Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist

by Jane Rosenberg

Overview

From America’s top courtroom sketch artist, a penetrating, compulsively readable memoir about her dramatic four-decade career


“A mesmerizing look at this rarest of professions…”–Bookpage STARRED review
"Readers will be hard-pressed to put this down.”—Publishers Weekly STARRED review
"Rosenberg’s fascinating debut offers a front row seat to some of the most high-profile criminal cases of the last four decades."—Library Journal STARRED review
"Perceptive, compassionate, and endlessly fascinated by how the human condition is revealed in the courtroom, Rosenberg tells riveting and resonant tales in image and word."—Booklist STARRED review

For over forty years, Jane Rosenberg has been at the heart of the news cycle, covering almost every major trial that has passed through the New York justice system as a courtroom sketch artist, including the most recent Donald Trump hush money trial.

In Drawn Testimony, Rosenberg brings us into the dramatic high-stakes world of her craft, where art, psychology and courtroom drama collide. Over the course of her legendary career, Jane has had a front-row seat to some of the most iconic and notorious moments in our nation’s recent history, including cases pertaining to:
• Mick Jagger
• Martha Stewart
• Tom Brady's "Deflategate" scandal
• John Lennon’s murder trial 
• Ghislaine Maxwell
• John Gotti
• Harvey Weinstein
• The Boston Marathon bomber
• Donald Trump

Readers will learn how she has honed her unique powers of perception and also what her portraits reveal, not only about her subjects, but about the human condition in general.

Fearless, fascinating and gorgeously written, Drawn Testimony captures the unique career of an artist whose body of work depicts history as it’s happening.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780369746610
Publisher:	Hanover Square Press
Publication date:	08/13/2024
Sold by:	HARLEQUIN
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	118,508
File size:	39 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Jane Rosenberg received a degree in fine art from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She became a courtroom artist for major television stations and newspapers covering trials such as John Gotti, Susan Smith, Woody Allen, the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing Trial, Michael Skakel, Martha Stewart, WorldCom, and most recently, Donald Trump's arraignment.  Her work is seen in collections throughout the US and abroad.

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/17/2024

Rosenberg’s fascinating debut offers a front row seat to some of the most high-profile criminal cases of the last four decades. As a lover of realism in a sea of abstract impressionists, Rosenberg spent her first years out of art school in the late 1970s feeling frustrated and out of step with contemporary trends. Then a 1980 lecture by courtroom artist Marilyn Church at New York City’s Society of Illustrators convinced Rosenberg that her best chance at making a living doing realistic portraiture was to pick up a sketch pad and head to the courthouse. As she recounts her ascent to the top of the field—first by selling a drawing from an arraignment to NBC, then as a go-to for clients like CNN—Rosenberg provides insider details about trials she worked on, including those of Ghislaine Maxwell, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby. In a relaxed, personable style, Rosenberg writes of both the quotidian and soul-chilling aspects of her job, from drawing on her sketch pad with one hand and holding her egg salad sandwich with the other to scrubbing chalk from her hands, Lady Macbeth–style, after drawing convicted murderer John Evans. The results thrill without teetering into salaciousness. Readers will be hard-pressed to put this down. Agent: Rebecca Wearmouth, Peters, Fraser & Dunlop (U.K.). (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Drawn Testimony is riveting. Through the singular craft that is her life's calling, Rosenberg gives us a front row seat to the most important courtroom trials of our generation."—Hope Jahren, New York Times bestselling author of Lab Girl

"An immersive and riveting reading experience. Jane Rosenberg captures moment and mood in her sketches, turning pastel impressions into whole narratives—and, along the way, slyly relating a unique forty-year cultural history of New York City."—Judy Melinek & T.J. Mitchell, New York Times bestselling authors of Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner

“Reading Drawn Testimony is like peering over Jane Rosenberg’s shoulder as she deftly captures telling moments from trial after trial. Against the odds, her prose keeps pace with her pastels.”—Patrick Bringley, author of All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me

