Guercino in Cento - 1616 (Accademia del Nudo)

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
École des Beaux-Arts de Paris

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
private collection

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

"In 1616 Guercino set up his own Accademia del Nudo in rooms in the house of one of his Centese patrons, Bartolomeo Fabri, thereby placing himself, perhaps somewhat selfconsciously, in the pioneering tradition of the drawing academy of the famous Carracci.  According to [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia, Guercino quickly accumulated a significant following of students, who numbered 23 by 1617." 

Guercino's Accademia remained active in the same quarters until his permanent relocation to Bologna in 1642.  The house of Bartolomeo Fabri still stands on what is now called Corso del Guercino in Cento, bearing a marble plaque attesting to its art-historical significance.

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
École des Beaux-Arts de Paris

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
École des Beaux-Arts de Paris

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Académie
1616 or after
drawing
École des Beaux-Arts de Paris

– quoted text from The Paintings of Guercino: a revised and expanded catalogue raisonné by Nicholas Turner (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017)

Royal Academy Schools as remembered by E.H. Shepard

Marcus Stone
Royalists Seeking Safety
1866
oil on canvas
Glasgow Museums

Marcus Stone
Welcome Footsteps
1898
oil on canvas
Aberdeen Art Gallery

George Henry Boughton
The Lady of the Snows
after 1896
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

George Henry Boughton
The Miners
1878
oil on canvas
Sudley House, Liverpool

"At the end of my first year I duly passed into the Upper School. There was no more drawing from the antique: it was painting, painting all the time, with a visiting Royal Academician to teach us. Some of this teaching was good and some quite the reverse. Marcus Stone, for instance, would lay down the law, discoursing on 'a sense of fatty sweetness' which was quite in keeping with the subjects of his pictures. G.H. Boughton, who favoured Dutch scenes of the seventeenth century – fancy-costumed figures skating – would seize my favourite brush and grind it on to the canvas so that it spread out fanwise, and then tell me to go ahead. We had Seymour Lucas and Arthur Hacker and several others. Solomon J. Solomon was an infrequent visitor, but he did teach us something."

– E.H. Shepard, Drawn from Life (1961), recollecting experiences of 1899-1900

John Seymour Lucas
The Flight of the Five Members
(from the House of Commons in 1642)
1915
oil on canvas
Wolverhampton Art Gallery, West Midlands

John Seymour Lucas
S.J. Whawell in Landsknecht Armour
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, Yorkshire

Arthur Hacker
Portrait of the Artist's Mother
1907
oil on canvas
Torre Abbey Museum, Torquay, Devon

Arthur Hacker
Persephone
ca. 1888-89
oil on canvas
Torre Abbey Museum, Torquay, Devon

Solomon Joseph Solomon
Samson
ca. 1887
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Solomon Joseph Solomon
Ajax and Cassandra
1886
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia

John Singer Sargent
Portrait of Mrs Huth Jackson
1907
oil on canvas
private collection

John Singer Sargent
Balustrade, Church of Santi Domenico e Sisto, Rome
1906
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

John Singer Sargent
Model Standing before a Stove
ca. 1875-80
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"It was quite different when [John Singer] Sargent was the Visitor. He was dynamic. Bursting with energy and enthusiasm, he inspired us all. Everyone tried to paint as he did. On one occasion he seized palette and brushes from a student and got to work himself. The painting remained untouched after he had left and was taken home by the lucky student, though several of us tried to bribe him to part with it. George Clausen was quite as popular as Sargent, though of a different temperament. A rather shy, quiet man, almost diffident in his criticisms, he was a most excellent teacher besides being a distinguished painter."

– E.H. Shepard, Drawn from Life (1961), recollecting experiences of 1899-1900

George Clausen
The Boy and the Man
1908
oil on canvas
Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, Yorkshire

George Clausen
Study for a Self Portrait
ca. 1882
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Drawings by Alphonse Legros (1837-1911)

Alphonse Legros
Self Portrait
ca. 1870
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alphonse Legros
Head of a Man facing left
before 1911
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Alphonse Legros
Head of a Man looking up
ca. 1890
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Alphonse Legros
Half Length Study of a Model
before 1911
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Alphonse Legros
Seated Model
before 1911
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

