The Antique, The Living Model & The Study of Anatomy - VII

John Hamilton Mortimer
Self-Portrait with Joseph Wilton and a Student
ca. 1765
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts, London

"The painting, formerly dated c. 1778-79, has been redated to c. 1765 by John Sunderland who has suggested that it recalls earlier times when Mortimer and the sculptor Joseph Wilton were associated with the Academy attached to the Duke of Richmond's Cast Gallery of 1758-62.  This gallery complemented the teaching offered by William Shipley's Drawing School, 1753-68, and the second St Martin's Lane Academy, 1753-68.  In 1758 Wilton was made Director of the Duke of Richmond's Academy, and Giovanni Battista Cipriani was in charge of instruction in painting.  John Hamilton Mortimer was among the students.  The three figures in Mortimer's paintings are Wilton (supervising), Mortimer (drawing after the Antique), and a young student (holding an antique head)."

John Hamilton Mortimer
Study of a Cast of the Bacchus of Sansovino
ca. 1760
drawing
Tate Britain

John Hamilton Mortimer
Reclining Model
ca. 1773
drawing
Yale Center for British Art

John Hamilton Mortimer
Reclining Model
ca. 1757-59
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"John Hamilton Mortimer was one of the most precocious draughtsmen of his generation.  While a pupil of Robert Edge Pine he studied at St Martin's Lane Academy and at the Duke of Richmond's Sculpture Gallery, winning prizes both for life drawing and for a drawing from a cast of Michelangelo's Bacchus.  The medium used by Mortimer in [the drawing directly above], black chalk on grey paper, and the technique, with firm cross-hatching, is very close to that which the artist employed in drawings from the Antique.  Nonetheless, although the drawing exhibits Mortimer's control of line and his confident manipulation of tone, it also reveals the difficulties he experienced in coping with the unexpected irregularities of the human form as opposed to the familiar contours of the classical cast – especially in the handling of the area around the upper torso and neck."  

John Constable
Figure from Michelangelo's Last Judgment
ca. 1830
oil on canvas
National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge

John Constable
Model posed after Michelangelo's Jonah
from the Sistine Ceiling
ca. 1800-1801
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"This work demonstrates the manner in which living models were posed at the Royal Academy to resemble figures taken from the Old Masters, as well as from antique statuary.  Here the male model takes up an attitude based on the prophet Jonah from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, a practice which Constable, as a Visitor in the Life Schools in the 1830s, favoured when he posed two male figures based on Michelangelo's Last Judgment, as well as a setting based on Titian's St Peter Martyr.  . . .  On the basis of the paucity of drawings by him from the antique, it has been argued that Constable spent very little time drawing from the Antique.  C.R. Leslie noted: 'I have seen no studies made by Constable at the Academy from the antique, but many chalk drawings and oil paintings from the living model, all of which have great breadth of light and shade, though they are sometimes defective in outline.'  Graham Reynolds pointed out that this drawing, which shows a lack of confidence in the handling, conforms with Leslie's description." 

Richard Cosway
Emma Hamilton in Classical Attitude
ca. 1800
drawing
National Portrait Gallery, London

"At the time of Cosway's drawing, Emma Hart (1765?-1815) was already famous for the 'Attitudes' she performed after classical statuary during her sojourn in Italy as the mistress of Sir William Hamilton, the British Ambassador in Naples.  The first record of Emma's 'Attitudes' was in 1787 when Goethe, who was at the time a guest at Sir William Hamilton's residence, noted: 'He has had a Greek costume made for her which becomes her extremely. Dressed in this, she lets down her hair and, with a few shawls, gives so much variety to her poses, gestures, expressions, etc., that the spectator can hardly believe his eyes . . . The old knight (Hamilton) idolises her and is quite enthusiastic about everything she does. In her he has found all the antiquities, all the profiles of Sicilian coins, even the Apollo Belvedere.'  In 1794 Frederick Rehberg produced a series of line engravings of Emma's 'Attitudes' entitled Drawings Faithfully Copied from Nature at Naples.  In 1800 she returned to England, around which time Cosway produced this drawing.  By this time she was, according to one contemporary, 'colossal, but, excepting her feet, which are hideous, well shaped. Her bones are large, and she is exceedingly embonpoint. She resembles the bust of Ariadne . . ."  

