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| William Hogarth Female Model Seated ca. 1720-24 drawing British Museum |
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| William Hogarth Female Model Seated ca. 1735 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
"By the time Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty was published in 1753, the conventions for figure drawing in Britain were well-established. Many elements and many artists had contributed to their formulation. Private, unregulated and artist-dominated academies active in London from 1673 to 1768 were centres where a cosmopolitan community of artists met to work from the same models. Old Master paintings, scientific anatomy, and a study of living models were the principal elements of their new graphic vocabulary. The result was a great fluency in drawing from the model, a remarkable naturalness in the rendering of the human figure, and a marked informality of the poses. These qualities were retained well after Hogarth's death. However, after the mid 1750s the Antique took the lead in greater measure. A new approach to the Antique changed the syntax of the body, and encouraged British artists to contribute to the formulation of a common European language for the arts."
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| Henry Fuseli Figure Study of a Woman 1796 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Figure Study of a Woman 1796 drawing British Museum |
"Henry Fuseli first visited London in 1764, although his artistic training did not really begin in earnest until his Italian sojourn from 1770 to 1778. In 1788 he became Associate Royal Academician, and a full Academician two years later in 1790. These drawings are dated by the artist to 17th and 18th November 1796. In their reliance on line and wash, rather than on careful execution in chalks, they are reminiscent of the life-drawing of James Barry, although Fuseli did not possess Barry's control of line. Fuseli drew the figure frequently, although usually his studies were based on his own imagination, rather than on the living model. . . . He was a frequent Visitor at the Royal Academy Schools during the 1790s, although his greatest impact on the teaching of life-drawing occurred when he was appointed Keeper in 1804. His impact was felt on a whole generation of artists, including Wilkie, Mulready, Constable, and Haydon. Fuseli had a reputation for leaving students to their own devices, although an essay in the Polytechnic Journal of 1840 presented a somewhat different picture: 'Boldness of outline and vigour of execution were sure to elicit his approbation. He loved a decision of style as he hated what he called "a neegling touch." Woe to the poor student who depended on his elaborate finishing. After having been a week or ten days working up his drawing with the softest chalk, stumping, dotting, stippling, until he had nearly worn his eyes out, the Keeper would stealthily come behind him, and looking over his shoulder would grasp the porte-crayon, and, standing at arm's length from the drawing, would give so terrific a score as to cut through the paper and leave a distinct outline on the board beneath; and then would say, by way of encouragement to future exertion, "There, Saar, there, you should have a boldness of handling and a greater freedom of touch."
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| David Wilkie Female Model Seated ca. 1833 drawing Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| David Wilkie Female Model ascending a Ladder 1840 drawing, with watercolor British Museum |
"The impact of the Elgin Marbles on the generally accepted relationship of the antique to the living model was profound, for they seemed to show that the greatest ancient sculptors had looked closely at the individual model, rather than seeking to establish a range of generalised archetypes. In 1814 Hazlitt, writing in The Champion, stated, concerning Reynolds' 'inability to draw the naked figure,' that 'drawing from the antique would not have enabled either him or anyone else to draw from the naked figure. The difficulty of copying from nature, or in other words of doing anything that has not been done before, or that is worth doing, is that of combining many ideas at once, or of reconciling things in motion: wheras in copying from the antique, you have only to copy still life, and in proportion as you get a knack at the one, you disqualify yourself for the other.' From the 1820s life drawings by British artists indicate that the model was viewed less as a poor relation to the Antique and more as an entity in its own right. The Antique was still attentively studied, although similarities between life drawings and those made from statuary decreased – as Wilkie's impromptu watercolor of his nude female model ascending a ladder, for example, illustrates."
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| James Barry Seated Model drawn at the Royal Academy Schools 1800 drawing British Museum |
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| James Barry Seated Model drawn at the Royal Academy Schools ca. 1790-1800 drawing Royal Academy of Arts, London |
"In 1775 James Barry, in An Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England, expressed the need to defend the representation of nudity in classical statuary: 'The Greek statues of the Laocoon, Apollo, Meleager, of the Belvedere, Hercules, the Fighting Gladiator, and the Venus de Medici, though altogether naked, yet surely there is nothing in them offensive to modesty."
