The drawings of Theophil Groell of Stonington, who died in early March, hark back to the old masters. In line, contour and tone, Groell consistently manifested the classical ideal: Through close attention comes beauty.

Through the month of April, the John Edwards Wine Cellar Art Gallery in Ellsworth is showing a handsome and ample retrospective of Groell’s drawings from the past three decades. The 100-plus works on paper, some of them on colored paper, offer a rare opportunity to view the draftsmanship of a master realist.

In a statement written to accompany the show, the artist divided the work in the show into three groups: graphite on paper, tonal drawings and silver point. Groell practiced the first medium in his formative

years as a member of a figure-drawing group in New York City, learning the art of the “hard lead pencil.”

The precision in these early works

demonstrates the artist’s skill in delineating the human figure. A reclining nude from 1973 is both precise and sensual. Through focused study, Groell came to recognize “the virtues of … economy over lavish expenditure” – an eloquent way of saying, “Less is more.”

While living on Deer Isle in the mid-1980s, Groell was smitten with thoughts of Greece. His infatuation manifested itself in studies of trees that brought myths to mind – a tangle of roots, for example, evoked the Laocoon. “If you are going to humanize the landscape,” critic Edgar Allen Beem said in a review of Groell’s work at the time, “you might as well deify it.”

For these exquisite drawings Groell used charcoal pencil, Conte or lithograph crayon, relying on tonal mass rather than linear elements to render the motif. Among his favorite subjects were draped female figures, which he called Nike, after the goddess of victory depicted in classical Grecian art. He also returned to drawing from the model, producing “tonal vignettes” created in half-hour sessions.

Recovering from a heart attack in 1990, Groell took up silver point, a medium he was familiar with but hadn’t seriously pursued. “I could sit quietly,” he recalled, “with a small drawing surface (coated with gelatin, at first; later, gesso, or clay) on my lap, stroking the silver wire (secured in a holder and sharpened like a pencil to a point) to build up, gradually, a tonal image.”

Two still-life drawings in the show, of oysters (“Shades of Silver”) and squash (“Magic Garden”), exemplify the delicacy of silver point, a technique that dates to the Renaissance. Groell could also express more dramatic subjects with this refined technique, as seen in “La Detresse,” a depiction of a woman sprawled on a bed, her face buried in bed sheets.

Viewing the show, one remarks on Groell’s fascination with limbs – human and tree. Likewise, torsos and tree trunks at times echo each other. His landscapes can be quite complex. All of his drawings are full-bodied and finished.

Born in Pittsburgh, Groell received a BFA from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1953. The next year he exhibited in an “emerging talent” show at the Kootz Gallery, an important venue for new artists in New York City. Later on, Groell was often grouped with the so-called “new realist” painters. In the mid-’80s his work was included in “American Realism – 20th Century Drawings and Watercolors from the Glenn C. Janss Collection,” organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and “Realism Today: American Drawing from the Rita Rich Collection,” at the National Academy of Design in New York.

This exhibition carried me back to four years spent in the employ of Lucien Goldschmidt, an eminent dealer of old and modern master prints and drawings in New York City. An appreciation was born in that shop for the beauty of close studies of the human form, a floral design, landscapes. Groell’s drawings further this line, literally and figuratively, reminding us of the resonance of representation.

Carl Little can be reached at little@acadia.net.