Benjamin Robert Haydon
Seated Model posed as Hercules
1806
drawing
Yale Center for British Art

George Romney
Model posed as Wounded Achilles
ca. 1775
drawing
Yale Center for British Art

Robert Ker Porter
Model posed at the Royal Academy
ca. 1794-95
drawing
British Museum

George Michael Moser
Seated Model
ca. 1745-50
drawing
Royal Academy of Arts, London

"Although George Michael Moser was active in the Life Class throughout his career, few of his own life drawings survive.  As Moser is not known to have worked either in Paris or Rome, it is probable that this drawing was made in London in the St Martin's Lane Academy, possibly in the the 1740s.  . . .  Moser was known for his abilities as a draughtsman; George Vertue, writing in 1745 about the St Martin's Lane Academy, noted that 'amongst the best Mr. Moser the Chaser has distinguisht him self by his skill in drawing in ye Academy from the life this Winter.'  Moser's early history is obscure.  He is said to have studied in Geneva before coming to England as a youth to work as a gold- and silver-chaser.  Moser also worked as an enameller, medallist, and sculptor.  . . .  [He was] instrumental in the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts, and became its first Keeper in 1769.  In that post, it was his responsibility to oversee the running of the 'Academy of the Living Model' and the 'Plaister Academy,' including the provision of models, the setting out of casts, and the admission of new students to the Schools." 

George Michael Moser after Guido Reni
Hercules and the Hydra
before 1783
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Thomas Rowlandson
Venus, Anchises and Cupid
before 1827
drawing, with watercolor
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thomas Rowlandson
Modern Pygmalion with Galatea
ca. 1790-1810
etching
British Museum

Thomas Rowlandson
The Sculptor
ca. 1800
hand-colored etching
British Museum

"Although Rowlandson's print of The Sculptor was not produced until c. 1800, the clay modello on which Nollekens is shown at work, Venus chiding Cupid, was apparently exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1778.  Even though Rowlandson's print is essentially a satirical flight of fancy, the image anticipates the recollections of Nollekens's pupil, J.T. Smith, concerning the sculptor's primary interest in the studio, rather than the academy, model.  According to Smith, 'his naked figures were of the most simple class, being either a young Bacchus, a Diana, or a Venus, with limbs sleek, plump, and round; but I never knew him like Banks to attempt the grandeur of a Jupiter, or even the strength of a gladiator." 

– 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)

The Antique, The Living Model & The Study of Anatomy - VI

William Blake
Pan and Youth
(study of a cast of an antique sculpture group)
ca. 1785
drawing
British Museum

William Blake
 Naked Youth
ca. 1779-80
drawing
British Museum

"This drawing was traditionally thought to have been executed when Blake was a student at the Royal Academy in 1779-80.  . . .  The youth's legs are ultimately derived from the Venus de Medici, while his arms are derived from poses typical of artists of the Italian Renaissance.  . . .  But Blake went further.  He produced a new version of the hermaphrodite, an ideal figure for what he called "the Shape of the Naked" in his Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses, (c. 1808).  A passage in Blake's Annotations throws new light on the drawing: 'I was once looking over the Prints from Rafael & Michael Angelo in the Library of the Royal Academy.  Moser (the Keeper) came to me & said: 'You should not study these old Hard, Stiff & Dry, Unfinish'd Works of Art – Stay a little & I will shew you what you should Study.'  He went & took down Le Brun's & Rubens's Galleries. How I did secretely Rage! . . . I said to Moser, 'These things that you call Finish'd are not Even Begun: how can they be Finish'd? The Man who does not know The Beginning never can know the End of Art."

