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On Paper: Five Centuries of Drawings in Houston
Join IN SITU Art Club on Monday, October 12 at noon at Josh Pazda Hiram Butler Gallery for a guided visit of Trois Crayons' first Drawings Hub in Texas.
Old master drawings have a reputation for being a closed world. The founders of Trois Crayons want to prove the opposite. Until October 13, their first multi-city Drawings Hub opens in Houston with "On Paper: Drawings from the Renaissance to the Modern Day."
A different kind of fair
Founded in 2023, Trois Crayons set out to bring more people into the world of drawings. The Drawings Hub breaks with the conventional art fair: there are no gallery booths. Instead, the Trois Crayons team curates every work into a single selling exhibition.
Fourteen galleries and dealers from London, Brussels, Florence, Amsterdam, Vienna and the United States are taking part. Among them are Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, Abbott and Holder, Wildenstein & Co. and Rosenberg & Co., with newcomers including Jill Newhouse Gallery and Mireille Mosler Ltd. The works span five centuries, from Jan van Calcar to Edgar Degas, Edward Burne-Jones, Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore, with Ingres, Turner and Charles R. Sheeler also on view.
A collector's mission
Co-founder Sebastien Paraskevas is first of all a collector. He came to drawings almost by accident. A book collector at the time, he was told he would one day switch to drawings, and he did not believe it. Then he walked into a gallery near his office, and things just clicked. His first purchase was a 17th century French caricature portrait attributed to the enigmatic Nicolas Lagneau, a name that has intrigued collectors for centuries.
Lots of parts of the art world are very gatekept, very hard to access. And old master drawings, some people on the outside seem to think that, but once they approach it, they say, oh, everyone's super passionate, everyone's super welcoming. There's an exchange of knowledge within the community that is very rare.
Sebastien Paraskevas, co-founder of Trois Crayons
Prices range from a few hundred dollars to millions, and collectors at every level meet and exchange with mutual respect. It is, he says, a great place to start collecting, and just as good a place to start a second collection.
From the interview: buying your first drawing
What advice would you give to someone buying their first drawing?
Fundamentally, drawings are objects that you want to live with. Buy something that moves you, something that makes you smile, something you want to see every day. Don't buy something because someone said it's fashionable. And pick a budget that makes you smile as well. There are beautiful things for everyone. Maybe it's connected to a memory, or a piece of your identity, or where you're from. Or you might decide something is really beautiful and you want it on your wall, and it doesn't need a reason to be there. That is also very valid.
Is it difficult to authenticate drawings? Is it harder than paintings?
I would say it's perhaps easier than paintings. The amount of restoration that can be done to an old master painting is quite significant. Paper doesn't lie. There's a limit to what a restorer can do to a piece of paper. It's a very normal question to ask, how do I know it's real? Can you explain it to me? People shouldn't feel shy about that. It's the responsibility of the seller, with a smile, to demonstrate and explain.
What to expect
The Houston exhibition is deliberately not centered on a single artist or style. Bright color, monochrome graphite, sketches and finished works sit side by side, offering what Paraskevas calls an introduction to a corner of the art market that is far more diverse than it seems. "Most people will probably not find everything to their taste," he says, "but may find specific things that draw them in."
The tour then continues to Dallas-Fort Worth (October 22 to 29) and Austin (November 4 to 8). Texas is the first stop outside the United Kingdom for the Hub.
Join us
Monday, October 12, noon
Josh Pazda Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston
RSVP
Laura Matesco, October 2026
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