"...As vibrant and compelling a writer as she is an artist... Perceptive, compassionate, and endlessly fascinated by how the human condition is revealed in the courtroom, Rosenberg tells riveting and resonant tales in image and word."—Booklist STARRED review

“Rosenberg’s fascinating debut offers a front row seat to some of the most high-profile criminal cases of the last four decades…The results thrill without teetering into salaciousness. Readers will be hard-pressed to put this down.”—Publishers Weekly STARRED review

“Rosenberg delivers stories for every true-crime buff—and aspiring courtroom artist… A revealing look at an often-overlooked aspect of the legal system.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Rosenberg’s fascinating debut offers a front row seat to some of the most high-profile criminal cases of the last four decades."—Library Journal STARRED review


“A mesmerizing look at this rarest of professions… As talented as Rosenberg is at drawing, she is an equally gifted writer… An utterly absorbing read.”–Bookpage STARRED review


“In precise, often lyrical prose, Rosenberg reflects on a career at the intersection of art and law, fact and impression, reason and emotion.”—New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

★ 07/01/2024

In the era of omnipresent cell phone cameras and AI, what's behind the continued relevance of courtroom sketch artists? This is the question at the heart of Rosenberg's memoir about her four decades working in this highly specific yet ever-changing field. Having illustrated key moments, from the botched execution of John Louis Evans in 1983 and the COVID-era trial of Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021 to Donald Trump's first indictment in 2023, she depicts her experiences in this distinctive field with meticulous prose that will make readers feel as though they are in the courtroom with her. She writes about fumbling for the correct pastel to secure the perfect sketch of a moment that cannot, for legal reasons, be caught on camera. While innovations in the legal system and journalism have changed how her work is disseminated, the book shows how courtroom artists add depth to proceedings that could otherwise only be described in words. VERDICT Readers interested in true crime or the legal system will be delighted with Rosenberg's narrative gift. They won't want to miss her memoir's unique perspectives.—Jennifer Moore

Library Journal

Gabra Zackman gives a stellar performance of Jane Rosenberg's memoir of her forty-year career as a courtroom sketch artist. Each chapter details a court proceeding wherein Rosenberg was commissioned to produce sketches of the principals, many of whom were well-known politicians, mob bosses, sports figures, and celebrities such as Donald Trump, John Gotti, Tom Brady, and Martha Stewart. Zackman does a wonderful job channeling Rosenberg's passion for her job. She conveys Rosenberg's determination and thoughtfulness as she works to capture the defining moments that illuminated each proceeding. With Zackman's steady pacing and expressive tone, listeners will be fascinated as they relive these famous trials. M.J. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2024 - AudioFile

2024-06-14
Perhaps the best-known courtroom sketch artist working today looks over a long career and discusses her métier.

“I reach for the primary tool of my trade, a pastel pencil, and begin to draw,” writes Rosenberg. All those recent drawings of Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, and Stormy Daniels (“a slightly ethereal figure, hovering ghostlike behind Cohen”) in that New York City courtroom were the product of that pencil, just a few of the thousands of drawings Rosenberg has produced over the years. Starting off as a portraitist, she “put the ‘starving’ in starving artist,” then stumbled into courtroom art, freelance work that’s unpredictable and hard to plan around. Over her long career, she writes, it “has been considered the ultimate dying art.” Fortunately for her, some legal proceedings ban cameras; fortunately, too, art can sometimes convey human character and emotions in ways that elude photographers and videographers. So it was, she writes near the opening, that in the initial trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, she was able to capture the nuances of a woman who seemed to regard the courtroom as a theater stage and was responsive to Rosenberg’s presence: “She may have been wearing a mask almost throughout, but even with half a face she was giving me more to work with than many I have drawn across my long career.” A mask over Zoom impeded her ability to capture Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd, which “meant that my sketches were even more of a jigsaw puzzle than normal.” With a cast of characters including John Gotti, Woody Allen, Bernie Madoff, Mark David Chapman, Bill Cosby, Susan Smith, and Tom Brady, and with smart commentary on technique, Rosenberg delivers stories for every true-crime buff—and aspiring courtroom artist.

A revealing look at an often-overlooked aspect of the legal system.

Kirkus Reviews