John Constable made extensive use of sketches for his landscapes, both of intimate scale, often in a sketchbook on paper, and in full-scale sketches for his largest "six-footers", which he used to refine his compositions.Tate Britain exhibition showing Constable's large landscapes along with their full-size oil sketches Delacroix, Géricault, Manet and Degas are other artists who often used them. For some oil sketches Degas painted in essence, a technique by which the oil had been all but removed from the pigment, so that the artist was virtually drawing with pure paint. Seurat made many careful small oil sketches for his larger works. However, with the advent of Impressionism, and then Modernism, the practice of preparatory drawing and painting tended to decline. The abandonment by many artists of a high level of detail and finish in favor of a more painterly and spontaneous approach, reduced the distinction between a detailed sketch and a finished painting. Sketches by Rubens or Tiepolo, for example, are at least as highly finished as many 20th century oil paintings. Many artists, especially those working in more traditional styles, still use oil sketches today. Francis Bacon is an example of an artist who called many of his most important, and largest, finished works "studies": examples are his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion Tate Britain, or his Study from Pope Innocent X, auctioned in 2007 for $52.7 million.RTE story & picture
