Leonard Gow
Medium
drypoint
Dimensions
plate: 25.2 x 17.7 cm (9 15/16 x 6 15/16 in.) sheet: 39.2 x 27.5 cm (15 7/16 x 10 13/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Rosenwald Collection
Accession Number
1943.3.2060
Art Historical Context
Sir Muirhead Bone's *Leonard Gow* (1927) is a striking drypoint portrait capturing the Scottish art collector and patron in a moment of quiet intensity. Bone, a renowned British artist knighted for his wartime sketches and masterful printmaking, excelled in translating the three-dimensional world into intricate lines. Created in the interwar years, this work reflects the era's fascination with personal legacy and cultural stewardship, as Gow himself amassed a significant collection of modern art. Drypoint, Bone's favored medium here, involves scratching directly into a copper plate with a sha...
About the Artist
Sir Muirhead Bone
Sir Muirhead Bone (1876–1953), born David Muirhead Bone in Partick, Glasgow, to a journalist father and descended from a family of printers, showed early artistic promise. Apprenticed at fourteen first as a porcelain painter and then as an architect's draughtsman for four years, he honed his draughtsmanship while attending evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art under teachers Archibald Kay a...