Richard Dalton
Apollo Belvedere
1741
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Study of a cast of the Apollo Belvedere
ca. 1792-93
drawing
Tate Britain

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Study of a cast of the Apollo Belvedere
ca. 1792
drawing
Tate Britain

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Study of a cast of the Apollo Belvedere
ca. 1792
drawing
Tate Britain

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Study of a Model in the Pose of The Dying Gaul
ca. 1792
drawing
Tate Britain

George Romney
Study of a Classical Sculpture
ca. 1775
drawing
Yale Center for British Art

Thomas Rowlandson
Study of a cast of the Ludovisi Gaul
(antique sculpture group also called Paetus and Arria)
before 1827
drawing, with watercolor
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

William Mulready
Study of a cast of The Wrestlers
ca. 1801
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"In May 1799 Mulready's parents asked the Royal Academician Thomas Banks to inspect a drawing of the cast of the Apollo, with a view to gaining entry for their son to the Royal Academy Schools.  Although Banks did not apparently think Mulready's first effort was up to the required standard, he agreed to assist him on the strength of a second drawing presented to him a month later.  For six weeks Mulready attended a drawing school in Furnival's Inn, Holborn, after which he drew from the cast in Banks's studio.  He was admitted as a probationer to the Royal Academy in June 1800, and was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools on 23 October 1800.  It is not clear whether the date of Mulready's admission was to the Antique Academy or to the Life Schools.  Admission to the Schools usually meant that the student was permitted to enter the Antique Academy rather than the Life Schools, for which one had to serve a further apprenticeship.  Given Mulready's age, however (he was 14), he was almost certainly admitted to the Antique Academy in October 1800.  As Turner spent three years in the Antique Academy, Mulready's drawing made, as the inscription says, to enable him to draw from the living model, may have not been executed until at least 1801."   

Allan Ramsay
Reclining Model posed as River God
1755
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

"One of a series of drawing made in natural light by Ramsay at the French Academy in Rome during his second visit to Italy (1754-1755).  Ramsay had first visited the French Academy during his earlier sojourn (1736-1738), where he is recorded as having studied the living model in the evening by lamplight.  He continued to draw from the living model on his return to England, at St Martin's Lane, where he was criticised by George Vertue.  Critically, Ramsay fared little better on his return to Rome in the 1750s, when Andrew Lumisden told the engraver Robert Strange that Ramsay 'drew such figures as everyone laughed at and wondered how he could pretend to be a painter.'  Another fellow-Scot,  Robert Adam, also observed in 1756: 'There are many qualities and studies that form a good painter that he is ignorant of as an unborn child, and he for an old boy knows less about the proportions of the human figure than any young boy about Rome, a fact which amazed and astonished me.'  Despite criticism, Ramsay continued to draw from the model at the St Martin's Lane Academy.  One problem, however, for a busy portraitist like Ramsay must have been that the practice of life drawing was not integrated into his everyday artistic practice.  Nonetheless, the drawings which survive from both Ramsay's first and second trips to Italy indicate that the artist rapidly gained in confidence as he drew from the model."

Allan Ramsay
Standing Model posed as Hercules
ca. 1758
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

James Barry
Standing Model posed as Hercules
ca. 1777-80
drawing
Yale Center for British Art

"This life drawing is a study for the statue of Hercules which appears in the Crowning of the Victors at Olympia, one of six murals which Barry painted for the Great Room at the Society of Arts between 1777 and 1784.  The figure of Hercules, who treads on Envy in the form of a serpent, is located at the extreme left of the painting, and is matched by a statue of the goddess Minerva on the right.  . . .  It is perhaps no accident that Barry, in a conscious decision to rely on his own creative drive, chose to take as his model a figure based on a life drawing rather than the Farnese Hercules, which would have been the obvious model."  

James Barry
Reclining Model posed as Narcissus
ca. 1774
drawing
British Museum

William Pether after Joseph Wright of Derby
An Academy
(studying a cast of Nymph with a Shell by lamplight)
1772
mezzotint
British Museum

"Joseph Wright exhibited An Academy by Lamplight at the Society of Artists in 1769.  William Pether's print was published three years later. The presence of youths rather than men is stressed, perhaps in order to make the point that the study of the antique was the basis of all subsequent artistic education.  It is almost certain that Wright's Academy is imaginary, not least because the work is didactic rather than descriptive in its intention to show that the ideal of physical perfection is personified not by the living individual, but by the paradigm offered by the antique."  

