'Man sitting on a rock'
Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 1789
I spent a day recently at the Wallace Collection (Manchester Square, London), with Mari and Sandy, a friend of ours. Mari and I nipped down to London specifically to see this particular exhibition, which was a group of 40 or so drawings done by the students at the French equivalent of the Royal Academy School, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, during the 18th Century.
All the drawings are of male figures, by male students. (This is simply because at that time female students were not allowed to draw from the nude figure, and female models were not allowed in the life studio).
It was a very compelling exhibition for anyone interested in drawing. Most of the drawings were between A2 and A1 size, on paper, using various kinds of chalks or charcoal.
They had a sort of unity of style originating from the fact that the students were being taught by teachers who would be suggesting similar 'requirements' for the drawing (...what we would today call a 'brief'), and who would be giving consistent stylistic guidance. Most art colleges which do life drawing also seem to develop a house style, and for similar reasons.
The drawing above, by Isabey, is a terrific example. It is made using charcoal or black crayon, with white chalk for highlighting. He used a mid-toned paper, which makes the exercise quicker to execute.
'Man sitting on a rock'
Anthelme-François Lagrenée, 1789
This drawing is the same pose as the drawing by Isabey above, from an angle slightly to the left. It is also an excellent piece, but for me it does not have the same feeling for mass, as the Isabey has. All the muscles are a little too individually articulated.
Notice how he couldn't get the right tootsies into the picture, so he stuck a bit more paper onto his sheet, so he could complete the figure. Many artists did this, particularly Degas.
I find it interesting that the students at the Beaux-Arts would occasionally combine the necessary fierce visual accuracy and focus, along with some imagined or invented features (like the rocks in the drawings above, or in one case, the body of a horse!) which suggests how the figure/s may be used in a projected painting.
I'm not sure I agree with this mixed approach, (but I understand why they did it, - history painting, which always incorporated figures, was considered to be the highest form of painting at the time, and any artist who wished to become successful had to demonstrate their figure-drawing, and how they could incorporate figures into a history painting).
'Drawing from a live model at the Académie Royale de peinture et sculpture.'
Unknown artist, 1775
The exhibition organisers had the good luck to be able to show several drawings, carried out by different students, on the same day, of the same model and pose. It's enlightening to compare/contrast such drawings one with the other, knowing they were made side by side.
'Standing man, turning towards his right'
Three aspects, drawn in 1782, by:
Left : Paul Barbier
Centre : Louis-Simon Boizot
Right : Ferdinand-Nicolas Godefroid
Left : Paul Barbier
Centre : Louis-Simon Boizot
Right : Ferdinand-Nicolas Godefroid
A couple of things strike me initially. One is the similarity in style seen in the various drawings. The students were obviously not urged to develop their own personal vision, but rather to just observe the figure, the anatomy, the pose, the proportions, etc.
Very unlike the modern approach in which each student is encouraged to establish a stylistic difference.
And secondly, imagine how gruelling the model must have found holding that pose for several hours. Even if he had supports for his hands (which may have been ignored by the students) it is still a killer of a pose to hold. Also notice how there is no or little compositional variety. The drawings all show the whole figure.
'Crouching man, looking to his right'
Claude Chially, 1782
And here is the same figure as seen from the opposite angle. These four drawings were all done on the same day in 1782.
'Man lying on his back'
Jean-Jacques Bachelier, 1764
When we arrived at the exhibition, there were a group of what I took to be 'A' level students, twenty or so, scattered through the two rooms of the exhibition, who had drawing stools and were half way through producing copies of the drawings on the walls.
A strange exercise.
One would have thought that doing a straight-forward life drawing from the model would be more valuable, in that they would then be using their own eyes and brain, (and therefore developing their own style), and not drawing a figure as processed through the eyes and brain of another artist (and therefore imitating their style).
(Imagine, for example, current RA students copying Tracy Emin drawings - how much would they learn about form, structure, human anatomy, or translating a 3D form onto a 2D surface, as opposed to style?)
However, maybe the school would find it too expensive to put on similar life classes (certainly giving the same amount of time for each pose that the Beaux Arts students had, i.e., six or eight hours).
Or maybe such classes would not be approved of in a school setting. I know that at my own school (which was an eleven-year-old to eighteen-year-old 'junior' art school) we could only do clothed figure drawing. So I had to go in the evenings to the Manchester Regional College (as was) in order to do life drawing there.
Anyway, given that it was an exercise in a sort of second-hand drawing, the school group at the Wallace were nevertheless producing very good work.
On chatting to the female gallery attendant before we left, we discovered that she had been, in her earlier years, a life model at St.Martins School of Art! (Although she was there a few years after Mari and I left St.Martins, so we hadn't ever had the pleasure of drawing her).
Small world!
All the above scans were taken from the catalogue of
'The Male Nude : Eighteenth-century drawings from the Paris Academy', - an exhibition shown at the
Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, London.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details............” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
Who painted this palette, and in which painting?
(The answer will be in the next posting.)
And here's the answer from the last posting -
'The Last Supper'
by Leonardo da Vinci. Milan 1962
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details............” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
"The ability to draw from life determines the artist's skill. This is why live drawing classes have always been at the top of the curriculum for properly structured academic workshops."
Igor Babailov