Saturday, May 16, 2026

Posed

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Model Studies for Virgin Annunciate
ca. 1527-28
drawing (study for painting)
British Museum


Francesco Morandini (il Poppi)
Studies of Seated Model
before 1597
drawing
British Museum

Alessandro Casolani
Seated Model and Cat
ca. 1580-1600
drawing
British Museum

Nicolaes Maes
Standing Model
ca. 1648-50
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Hugues Taraval
Life Study (model posed as dead Christ)
before 1785
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Achille-Etna Michallon
Académie (Roman model)
1803
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Julien Vallou de Villeneuve
Standing Model
ca. 1853
salted paper print from paper negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

William McTaggart
Model Study
ca. 1855
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Charles-Alphonse Marlé
Model in Academic Pose
ca. 1855
salted paper print from paper negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Edward Burne-Jones
Model Study
ca. 1858
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Henri Matisse
Le Repose du Modèle
1922
lithograph
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

George Bellows
The Model
before 1925
drawing
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Louise Dahl-Wolfe
Fashion Model at Rose Pauson House, Phoenix
1942
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

George Hoyningen Huene
Model wearing Cape by Valentina
ca. 1946
chromogenic transparency
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Bernard Dunstan
Model Study
ca. 1950
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Philip Pearlstein
Male and Female Models Reclining
1964
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Joan Brown
Model, Artist + Cupboard
1972
graphite, ink and acrylic on paper
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

I know that those who print these pages will weep, and therefore one must not be surprised at the bad print.  Bad print is produced by poor people who have little strength.  I know that print spoils the eyes, and therefore I want my writing to be photographed.  For a photograph spoils only one eye, but print spoils many eyes.  I want to photograph my manuscript, only I am afraid of spoiling the photograph.  I had a camera, and I tried to make photographs with it and develop the films.  I am not afraid of the red light, but I am afraid of spoiling the photographs, because film is a good thing and one must cherish it.  I would prefer to give my camera to a man who would make one photograph of me.  I like my camera because I think it will be of use to me.  I feel the opposite.  I do not want to make photographs, because I have little time.  I want to devote myself to the theater and not to photography.  I will leave photography to those who like it.  I like photography, only I cannot sacrifice my whole life to it.  

– from The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, written in Russian in 1919, translated by Kyril FitzLyon and edited by Joan Acocella (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999)