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| William Etty Guardsman Higgins ca. 1830 oil on board National Army Museum, London |
"Guardsman Higgins may stand for a whole series of soldiers who supplemented their income by modelling privately and at the Royal Academy. Benjamin Robert Haydon, who had more to say about his models than most, placed great emphasis on the qualities of soldiers as models, and made frequent reference to them in his autobiography. Corporal Sammons, who had been in the Peninsular War, he described as 'a living Ilissus,' while Hodgson, another of his models, who had fought at Waterloo, he described as 'a perfect Achilles.' Naturally soldiers (even more than boxers) made excellent models, not merely because of their good physique but because of their ability to remain still for protracted periods."
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| Edward Francis Burney Tom Tring the Boxer ca. 1790-1800 drawing British Museum |
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| Edward Francis Burney Tom Tring the Boxer ca. 1790-1800 drawing British Museum |
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| John Hamilton Mortimer Jack Broughton the Boxer ca. 1767 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
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| Isaac Jehner after Joshua Reynolds Dionysius Areopagita (portrait of Academy model George White) 1776 mezzotint British Museum |
"This mezzotint is based on a lost painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds which employs the features of his favorite model, George White. Reynolds came across White in 1770, after he had been confined with a fever in St George's Hospital, which was then administered by John Hunter. Afterwards he went to live with William Hunter in his house in Windmill Street, where he was used by Hunter in demonstrations to medical students. Although he was clearly quite old, White apparently still had a marvellous physique, not least because of a life spent in laying paving slabs. It was for this reason, rather than his venerable features, that he was also used as a model in the Royal Academy Schools. During the early 1770s, when he was at the height of his popularity, White featured in subject pictures by a number of prominent artists, including Zoffany, John Russell, West, and Reynolds."
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| Thomas Banks Portrait of John Malin (model and porter at the Royal Academy) ca. 1768-69 drawing Royal Academy of Arts, London |
"An inscription on the back states, 'this fine drawing is a portrait of John Malin, the first porter and model at the Royal Academy, which posts he had filled at the Academy in Peter House, St Martin's Lane, from which the Royal Academy emanated.' Malin's wife Elizabeth was also appointed first 'Sweeper' or caretaker at the Royal Academy. Article XV of the Instrument of Foundation of the Royal Academy, dated 10 December 1768, stated: 'There shall be a Porter of the Royal Academy, whose salary shall be twenty-five pounds a year; he shall have a room in the Royal Academy, and receive his orders from the Keeper or Secretary.' Malin was appointed to the position of porter on 17 December 1768. Evidently he had been employed in the St Martin's Lane Academy and was simply transferred, alongside the benches, casts, and other paraphernalia to the new Academy. He died early in 1769, whereupon the Academy agreed to pay funeral expenses of £6 2s 2d, owing to his 'long and faithful services."
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| Francis Hayman Reclining Model (study for painting, The Good Samaritan) ca. 1751 drawing Royal Academy of Arts, London |
"This drawing is a study for the naked figure in Hayman's oil painting, The Good Samaritan [directly below], which the artist painted for the chapel at Cusworth Hall. Hayman's drawing, which is the only extant study from the naked living model by the artist, is also one of the few mid 18th-century British drawings which relates to a known historical composition. Probably executed at the second St Martin's Lane Academy, Hayman's drawing raises some very interesting questions about the use of the living model in the Academy, other than as an academic exercise. There is, in fact, one recorded precedent for the use of the model in the Academy for a particular historical composition. In or around 1713, at an evening session at Kneller's Academy, Sir James Thornhill placed the model in a 'curious crouching position' for a figure he wished to incorporate into the ceiling of the Painted Hall at Greenwich. The principal difference, however, between Hayman's practice and Thornhill's, was that the latter was not actually in attendance at the Academy on the evening in question, having instructed another artist, Thomas Gibson, to pose the model and execute the drawings for him."
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| Francis Hayman The Good Samaritan ca. 1751-52 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
– quoted passages from The Artist's Model: its Role in British Art from Lely to Etty by Ilaria Bignamini and Martin Postle (exhibition catalogue, Nottingham University Art Gallery, 1991)
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| Alexander Beugo (publisher) Charles Cranmer Posing (model and porter at the Royal Academy) ca. 1770-80 hand-colored etching British Museum |