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Shakespeare & Beyond

Drawing the Folger's Shakespeare bas-reliefs

Yes, the Folger Shakespeare Library has a theater inside its historic building on Capitol Hill. But it also has nine stages outside on the north wall facing East Capitol Street. Nine moments from nine Shakespeare plays, their marble actors eternally holding their places. John Gregory’s bas-relief sculptures are one of the artistic jewels of Washington DC—yet they’re easily overlooked.

I’ve lived in the DC area my whole life and have been drawing sculpture in the city for decades. Yet it wasn’t until a casual visit to the Folger this spring that I finally had that jaw-dropping moment of seeing the reliefs. How could I have missed them? I resolved to draw them all.

What hooked me was the way each sculpture instantly told a story. Their classicist grace (tinged with Art Deco styling) can be taken in at a glance, but observing them slowly yields great pleasure and reward—as I’ve learned.

Gregory set up each scene in the same six-by-six-foot square, and then filled them with so much to see: life-size figures standing, sitting, crouching, and turning; facial expressions ranging from passive to crazed; delicate fingers and gnarled fists; hats, headdresses, and helmets; wild swoops of drapery and monumental armor; hints of architecture and billowing clouds.

They represent a thematic core sample of Shakespeare’s work: dynamic moments of fantasy, love, jealousy, murder, ambition, madness, innocence, betrayal, and redemption. Even if you don’t know the story, you can get a sense of the characters—who they are, what they’re doing, what their relationship might be. Each frozen moment suggests what happened a second before, and what might happen next.

Comments

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Drawing Shakespeare: Richard III - Shakespeare & Beyond — March 29, 2019

We came across your posting about your drawing of the sculptures outside the Folger. Did you know that the originals are on display at Pomona College, where my wife and I were proudly shown them last month by a colleague from their faculty?

Jay Pasachoff — April 24, 2019