I think I first read this book in 1976 in New Zealand and tried my hand a copying a few of the drawings....in hind-sight ....not very well. However, I have always been rather intrigued by what separates a "Master" drawing from just an "ordinary drawing"....which might be brilliantly done. I guess the simple answer to this lies with the PR department for the individual artists. Some achieved fame (usually as painters) and the drawings were a means to an end. A sketch or cartoon of the final painting. In fact, I was a little bit confused by the fact that a lot of the drawings in the book are coloured paintings or pen and wash drawings etc. So it's not just pencil, pen or charcoal ....but rather a wide range of media.
The "Old" masters are heavily represented but more modern painters such as Picasso, Georgia O'Keefe and others are represented as well.
The book is organised by the genre of the subjects: Portraits, landscape, figures, animals etc., and the main approach seems to be just supplying a good range of examples of the art. The text itself is of strictly limited value. For example, there are just 2.3 pages of text devoted to the genre of landscape...covering a period from around 1500 to 1940....so clearly hard to summarise or present any great insights.
However, I really enjoyed the book for the illustrations...and still tempted to "have a go myself" and maybe try and emulate some of the work of the great masters. Yes, hard not to be impressed with Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings....were they really just light sketches dashed off or much more studied works. Mostly, I think he took his drawing very seriously....like most of the subjects he studied....even if he rarely got around to finishing his projects. Other's are much sketchier ....one can see traces of Quentin Blake's style of drawing (in many of the Roald Dahl books, for example), in the drawing of Tiepolo "Group of seated buffoons".
I like the book. Lots there to learn from at the hands of the "masters"....from composition, techniques, media ...the use of models....of squaring up to reproduce ...and of paper pricking to transfer images from cartoons.
A bit lacking in the theory but otherwise quite a solid collection. Four stars from me. ( )