"His arrival [that of Alphonse Legros] at the Slade [School of Art in London] was stage-managed by [Prof. E.J.] Poynter, a friend since their student days in Paris, who had in 1875 secured for him an etching class at the National Art-Training Schools in South Kensington. The following year he persuaded the Slade Committee to permit Legros to take over temporarily some of his duties as Slade Professor, and when he resigned his position later that year Legros was allowed to succeed him, despite opposition from some quarters on the grounds that he was a foreigner and that his command of English was far from good. He was to become a British citizen in 1881, but his English did not improve, and most of his teaching was of necessity in the form of demonstration rather than verbal instruction. His skilful painting of a head once a term before the entire school became 'a momentous event' in the curriculum. This method of instruction did not suit all students, and his shrewd estimate of his pupils' abilities combined with his unwillingness to 'compromise with the singleness of purpose that should guide an artist in his career' led him to neglect his less gifted or committed students. One of these wrote ruefully, 'Legros was not a stimulating teacher for the ordinary, undistinguished student.' His exacting standards, his blunt manner and his habit of seizing his chalk and drawing his corrections all over the students' carefully prepared work was guaranteed to offend many susceptibilities. But others, such as Charles Holroyd and William Strang, who both became his assistants for a time, responded well to his tuition, and with many his personality commanded great respect, as did his ability to stimulate their artistic appreciation and to impress on them the seriousness of their calling."

"In 1892 Legros resigned from the Slade . . . his last years at the School were marked by an increasing disillusionment with teaching in general. His visits to his students became less frequent. Archibald Hatrick, who arrived at the School in 1888, recalled 'his somewhat rare rounds of the classes,' and Alfred Thornton, also at the School towards the end of the decade, remembered that Legros was by now 'a little weary of teaching.' His eventual departure was precipitated by a number of complaints, including that of an angry father who claimed that his daughter 'appears to me to get hardly any teaching at all.'"

– from an article by Philip Atwood in the British Numismatics Journal (1986)

Alphonse Legros
Study of the Belvedere Torso
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alphonse Legros
Study of the Belvedere Torso
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alphonse Legros
Study from the Antique
before 1911
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Alphonse Legros
Study of the Head of a Horse from the Parthenon
(Elgin Marbles, British Museum)
1898
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Alphonse Legros
Head of a Man
before 1911
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Alphonse Legros
Study of a Model
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alphonse Legros
Study of a Model
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alphonse Legros
Study of a Model
before 1892
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

David Wilkie Wynfield
Portrait of Alphonse Legros
ca. 1865-70
albumen print
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651) - Earlier Work

Abraham Bloemaert
Venus appeals to Cupid to induce Pluto to fall in love with Proserpina
ca. 1591-94
drawing
National Galleries of Scotland

Abraham Bloemaert
Apollo and Diana slaying the Children of Niobe
1591
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Abraham Bloemaert
Mercury, Argus, and Io
ca. 1592
oil on canvas
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

Abraham Bloemaert
Miracle of the Loaves
1593
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
National Galleries of Scotland

Abraham Bloemaert
Baptism of Christ
1595
oil on canvas
National Trust, Ham House, Surrey

"Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651) – Dutch figure and landscape painter and engraver, the son of sculptor and architect Cornelis Bloemaert the Elder (ca. 1540-1593).  Abraham Bloemaert spent most of his life in Utrecht, where for many years he was the leading painter and an outstanding teacher.  Both Gerrit van Honthorst and Hendrick ter Brugghen – and virtually all the Utrecht painters of the period who attained any kind of distinction – trained with him.   Bloemaert was a good learner, as well as a good teacher, and rapidly assimilated the new ideas his pupils brought back from Italy.  Early in his career he was one of the leading Dutch exponents of Mannerism [selections in this current post].  In the 1620s he had a Caravaggesque phase; and in his later years adopted some aspects of the classicism of the Carracci [selections in the following post].  Many of Bloemaert's drawings were etched and published by his son Frederick (ca. 1616-1690) in an instructional book for the use of art students (it first appeared ca. 1650 and continued to be reprinted into the 19th century).  Abraham Bloemaert had three other painter sons, who were likewise his pupils: Hendrick (ca. 1601-1672), Cornelis the Younger (ca. 1603-1684), and Adriaen (ca. 1609-1666)." 

– excerpted from The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists 

Abraham Bloemaert
Joseph and his Brothers
ca. 1595-1600
oil on canvas
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

Abraham Bloemaert
Marriage of Cupid and Psyche
ca. 1595
oil on panel
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Abraham Bloemaert
Moses striking the Rock
1596
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Abraham Bloemaert
Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1600-1605
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Abraham Bloemaert
The Prodigal Son
1615
oil on canvas
Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum

Abraham Bloemaert
Landscape with the Prophet Elijah in the Desert
ca. 1610-20
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Abraham Bloemaert
Study of Tree
1590s
drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Abraham Bloemaert
St Roch
ca. 1600-1610
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Abraham Bloemaert
The Four Evangelists writing the Gospels around a Table
ca. 1612-15
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Abraham Bloemaert
The Four Evangelists writing the Gospels around a Table
ca. 1612-15
oil on canvas
Princeton University Art Museum