Enfilade

From the PMC:

Drawing as Knowledge: Practice, Theory, and History

Online and in-person, Warburg Institute, London, 16–17 September 2026

A collaboration between the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Warburg Institute, this is a conference about ‘drawing as visual thinking’ within the context of British art history, inspired by the life and work of Deanna Petherbridge (1939–2024).

This conference has been organised to coincide with a display at the Paul Mellon Centre, ‘Just on the Edge’: Exploring the Deanna Petherbridge Archive (29 July – 29 October 2026). Featuring materials from Petherbridge’s archive at the PMC, together with artworks from private collections, a key theme of the display is Petherbridge’s lifelong commitment to the medium of drawing as an active process of knowledge acquisition and formation. Delegates will be given the opportunity to view the display and hear from the curator at PMC on the evening of Wednesday, 15 September. This will be followed by two days of papers and discussion in the Warburg Institute’s Lecture Theatre.

One panel will explore drawing within the practice of a range of British artists, including its function, meaning, and relationship with other media. Another will turn to curators, the role of drawing in their collaborations, and the processes of recording and understanding collections. A number of papers grouped around the theme of ‘intersections’ will explore the interconnectedness of artistic drawing practice with other disciplines, such as mapping and writing. Other talks will be situated between art history and medical humanities, looking at the role of drawing in navigating trauma, mental illness, and bereavement. Two of the panels will range across anatomy, natural history, and empire, exploring drawing as a means of knowing, conceptualising, and mastering the world. Encompassing peoples, lands, flora, and fauna, a key focus will be drawing as a technology of both colonial governance and resistance.

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Paul Mellon Centre

5.30  Drinks Reception
Short talk from Petherbridge display curator, Hannah Jones, and opportunity to see the exhibition

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The Warburg Institute

9.30  Registration and coffee

10.00  Welcome and introduction — Kate Retford, Alixe Bovey, and Flora Dennis

10.30  Panel 1 | Artists’ Practices
• Drawing to Belong: Katerina Wilczynski’s Oxford Portraits — Eliza Goodpastures
• A Rhythm of Thrusts and Curves: Barbara Hepworth’s Drawing in the 1950s — Stephen Feeke
• ‘Straining against the Limits of the Archive’: Drawing as Reimagination — Isabel Seligman

Noon  Lunch

1.15  Panel 2 | Curators’ Practices
• Drawing Sculpture in the British Museum: William Alexander, Henry Corbould, and the Ancient Marbles — Tessa Kilgarriff
• Drawing Curators: Materiality, Communication, Collaboration — Claire Wintle
• Drawing from Art: Copying, Cognition, and Visual Thinking in the Museum — Antje Southern

2.45  Tea and coffee

3.15  Panel 3 | Care
• Mimesis and Memorialisation: ‘Looking After’ in End-of-Life Drawings — Eve Ess
• Commissioned Drawing as an Encounter between Forms of Knowledge — Rose Forshall and Aimee Middlemiss
• Drawn from Experience: Co-Creating Visual Narratives of Illness, Trauma and Healing — Jenny Wright
• Drawing Loneliness and Connection from the Lived Experience of Mental Distress: Findings from a Pilot Study — Louisa Smyllie-Peters and Jo Doll

5.15  Drinks Reception

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The Warburg Institute

9.00  Arrival and registration

9.15  Panel 4 | Resisting Empire
• Drawing Against the Grain: Colonial Plans, Everyday Paper Handling, and the Production of Spatial Knowledge in Colonial Bombay — Excy Hansda
• Iconologies of Line: Visual Thinking, Medium, and Colonial Power in the Daniells’ Drawings of India — Nuno Grancho
• Counter-Cartographies of Dissent: Dhali Al Mamoon’s Drawing against the Colonial Map — Humaira Hossain

10.45  Panel 5 | Travel
• A Cat Called Beef: Exploring the Drawing Practices of British Naval Officers — Katherine Gazzard
• ‘Sketching and Journalising’: Ottoman Encounters in George Scharf’s Travel Sketchbooks — Sebastian Marshall

11.45  Lunch

1.00  Panel 6 | Natural Histories
• The Quick and the Dead: George Stubbs between Drawing and Painting — Michaela Giebelhausen
• Drawn from Nature: Illustrators as Knowledge-makers in 18th-Century British Natural History — Isobel Elstob

2.00  Tea and coffee

2.30  Panel 7 | Intersections
• Only in Drawing: Impossible Objects and the Pre-Disciplinary Sketch — Tal Horesh
• Tracing Musical Logic in the Legacy of Deanna Petherbridge’s The Primacy of Drawing — Jane Alden (online)
• Cartouches and Calligraphy: Gravelot’s Designs for London’s Writing Masters, 1737–40 — Alice Clanachan
• Property Lines: Drawing, Design, and Documentation on the 18th-Century Landed Estate — John Bonehill

4.30  Concluding remarks