chalk was added to the other three natural chalks to further increase the complexity of the technique creating a drawing in the rare traditional technique known as aux quatre crayons (with four chalk pencils). This was my first drawing done using four traditional natural chalks and trust me, based on my experience working with this very complex traditional natural chalk drawing technique I can assure you that it is a lot more difficult than you could imagine. The Birds in Art exhibition’s opening reception will be on Friday, September 5, 2014, and the exhibition will be open to the public from September 6th through November 16, 2014. The Woodson Art Museum is located at 700 N. 12th Street in Wausau, Wisconsin, and their phone is: 715-845-7010. Further information is available from the Museum’s website: http://www.lywam.org/birds-in-art If you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
Charleston Small Works Fine Art Auction…June 22, 2014 Greetings,
The collection will be hung and available for preview beginning July, 14th, 2014. The auction preview will continue daily through Saturday the 19th at 1:00 at which time the auction will begin. I will have two drawings in the auction, both of which were done in the rare old master drawing medium of natural red chalk that was widely used by artists during the Renaissance, but lost to modern use since the 1800s. These drawings were from my field studies of snowy plovers undertaken this past winter as preparatory drawings for a series of oil paintings. For more information about the Charleston Small Works Fine Art Auction contact J. Ben Whiteside by email at: ben@morris-whiteside.com or by phone at: 843-842-4433. If you have any questions, comments, or if you would like to know more about the artwork I will have in the auction, I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
Cheyenne Frontier Days Western Art Show…June 1, 2014 Greetings, once more,
This popular exhibition will feature the works of over 60 of the country’s top western and wildlife artists who are included in this exhibition by invitation from Wyoming State Governor, Matthew H. Mead. Converging on the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum the artists celebrate the American West, including its culture, its magnificent scenery, its wildlife, and the Western way of life through their impressive works of art. This is a noteworthy exhibition that celebrates the heritage of the American West in all of its grandeur. For more than a century, Cheyenne Frontier Days has preserved the western way of life, the rich traditions of rodeo, and the spirit of community involvement. Through the arts, the Cheyenne Frontier Days Western Art Show and Sale proudly takes its place among the grand traditions of Cheyenne Frontier Days. The Cheyenne Frontier Days Western Art Show and Sale is one of the most respected and prestigious western art exhibitions in the Rocky Mountain region. In the exhibition this year I will have several oil paintings as well as a drawing of two pintail ducks done in the old master drawing medium of natural red chalk that was widely used by artists during the Renaissance, but lost to modern use since the 1800s. Festivities begin with a pre-view at 3:30 p.m., followed by a reception at the Wyoming Governor’s Mansion at 4 p.m. and the opportunity to view the art and meet the artists at the Museum from 6 - 8 p.m. A western dinner and cocktails are served throughout the evening and the actual sale takes place at 8 p.m. The artwork will remain on display at the Museum until July 28th. The Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum is located in the Northeast corner of Frontier Park at 4610 N. Carey Avenue, in Cheyenne, Wyoming. For more information you can call the Museum at (307) 778-7290, or visit the website for this exhibition at: If you have any questions, comments, or if you would like to know more about the artwork I will have in this important exhibition, I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
Natural red chalk manuscript published in the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation…May, 27, 2014 Greetings, I am extremely pleased to announce that the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (JAIC) has just published a fourth manuscript resulting from my decades of research into the traditional drawing materials and techniques of the old master artists. This manuscript is entitled, Natural red chalk in traditional old master drawings, and is based on over 30 years of research. The citation for the manuscript is the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, 2014, Volume 53, Number 2, pages 89-115. The manuscript was written by me, along with my colleagues Stephen Hernandez, Philip Anderson, and Supapan Seraphin of the University of Arizona. This manuscript serves as an important companion piece to the previous three manuscripts, Natural black chalk in traditional old master drawings, and, Steatite and calcite natural white chalks in traditional old master drawings, which were published by JAIC in 2010 and 2013 respectively, and the recent manuscript, Natural yellow chalk in traditional old master drawings, which was published in JAIC earlier this year. The naturally-occurring chalks were highly-valued drawing materials that were used by the European old master artists for more than four centuries. They were geologically unique materials that were quarried from the earth and required no further processing than to be simply sawn into drawing sticks. They were widely-used by artists such as da Vinci, Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, and numerous others. Natural red chalk was one of the more widely used of the natural chalks and this research uncovered significant historical descriptions of its use, determined its chemical makeup, described its geological formation, and documented its unique particle size and morphology accounting for its unique optical and working properties. Unfortunately, the use of these natural chalks had been lost to the artistic community when they were gradually replaced by commercially-manufactured artificial chalks beginning in the early 1800s. Since then