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| W. Farren Francis Cowley Burnand (in Drag) ca. 1855 hand-colored albumen print Wellcome Collection, London |
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| Oscar Gustav Rejlander Study for The Two Ways of Life ca. 1855-56 gelatin silver print from wet collodion negative Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Oscar Gustav Rejlander The Two Ways of Life 1856 photomontage print Royal Photographic Society, Bath |
"Rejlander was a Swedish photographer who began his career as a painter. He moved to England in the early 1840s. In 1846 he settled in Wolverhampton, where he soon began to practice photography. The Two Ways of Life attracted mixed attention, though it was admired by Queen Victoria. A large-scale composition of clothed and unclothed figures personifying concepts, it deliberately set out to claim that photography was an art as capable as painting of treating idealized historical and allegorical themes. However, it was not so much this ambition as the display of photographic nudity that offended. It was felt that photography was too realistic a medium to display naked figures with propriety. Rejlander defended his position on the grounds that photography was capable of expressing the ideal if correctly treated. He himself said that he disliked a nude, 'if it (apart from study) conveys no idea.' . . . He was concerned that in studies of semi-naked figures there should be a harmonious relationship between the form of the body and the fabric covering. He emulated the effects of Greek sculpture, in which drapery does not conceal form. He achieved this effect by using dampened thin fabric, often staining it with coffee 'to lessen the colour contrast of flesh and drapery."
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| William Powell Frith Study for The Sleepy Model 1853 drawing Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| William Powell Frith The Sleepy Model 1853 oil on canvas Royal Academy of Arts, London |
"The perceived moral pitfalls lying in wait for unsuspecting male artists were increasingly apparent as models thronged studios to meet increased demands of a growing phalanx of genre painters. With the increase of subjects drawn from contemporary life, the gap between the real circumstances of models and their imagined role in art closed. With this heightened realism came an increased awareness of models as individuals in their own right. It is in this context that the most celebrated of Victorian artist's model pictures, Frith's The Sleepy Model, can be fully appreciated. This was the artist's diploma picture. On one level it is a personal and wholly sympathetic statement about one artist's relationship with his studio model, a pretty young costermonger, plucked from the London streets to re-enact a role integral to her daily life. Once in the studio, she falls asleep, her weariness induced not so much by the strains of modelling but by the rigours of her working day."
"Frith's model is wholesome, and passive – a world away from the libidinous street vendors presented in countless 'fancy' pictures and prints, whose inviting leers and lewd cries suggest their desire to trade sexual favours along with their assorted comestibles. Bundled up in her shawl the sleeping model finds in Frith's studio a safe haven, and the chance to dream of a better life. The artist's projected self-image as a trustworthy, reassuring, paternal presence has a rhetorical counterpart in the chatty, avuncular approach adopted by Frith in his autobiography some thirty years later. For Frith the studio was his stage, a microcosm of the city which surrounded him, with its cast of colourful, 'Dickensian' characters – poor, down on their luck, but invariably cheerful. In reality, as Frith occasionally let slip, he at times found them to be dirty, diseased and illiterate – the working-class female models whose grammar 'caused a shudder' – or the young crossing-sweeper, a 'low, dull, Irish boy – one degree removed from a pig."
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| William Powell Frith Self Portrait with a Model 1867 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery, London |
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| Frederic, Lord Leighton Head of an Italian Model ca. 1855 oil on canvas Leighton House Museum, London |
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| Frederic, Lord Leighton Head of an Italian Model ca. 1855 oil on canvas Leeds Art Gallery, Yorkshire |
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| Frederic, Lord Leighton Half-Length Study of Standing Model ca. 1860 oil on canvas Leighton House Museum, London |
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| David Wilkie Wynfield Frederic, Lord Leighton ca. 1860 carbon print Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| Frederic, Lord Leighton Study of Leg and Hands ca. 1858 drawing Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| Charles West Cope Abraham Cooper drawing the Female Model 1864 drawing National Portrait Gallery, London |
"Cope depicts the Academician Abraham Cooper seated at his 'donkey' in the Royal Academy life class, before the female model. The model's pose would have been retained for two hours, with a short break after one hour (if the model needed a rest in the interim the hourglass would be set on its side)."
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| Charles West Cope Life Class at the Royal Academy 1865 etching and drypoint on vellum British Museum |
"Cope's etching is among the most evocative portrayals of the life class at the Royal Academy, and a personal record of his devotion to his role as Visitor during the years 1861 to 1866. The male model, quite possibly posed by Cope, stands in the dramatic attitude of a classical warrior drawing a sword – a common device in British and Continental art schools, allowing a contrapposto posture which maximizes the muscular tension in the figure. The model is lit by a large, angled lamp, his form silhouetted against a large white sheet. The students' easels are illuminated by smaller shaded individual lamps above their heads."
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| Anonymous British Artist The Laocoön (study of a cast of the central figure) ca. 1850-70 drawing Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle Discophorus (study of a cast) ca. 1864-66 drawing British Museum |
"George Howard apparently made this drawing as a submission for entry to Heatherley's School. (The drawing is lined on the back with a sheet of heavier grey paper, covered by a page from The Times dated Thursday, 10 May 1866.) Howard, who was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, did in fact commence studies in 1865 at the Schools of Design at South Kensington and privately under Giovanni Costa and Alphonse Legros."
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| Edward Poynter The Painter's Inspiration ca. 1863 drawing (study for wood-engraving) British Museum |
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| Edmond Yon after Oreste Cortazzo La séance interrompue 1870 wood-engraving British Museum |