Works on paper

“The notion of a return to the figure is just media talk…For some of us, it is the only art we know…Manet and before, Cézanne, Degas, Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard, Brancusi, Mondrian…were all trained, roughly speaking, in the same way. Over long periods in their youth they gave themselves to the study of the human figure, to that age-old instinct, that instinct I feel in my bones, that we’ve been talking about, drawing from the human form.”

R.B. Kitaj 

Intently gazing, her head held high, Dominie, Kitaj’s daughter, stares toward the left of the sheet. Closely cropped and depicted in three-quarter profile, she appears delicate and contemplative yet elegant and assured. Rendered in black pastel and charcoal, this bold, life-size drawing strips away superficial elements, allowing Kitaj to lovingly observe his daughter. Adopted in 1964 with his late wife—who tragically passed away in 1969, leaving Kitaj a single parent—Dominie was a central figure in his life and art.

Kitaj’s life was as complex as his art. After serving in the merchant navy and the U.S. Army, he settled in England to study at the Ruskin School of Drawing (1958–59) in Oxford and later at the Royal College of Art (1959–61) in London. The loss of his wife in 1969 deeply affected him, prompting a hiatus from art and a return to the U.S. However, despite this setback, the 1970s proved to be an incredibly fertile period for him.

In 1971, Kitaj returned to London, initially living with David Hockney for several months and engaging in regular supper meetings with Frank Auerbach—interactions he credited with rekindling his passion for painting and drawing. A pivotal moment came in 1975 during a visit to Paris, where he encountered Edgar Degas’ pastels at the Petit Palais. Inspired by their mastery, Kitaj resolved to explore the medium himself upon his return to London.

Though pastel presented a new challenge, Kitaj embraced it with enthusiasm and skill, as evident in the present sheet. Yet drawing had always been at the core of his artistic practice, dating back to his early education at Ruskin. As a leading figure in the London School, alongside artists such as Patrick Proctor, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, and David Hockney, Kitaj resisted distinctions between contemporary and historical art. He believed originality did not necessitate abandoning figurative traditions, but rather approaching them with fresh intent—an idea echoed in the introductory quote to this catalogue note.

As Frederic Tuten observed in 1982, Kitaj’s pastel drawings of the 1970s "reinvigorated the tradition of drawing and of drawing from the figure… These drawings are among the most beautiful we have seen in decades, and their existence at this time raises substantial questions about where we have been in the past 30 years and where, if anywhere, our art is going."

For Robert Hughes, Kitaj stood among the few remaining masters of figurative drawing:
"Solid, chunky, driven, greedy—these adjectives apply to Kitaj’s appropriation of the world. Alongside Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach, he has emerged as one of the few true masters of depictive figure drawing alive today."

Executed in the summer of 1978 while Kitaj was artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College in the U.S., Dominie (Dartmouth) is a striking work—bold yet beautiful, expressive yet subtle. The close crop allows Kitaj to flirt between abstraction and figuration, minimalism and maximalism—creating an image that is both profoundly modern and deeply rooted in tradition.