Giovanni Battista Cipriani
Model posed as Classical Figure pouring a Libation
ca. 1760
drawing
British Museum

"Born in Florence, Cipriani had spent the years 1750 to 1753 in Rome, where he had come into close contact with the British artistic community.  In 1756 Cipriani went to London, where, in addition to carrying out a number of decorative paintings for William Chambers and Robert Adam, he joined Richard Wilson as an instructor at the Duke of Richmond's Cast Gallery.  Cipriani had an abiding interest in art education.  He became a member of the St Martin's Lane Academy, and was subsequently a founder member of the Royal Academy, where he was prominent as a teacher."

Edward Francis Burney
Classical Warrior with Sword and Shield
ca. 1790-1800
watercolor
Yale Center for British Art

Edward Francis Burney
Classical Warrior Seated
ca. 1790-1800
watercolor
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)

The Antique, The Living Model & The Study of Anatomy - V

Royal Academy of Arts
Cast of the Farnese Hercules
ca. 1790
plaster
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Richard Dalton
Farnese Hercules
1741
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Richard Dalton
Farnese Hercules
1742
drawing
Tate Britain

"This morning Mr. Dalton came, as he had promised and brought some statues drawn in red chalk, that he said were for Lord Brooke, and some copies from the little Farnese that he told me were for your Ladyship.  There is a very visible improvement from the first of his drawings to those last finished, which indeed were as good as any I have seen of the modern artists." – Lady Pomfret to Lady Hertford, 2 May 1741

"Eight of Dalton's drawings were published in 1770 by John Boydell as part of A Collection of Twenty Antique Statues Drawn after the Originals in Italy by Richard Dalton Esq.  At the time of Dalton's drawing, the Farnese Hercules was in its unrestored state in the Palazzo Farnese.  A cast of the figure also existed at the French Academy in Rome. At that time, not only were the extremities of the fingers missing on the left hand, but its legs were substitutes which had been made by Guglielmo della Porta on the advice of Michelangelo. In 1787, however, the statue's original legs were put back into place and the figure restored.  It was subsequently sent to Naples [where it remains to the present day].  And yet, as Lady Pomfret's letter indicates – and a comparison of Dalton's drawing with the original confirms – the artist had almost certainly based his study on a reduced copy of the statue, of which there were numerous versions in plaster and bronze by the early 18th century."  

Joseph Highmore
Study of a Cast of the Farnese Hercules
ca. 1712-15
drawing
Tate Britain

Domenico Corvi
Portrait of artist David Allan
painting a reduced copy of the Borghese Gladiator
1774
oil on canvas
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

William Pether after Joseph Wright of Derby
Three Artists studying a reduced copy
of the Borghese Gladiator by lamplight
1769
mezzotint
British Museum

Joseph Highmore
Study of a cast
of the Borghese Gladiator
ca. 1712-15
drawing
Tate Britain

William Etty
Model posed as the Venus de' Medici
ca. 1820
oil on card
Courtauld Gallery, London

"This oil study by Etty demonstrates the manner in which the living model at the Royal Academy Schools was sometimes required to emulate classical statuary.  Here the female model takes up the pose of the Venus de Medici, even in the manner in which her hair is caught up behind her neck.  The only major difference is that the pose of the antique statue has been reversed by the Visitor, presumably in the hope that the students would not simply refer back to drawings they had made of the cast, but rather approach the figure with fresh insight."

Joseph Nollekens
Venus de' Medici
1770
measured drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

"Nollekens' practice of taking careful measurements from classical statuary stemmed in part from his training in the workshop of the copyist and cast-maker Bartolomeo Cavaceppi in Rome, where precise measurements of original statues were necessary in order to replicate casts for collections.  He would also have experienced this working method at the French Academy in Rome, where the technique of making large-scale copies of antique statuary was also taught.  Nollekens, we know, made several replicas of classical statues for British collectors.  . . .  The system used by Nollekens to measure the Venus de Medici, which goes back ultimately to the organic theory of proportions devised by Polycleitos, is closely modeled on that which Gérard Audran had published in 1683 as Les proportions du corps humain measurées sur les plus belles figures de l'antiquité.  (An English version was first published in 1718.)  Rather than using a method of measurement based on custom (such as an inch or centimetre) Audran took as his unit of measurement the head of the particular statue."

