Plumbago drawing

Plumbago drawings are graphite drawings from the 17th and 18th centuries. There was a group of artists whose work in plumbago is remarkable for their portraits drawn with finely pointed pieces of graphite and on vellum. Initially these works were often prepared as the basis of an engraving. As time went by they would be produced as works in their own right.

One of the earliest of this group of workers was Simon Van de Pass (1595-1647), and his pencil drawings were probably either for reproduction on silver tablets or counters or for engraved plates. The earlier miniature painters also drew in this manner, notably Nicholas Hilliard in preparing designs for jewels and seals, and Isaac Oliver and Peter Oliver in portraits.

A few pencil portraits by Abraham Blooteling, the Dutch engraver, have been preserved, which appear to have been first sketches, from which plates were afterwards engraved. David Loggan (1635-1700), a pupil of Van de Pass, also left a few portraits, as a rule drawn on vellum and executed with dexterity.

These works were not always prepared for engraving. There is one representing Charles II, set in a gold snuff box, which was given by the King to the Duchess of Portsmouth, and which went to the Duke of Richmond, and a similar portrait of Oliver Cromwell which was in the possession of Lord Verulam; and there are no engravings corresponding to these.

William Faithorne (1616-1691) derived much of his skill from the time he spent with Robert Nanteuil, whose style he followed. There are drawings by him in the Bodleian Library, at Welbeck Abbey and at Montagu House, and two fine portraits in the British Museum. Thomas Forster (c. 1695-1712) was one of the major draughtsmen in this form of portraiture, on vellum and on paper. His work was at Welbeck Abbey, in the Holburne Museum at Bath, in the Victoria and Albert Museum and elsewhere.

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