Drawn Testimony: Sketching a generations most iconic criminal cases

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The trials of criminals who disgust and fascinate the world in equal measure continue to be depicted primarily not at the push of a button but the point of a pencil or the worn-down end of a pastel stub. It is the odd, bickering club of court artists - summoned at the last minute, jostling for position, scrambling to make permanent an event or expression that has already fled the scene - that is still charged with providing the pictures the world hungers to see, and depicting the faces it demands to know.

Jane Rosenberg has been a courtroom artist in New York for over 40 years. In her time on her benches, her pastels have captured some of the most notorious faces spanning multiple criminal eras: the Mafia crackdown of the 1980s and 1990s, the fallen titans of Wall Street's 'greed is good' decade, the sex abusers brought to account by the #MeToo movement, the police brutality spotlighted by Black Lives Matter, and the relentless infighting of Trumpworld.

But whilst the cases and the many recognisable names might suggest this to be a true crime goldmine, this, it is not. Instead Jane offers the reader something entirely new - rather than focusing on the facts and minutiae of a case as it unfolds, we are instead given a moving and discerning view of a courtroom and its cast, focusing on emotion above procedure; rather than analysis of evidence, we are presented with the barely perceptible shifts in a defendant's body language, the absence or abundance of feeling in their expression. The result is remarkable and sheds a light on the fascinating career which, arguably against the odds, has managed to stand the test of time.

Author Bio

JANE ROSENBERG received a BA in Art from SUNY Buffalo and trained in New York City at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Art. A courtroom sketch artist for major television networks and newspapers since 1980, her work has also appeared in collections throughout the US and abroad, including the National Constitution Center, the Museum of Television and Radio, the National September 11 Memorial Museum and the Library of Congress. In 2023, her drawing of former President Donald Trump became the first courtroom sketch to be featured on the cover of The New Yorker in the magazine's 98-year history.