information has become scarce on the naturally-occurring chalks especially concerning their geology, chemical composition, methods of quarrying, how they were processed, and the traditional techniques by which they were used for drawing purposes. This new manuscript is greatly strengthened by invaluable field emission scanning electron microscopic images and chemical compositional analyses, which were done on five different natural red chalk specimens from my own collection as well as from historical sources in France and Germany, preformed by my co-authors at the University of Arizona’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. In addition, it includes optical microscopic images done by Penley Knipe, the Philip and Lynn Straus Conservator of Works of Art on Paper, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums. I consider the publication of this new manuscript by the prestigious Journal of the American Institute for Conservation to be an extremely high honor as it is an internationally renowned and respected major periodical dealing with the preservation and conservation of historic and cultural works of art. The journal’s parent organization, the American Institute for Conservation (AIC)is the largest conservation membership organization in the United States, and counts among its more than 3000 members, the majority of which are professional conservators, conservation educators, and conservation scientists worldwide. The Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (JAIC) is the primary vehicle for the publication of peer-reviewed technical studies, research papers, treatment case studies, ethics and standards, as well as discussions relating to the broad field of conservation and preservation of historic and cultural works. Subscribers to the JAIC include AIC members, both individuals and institutions, as well as major museums, libraries, and universities throughout the world. This manuscript now completes a total of four manuscripts, which extensively covers the major types of the naturally-occurring chalks that were traditionally used by the old masters. Doing the research and obtaining the materials for this manuscript on natural red chalk over the past few decades has made it one of my favorite drawing mediums and it is arguably the most versatile and visually stunning member of the traditionally-used natural chalks. Several of my upcoming exhibitions this year will include drawings that were done in natural red chalk from my field studies of various charismatic megafauna and avian species. If you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
The Princeton University Art Museum…April 20, 2014 Greetings, There is an important exhibition of Italian Master Drawings currently on display at the Princeton University Art Museum through May 11, 2014, to which I have contributed. Last summer, I was approached by the curators at the Museum with a request for me to loan several specimens of the unique drawing materials used by the master artists to this exhibition. I was more than happy to comply with the request and I am pleased to announce that the exhibition includes a display case which houses raw pieces of natural black chalk, natural red chalk, natural white chalk, as well as an assortment of traditional reed chalk holders and other tools that were used by master artists during the renaissance on loan from my collection. I have recently received the exhibition catalog entitled, Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, written by Laura M. Giles, Lia Markey, and Claire Van Cleave. In reading this finely researched and scholarly book, I was greatly honored to find my loan of these traditional drawing materials described by Laura M. Giles, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Museum, as: “Although the majority of the works in the exhibition are from the Museum’s collection, three critical loans were integral to its thematic and contextualizing thrust. For these I am deeply grateful to Pierre Durand and Timothy Mayhew, and also to my colleagues Ben Primer and Stephen Ferguson in the Special Collections and Rare Books Division, Firestone Library.” For the past three decades I have been conducting research into the nature of the unique drawing materials and techniques of master artists, presenting my findings at a variety of major museums, and more recently publishing my findings in prestigious peer-reviewed journals. It was a great honor to have been able to loan these traditional drawing materials in my collection to this important exhibition to further promote contemporary knowledge and understanding of the unique materials that were used for centuries by master artist to create the extant drawings now housed in major museums and private collections around the world. If you have any questions, comments, I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
Publication of manuscript on natural yellow chalk in traditional old master drawings…March 14, 2014 Greetings, once more,
This manuscript is entitled, Natural yellow chalk in traditional old master drawings, and is based on over 20 years of research. The citation for the manuscript is the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, Volume 53, Number 1, February 2014, and I am pleased to say that it is the lead article in this issue with an image of one of the natural yellow chalk specimens from this study on the cover. The manuscript was written by me, along with my colleagues Supapan Seraphin and Margo Ellis of the University of Arizona. This manuscript serves as an important companion piece to the previous two manuscripts, Natural black chalk in old master drawings, and, Steatite and calcite natural white chalks, which were published by JAIC in 2010 and 2013 respectively. The naturally-occurring chalks were highly-valued drawing materials that were used by the European old master artists for more than four centuries. They were geologically unique materials that were quarried from the earth and required no further processing than to be simply sawn into drawing sticks. They were widely-used by artists such as da Vinci, Raphael, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, and