When artist Spencer Finch was visiting the IMA to install his work in the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion, we asked him to take a walk through our collection galleries and let us know his favorites.

 

Among Ruskin's numerous drawings from nature are dozens of life-sized studies of leaf sprays. In order to train his eye and his hand, Ruskin would bring in a freshly gathered branch from out-of-doors and, while his father read aloud to him for a half an hour after breakfast, Ruskin would challenge himself to finish a full scale pen and ink drawing of the foliage and fill it in with rapid watercolor washes.