Richard Dalton
Venus de' Medici
ca. 1741-42
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Study of a cast of the Venus de' Medici
ca. 1792
drawing
Tate Britain

"Turner was accepted as a student in the Royal Academy Schools in December 1789, on the recommendation of the Academician J.F. Rigaud.  Turner attended the Antique Academy regularly until 1793, where his last recorded signature in the 'Plaister Academy' register is on 8 October.  A.J. Finberg counted 137 separate attendances in the Antique Academy by Turner.  . . .  Although weak in terms of the realisation of the plastic form of the statue, Turner's Venus study reveals the manner in which the artist has attempted to show the shadows cast by the lamp which illuminated the statue from above."

John Flaxman
The Braschi Venus
1811
drawing
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Benjamin Robert Haydon
Study of a cast of an Antinoüs
ca. 1810-20
drawing
British Museum 

Joseph Nollekens
The Capitoline Antinoüs
1770
measured drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Richard Parkes Bonington
Study of a cast of the Dancing Faun
ca. 1819-22
drawing
Yale Center for British Art

David Wilkie
Study of a cast of the Dancing Faun
ca. 1805
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

"This drawing has traditionally been thought to have been drawn by Wilkie in 1799, to gain entry to the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh.  It seems more plausible, however, to argue that it was the drawing with which the artist gained entry to the Antique Academy at the Royal Academy Schools in December 1805.  Regarding his attempt to enter the Trustees Academy, Allan Cunningham noted how, despite a letter from the Earl of Leven to the Secretary George Thomson, 'his [Wilkie's] drawings failed to satisfy the eye of that gentleman; he looked at the drawings of the modest and timid boy, reperused the Earl's letter, shook his head, and finally refused to admit him.'  It was only through Leven's personal appeal that Wilkie was eventually admitted, and the artist later confessed to Cunningham, 'I, for one, can allow no ill to be said of patronage; patronage made me what I am, for it is plain that merit had no hand in my admission.'  John Burnet described Wilkie's attendance at the Trustees Academy: 'When Wilkie came to our class he had much enthusiasm of a queer and silent kind, and very little knowledge of drawing: he had made drawings, it is true, from living nature in that wide academy of the world, and chiefly from men or boys, such groups as chance threw his way; but in that sort of drawing on which taste and knowledge are desired, he was far behind the others who, without a tithe of his talent, stood in the same class.  . . .  It was not enough, for him, to say 'draw that antique foot, or draw this antique hand'; no, he required to know to what statue the foot or hand belonged; what was the action, and what the sentiment.  He soon felt that in the true antique the action and sentiment pervade it from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, and that unless this was known the fragment was not understood, and no right drawing of it could be made.'  In May 1805 Wilkie went to London, and in July entered the Royal Academy Schools as a probationer."

– 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)

The Antique, The Living Model & The Study of Anatomy - IV

Johan Zoffany
Charles Towneley in his Sculpture Gallery
1782
oil on canvas
Art Gallery and Museum, Burnley

Edward Francis Burney
The Antique School of the Royal Academy
at Old Somerset House
1779
drawing, with watercolor
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Edward Francis Burney
The Antique School of the Royal Academy
at New Somerset House
1780
drawing, with watercolor
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Anonymous British Artist
The Antique School of the Royal Academy
at New Somerset House
ca. 1780-83
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts, London

"Casts from the antique are illuminated by oil lamps with large triple reflectors set up on high standards.  Each student's easel is illuminated by its own oil lamp and reflector.  A lamp and reflector are also situated in front of the desk of the Keeper [against the right-hand wall], strongly delineating his features.  Casts include, from left to right, the Dancing Faun, the Wrestlers, Belvedere Torso, Cincinnatus, Apollo Belvedere, Borghese Gladiator, and Meleager.  A screen has been inserted along the wall behind the Belvedere Torso to sharpen the contours.  This practice appears to have been imported from Italy and was recommended to artists by English writers on art from the mid 17th century."   