numerous others. Natural yellow chalk was one of the lesser-known of the natural chalks, and this research uncovered significant historical descriptions of its use, determined its chemical makeup, described its geological formation, and documented its unique particle size and morphology, which accounted for its unique optical and working properties. Unfortunately, the use of these natural chalks had been lost to the artistic community when they were gradually replaced by commercially-manufactured artificial chalks beginning in the early 1800s. Since then information has become scarce on the naturally-occurring chalks especially concerning their geology, chemical composition, methods of quarrying, how they were processed, and the traditional techniques by which they were used for drawing purposes. This new manuscript is greatly strengthened by invaluable field emission scanning electron microscopic images and chemical compositional analyses, which were done on natural yellow chalk specimens from my own collection by my co-authors at the University of Arizona’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. In addition, it includes optical microscopic images done by Penley Knipe, the Philip and Lynn Straus Conservator of Works of Art on Paper, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums. I consider the publication of this new manuscript by the prestigious Journal of the American Institute for Conservation to be an extremely high honor as it is an internationally renowned and respected major periodical dealing with the preservation and conservation of historic and cultural works of art. The journal’s parent organization, the American Institute for Conservation (AIC)is the largest conservation membership organization in the United States, and counts among its more than 3000 members, the majority of which are professional conservators, conservation educators, and conservation scientists worldwide. The Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (JAIC) is the primary vehicle for the publication of peer-reviewed technical studies, research papers, treatment case studies, ethics and standards, as well as discussions relating to the broad field of conservation and preservation of historic and cultural works. Subscribers to the JAIC include AIC members, both individuals and institutions, as well as major museums, libraries, and universities throughout the world. I have planned a total of four manuscripts which extensively covers each type of the four naturally-occurring chalks that were used by the old masters. The fourth manuscript is on natural red chalk, arguably the most versatile and visually stunning member of the traditionally used natural chalks. This fourth manuscript has been recently completed, has gone through the stringent peer-review process at JAIC, was accepted, and will be published later this year. If you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
The J. Paul Getty Museum…January 15, 2014 Greetings on this interesting new year, I have just returned from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles where I was invited to present my current research into 19th century French drawing materials and techniques. There is a bit of background information on how this opportunity came about. Last summer I was contacted by Dr. Lee Hendrix, Curator of Drawings at the Getty Museum, and asked if I would assist with the Museum’s efforts to mount an exhibition of 19th century French drawings and prints. I was tasked with researching this topic from the viewpoint of the drawing materials and techniques used in France in the 19th century, to write a chapter for the book which will accompany the exhibition, and to give a lecture on this topic at the Getty Museum during the exhibition’s opening scheduled for February of 2015. Last week was the first face-to-face meeting for this project scheduled with the curators and conservators of the Getty, and I had expected my presentation would be given to a small audience of individuals involved with this project. However, the Getty is also a renowned research facility which hosts scholars from all over the world which use the Museum’s world class research facilities. Upon my arrival, I soon found that my audience included scholars from major museums worldwide, including curators from the Louvre in Paris (no pressure, right!?). I am very pleased to report that my research and presentation was extremely well received and I have been invited to return to the Getty for further in depth work and study as the exhibition approaches. When this 2015 exhibition date is nearer I will send another newsletter with the details. If you have any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you. Best regards, Timothy
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I am very pleased and honored to announce that two of my natural red chalk drawings have just been acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago for their permanent collection. It is very satisfying to me to find my many years of hard work and research being recognized this way and being added to a very prestigious collection.
I just received a phone call from Becky Kimmel, Director of Programs & Events at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She called to tell me that one of my paintings in the upcoming Western Visions exhibition just won the museum’s Trustees' Purchase Award and will be acquired by the National Museum of Wildlife Art as part of their permanent collection. 
I am honored have been invited to participate in the upcoming Charleston Small Works Fine Art Auction, which will be held July 19, 2014, at the Sylvan Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina. 
It gives me extreme pleasure to announce that my next exhibition will be the prestigious 34th Annual Cheyenne Frontier Days Western Art Show on July 17, 2014 at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum.
I am very pleased to announce that the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (JAIC) has just published a third manuscript resulting from my decades of research into the traditional drawing materials and techniques of the old master artists. 