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| Anonymous British Artist Life Class, Slade School of Art 1881 wood-engraving (published in The Graphic) British Museum |
"The impact of the Slade School [founded in 1871] on art education went far beyond artistic technique or the question of access to the living model, to issues of class and of gender. For the first time women were permitted to work in public from the semi-naked living model, a right which was not extended to women students at the Royal Academy until 1894 – by which time women at the Slade were working from the nude male model. . . . Despite these inroads there was a residual stigma attached to the nude, and women generally shied away from living models of both sexes, afraid of attracting the opprobrium of a disapproving society. In 1872 female students about to enter a mixed life class were told in no uncertain terms that they alone bore the responsibility for maintaining decorum, inasmuch as by 'looking neither to the right or to the left, they will never meet with annoyance, and will gradually form around them a pure, straightforward atmosphere."
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| Dermod O'Brien The Fine Art Academy, Antwerp 1890 oil on canvas Ulster Museum, Belfast |
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| Harold Knight Standing Male Model ca. 1893 oil on canvas Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery |
"This is one of a series of prize-winning oil studies of the male model made by Harold Knight at Nottingham School of Art in 1893. By that time Nottingham had established an enviable reputation as among the best of the provincial public art schools, run under the aegis of the National Art Training School."
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| Alfred Munnings Model at Julian's Atelier in Paris 1901 oil on canvas Munnings Art Museum, Colchester, Essex |
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| Alfred Munnings Model at Julian's Atelier in Paris 1902 oil on canvas Norfolk Museums |
"The Académie Julian had been founded in 1873 and rapidly rose to be the most popular teaching studio in Paris. Munnings, who made brief trips to Paris in 1902 and 1903, worked in the large ground-floor atelier at Julian's. Here models posed for a fortnight, new models being selected on Mondays: 'Each mounted the throne, one after the other, amid cries of approval or dissent. I felt sorry for the poor women who were too unattractive to please.' . . . Ostensibly, Munnings went to Paris to study art, although he also wanted to soak up the bohemian atmosphere, his impromptu decision to attend Julian's being fuelled by lurid tales told in his local pub by a fellow artist and by his obsession with Du Maurier's Trilby."
Martin Postle's catalogue text, published in 1999, states that "the location of the academy featured in this drawing has yet to be established," but curators at the Wellcome Institute have since then managed to identify both the location and and the artist. They also date the drawing a decade later than Postle's estimate. He notes the presence at far left of one of the many existing casts of Jean-Antoine Houdon's Écorché au bras tendu, made in Rome in the 1760s. At the time of this drawing, students in European academies had been making studies of Houdon's anatomical model for the previous 150 years.
"Edward Wadsworth was one of several precocious young students at the Slade around 1910. This painting was awarded first prize for figure painting in 1911. It shows the male figure class at the Slade. These is some sense of the influence of Sickert and other 'Camden Town' painters in the interest in depicting the ambience of the classroom and in the careful tonal painting employed. There is no hint of the modernist style that Wadsworth was to employ a few years later when he became a member of the Vorticist group."
"In provincial art schools educational regimes remained rigid, while in Scotland the traditional study of the Antique and anatomy remained the bedrock of artistic training. For art students in London, however, opportunities to study the living model increased dramatically."
"This work was produced in the latter years of the reign of the formidable Henry Tonks at the Slade. The remarkable staging of this work, with its hint of Vermeer, is perhaps a reflection of the encouragement that the head of the Slade gave his students to study the Old Masters carefully. But it also seems a highly appropriate way to bring across some sense of the vulnerability of the model and the curious expectancy of the life class."
"In 1937 Victor Pasmore joined with Claude Rogers and William Coldstream in setting up a painting school that later became known as the Euston Road School. The Life Class comes from the period when Pasmore was teaching there. It appears to represent the school in session. The sombre tones and the mature appearance of the men studying the nude figure suggests the earnestness of the school. Typically for Euston Road painting, great attention is paid to the exact placement of forms on the canvas. . . . Later, after the Second World War, Pasmore made his name as a constructivist, painting abstract works. However, he remained faithful to the teaching methods of the Euston Road School when subsequently teaching a life class at Camberwell School of Art."
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| A. Bianchini Life Class in Rome - Model posed as Christ on the Cross 1902 drawing (print study) Wellcome Collection, London |
Martin Postle's catalogue text, published in 1999, states that "the location of the academy featured in this drawing has yet to be established," but curators at the Wellcome Institute have since then managed to identify both the location and and the artist. They also date the drawing a decade later than Postle's estimate. He notes the presence at far left of one of the many existing casts of Jean-Antoine Houdon's Écorché au bras tendu, made in Rome in the 1760s. At the time of this drawing, students in European academies had been making studies of Houdon's anatomical model for the previous 150 years.
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| Edward Wadsworth Life Room at the Slade School 1911 oil on canvas University College London Art Museum |
"Edward Wadsworth was one of several precocious young students at the Slade around 1910. This painting was awarded first prize for figure painting in 1911. It shows the male figure class at the Slade. These is some sense of the influence of Sickert and other 'Camden Town' painters in the interest in depicting the ambience of the classroom and in the careful tonal painting employed. There is no hint of the modernist style that Wadsworth was to employ a few years later when he became a member of the Vorticist group."
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| Anonymous British Photographer Students in a Studio at the Glasgow School of Art (semi-nude figure 'posing' at top is a frolicking student, not a paid model) ca. 1918 photograph Glasgow School of Art |
"In provincial art schools educational regimes remained rigid, while in Scotland the traditional study of the Antique and anatomy remained the bedrock of artistic training. For art students in London, however, opportunities to study the living model increased dramatically."
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| Ida Knox Model posed for Life Class 1918 oil on canvas University College London Art Museum |
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| Katherine Anne West Life Class, Slade School of Art ca. 1920-24 oil on canvas University College London Art Museum |
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| John Gerald Hookham Model at the Slade School of Art 1923 oil on canvas University College London Art Museum |
"This work was produced in the latter years of the reign of the formidable Henry Tonks at the Slade. The remarkable staging of this work, with its hint of Vermeer, is perhaps a reflection of the encouragement that the head of the Slade gave his students to study the Old Masters carefully. But it also seems a highly appropriate way to bring across some sense of the vulnerability of the model and the curious expectancy of the life class."
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| Gertrude Hermes Work (Life Class) 1925 wood-engraving British Museum |
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| Margaret Marshall Life Class at the Slade 1927 oil on canvas University College London Art Museum |
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| Victor Pasmore The Life Class 1938 oil on canvas The Hepworth, Wakefield, Yorkshire |
"In 1937 Victor Pasmore joined with Claude Rogers and William Coldstream in setting up a painting school that later became known as the Euston Road School. The Life Class comes from the period when Pasmore was teaching there. It appears to represent the school in session. The sombre tones and the mature appearance of the men studying the nude figure suggests the earnestness of the school. Typically for Euston Road painting, great attention is paid to the exact placement of forms on the canvas. . . . Later, after the Second World War, Pasmore made his name as a constructivist, painting abstract works. However, he remained faithful to the teaching methods of the Euston Road School when subsequently teaching a life class at Camberwell School of Art."
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| Robert Barnes Drawing and Painting Studio ca. 1971 oil on canvas Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design University of Dundee |
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| Joyce Fisher The Studio 1973 oil on canvas Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design University of Dundee |
– quoted passages from The Artist's Model from Etty to Spencer by Martin Postle and William Vaughan (London: Merrell Holberton, 1999)
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| Lawrence Alma-Tadema Life Class in Ancient Rome 1877 oil on canvas Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana |