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| Anonymous Artist Sketchbook Sheet ca. 1880-90 drawing Wellcome Collection, London |
"The various life drawings of artists and models contained in this sketchbook were made by an unknown artist, possibly at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst, Munich. Stylistically, the studies suggest a date somewhere in the 1880s, when increasing numbers of British and American artists were attending academies and art schools in cities such as Paris, Rome, Antwerp and Munich. The forty leaves in the sketchbook include a wide variety of models: nude studies of children and adults (male and female), and older models employed for character studies. There are also several drawings of older artists working with models. The technique in the drawings is fluent and assured, the general sense of reportage suggesting that the artist was quite experienced, rather than a younger art student."
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| Anonymous British Artist Standing Model ca. 1880 oil on paper, mounted on panel Edinburgh College of Art |
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| George Denholm Armour Standing Model, Half-Length ca. 1886 oil on canvas Edinburgh College of Art |
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| George Denholm Armour Standing Model, Half-Length ca. 1886 oil on canvas Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture, Edinburgh |
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| Isobel Lilian Gloag Recumbent Model ca. 1885-90 drawing British Museum |
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| Isobel Lilian Gloag Standing Model ca. 1885-90 drawing British Museum |
"Gloag's fine study of the female model was possibly made at the Slade School, where she studied in the 1880s under Alphonse Legros. At the Slade women students were by this time permitted to study from the "undraped" model. Yet while the practice was accepted within more liberal art schools, prejudice continued to be expressed about the issue. In 1899 Henrietta Rae received a letter from a man who had viewed her paintings of the female nude at the Royal Academy exhibition. Such figures, he said, stimulated the "volcanic force" in men's nature: "Then as regards the models themselves. For women to sit to women in this way is probably not so deteriorating to their moral sense. But, as you know, it habituates them to sit thus also to men – and herein must be found a trespass upon feminine modesty on the one hand and also on masculine chivalry on the other."
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| George Bathgate Standing Model ca. 1880 oil on canvas Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture, Edinburgh |
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| William Black Standing Model 1880 oil on canvas Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture, Edinburgh |
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| Alfred Elmore Seated Model before 1881 drawing British Museum |
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| Arthur Hughes The Potter's Courtship 1886 oil on canvas Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne |
"The Potter's Courtship may have been an attempt to produce a variation in the vernacular on the popular Pygmalion theme, for here, rather than breathing life into an inanimate statue, the humble potter declares his love by making a votive statue of the object of his adoration. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1886 at a time when narratives featuring artists and models were very much in vogue."
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| Frederic, Lord Leighton Cymon ca. 1884 plaster (study for painting) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| Frederic, Lord Leighton Figure with Lyre ca. 1891 plaster (study for painting) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| Frederic, Lord Leighton Iphigenia ca. 1882-83 bronze (study for painting) Royal Academy of Arts, London |
"[The bronze sculpture directly above] was made from a plaster model used by Leighton as a miniature lay figure for his painting Cymon and Iphigenia. However, the sculpted figure was used not only for studying the nude – for which drawings would have sufficed – but for complex drapery patterns, through the application of sheets of sized muslin to the figure. Leighton had been in the habit of using wax and clay models as pictorial aids since the mid-1870s, and continued to do so until the end of his career. Plaster casts were made from these impromptu models, some of which he displayed in the studio; some also were given to friends. After his death, Leighton's sisters presented his plaster casts to the Royal Academy: a number of them were then recast in bronze (in the course of the process the cast itself was destroyed)."
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| Henry Herbert La Thangue Study of Model holding a Staff ca. 1885-90 oil on canvas The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent |
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| Edward Poynter Outward Bound 1886 oil on canvas Tate Gallery, London |
"Outward Bound was painted at the height of the debate on the role of the adult nude in art, and at a time when the nude child was becoming an increasingly popular subject for artists. . . . The subject of Poynter's picture, a young boy and girl, no doubt aimed to promote the concept of childhood innocence. Yet, paradoxically, in an effort to present a timeless, classical idyll, not least through the attitude of the naked boy in the foreground, Poynter's composition highlights the similarities between the nude child model and its adult counterpart."
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| Frank M. Sutcliffe Natives ca. 1885 carbon print Royal Photographic Society, Bath |
"Frank Sutcliffe was one of the noted art photographers of his day, and a member of the prestigious Brotherhood of the Linked Ring which was founded in 1892 as a secession from the larger Photographic Society, and which promoted 'Pictorialism.' He lived for most of his working life in Whitby, and achieved great success with his records of the life of fishermen and other local figures. He achieved his greatest success in 1885 with Water-rats, a photograph of young boys disporting themselves naked in Whitby harbour: the boys were truants from school, who were in the habit of taking off their clothes and dashing into the water so that the attendance enforcer could not reach them. Sutcliffe paid the boys one penny each for a day's photography."
– quoted passages from The Artist's Model from Etty to Spencer by Martin Postle and William Vaughan (London: Merrell Holberton, 1999)