Tom has always been very good at portraiture… In my typical art-historical fashion, I immediately attempted to place these portrait drawings in relationship to others both past and present. Among the many possibilities that occurred to me, I thought first of some of the great French draughtsmen of the nineteenth century; but the apparatus did not work… In the final analysis, however, great art always defies the question of influences. Heaven help me, then, as I put my hand in the fire and say that I think these astonishingly brilliant new portrait drawings by Thomas Cornell belong in that realm.