Drawing casts by lamplight was often deemed preferable to drawing by daylight – the sharper shadows better emphasizing and defining anatomical details.   

Henry Singleton
Royal Academicians in General Assembly
1795
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Archibald Archer
The Temporary Elgin Room at the British Museum
1819
oil on canvas
British Museum

"This painting was exhibited at the British Institution in 1819.  It shows the room in which the Elgin Marbles, including the most important pedimental sculptures and metopes from the Parthenon, were exhibited to the public between 1817 and 1831.  The bas-reliefs and statuary were removed from the Acropolis and shipped to England between 1801 and 1811, and formed part of the collection of antiquities assembled by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, during his diplomatic mission to Constantinople between 1801 and 1803.  They had been accommodated first at the house of the Duchess of Portland in Westminster, and subsequently in a shed in Park Lane, where in June 1808 a well-known boxer named Gregson was 'placed in many attitudes' in order to compare them with figures in the Marbles.  In 1811 Elgin offered the Marbles to the nation for £62,440.  After a prolonged Parliamentary inquiry, they were purchased from him in 1816 for £35,000, and handed over to the British Museum.  The painter of this work, Archibald Archer, is shown seated in the right foreground.  The President of the Royal Academy, Benjamin West, is seated at the left, while to his right is Joseph Planta, Principal Librarian at the British Museum.  Benjamin Robert Haydon, the most fervent advocate of the Marbles, is standing, in profile, at the extreme left."

Benjamin Robert Haydon
Ilissos (or Theseus) from the East Pediment of the Parthenon
(Elgin Marbles)
1808
drawing
British Museum

Benjamin Robert Haydon
Ilissos (or Theseus) from the East Pediment of the Parthenon
(Elgin Marbles)
1808
drawing
British Museum

Benjamin Robert Haydon
Metope with Lapith from the Parthenon
(Elgin Marbles)
1809
drawing
British Museum

Benjamin Robert Haydon
Horse of Selene from the East Pediment of the Parthenon
(Elgin Marbles)
1809
drawing
British Museum

John Landseer
Heads of Horses from the Parthenon Pediments
(Elgin Marbles)
1817
etching
Wellcome Collection, London

Benjamin Robert Haydon
Study of a Cast of the Belvedere Torso
ca. 1808-1811
drawing
British Museum

The drawing directly above is misidentified by the British Museum as representing one of Haydon's many large drawings of the Elgin Marbles – when in fact it was rendered after a cast of the Belvedere Torso.  The original antique sculptural fragment – documented in Rome since the 1430s – had acquired cult status in the early 16th century due to the reputed admiration of Michelangelo.  Consequently, by the 18th century, every art academy in Europe was displaying its own plaster copy of the Belvedere Torso for the edification of students.  

Joseph Highmore
Studies of a Cast of the Belvedere Torso
ca. 1712-15
drawing
Tate Britain

John James Masquerier
Studies of a Cast of the Belvedere Torso
ca. 1790-93
drawing
Wellcome Collection, London

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Study of a Cast of the Belvedere Torso
ca. 1795
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Angelica Kauffmann
Allegory of Design
(Artist studying the Belvedere Torso)
ca. 1778-80
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts, London

"Angelica Kauffmann, as a woman, could not work from the living model at the Royal Academy, even though she was a founder member.  J.T. Smith, who had heard that Kauffmann had arranged private sessions with a Royal Academy model named Charles Cranmer, went round to see him to find out if this was true.  Cranmer told Smith that 'he did frequently sit before Angelica Kauffmann at her home on the south side of Golden Square, but that he had only exposed his arms, shoulders, and legs, and that her father, who was also as artist and likewise an exhibitor at the Academy, was always present." 

– 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)

Anonymous British Artist
Antique School at the Royal Academy
ca. 1790
drawing, with watercolor
British Museum