Art History Today

The Artist, the Studio & the Model: The Carracci to Courbet. Slides

Slides

1. Netherlandish Manuscript illustrator, Cicero's works, 15th century manuscript, University Library, Ghent.

2. Jacob Hoefnagel, Apelles Painting Campaspe in the Presence of Alexander, 1611, watercolour on paper, 220×160 mm, Private collection.

3. Albrecht Dürer, Draughtsman drawing a nude with perspective device, 1538, etching, British Museum, London.

4. Attributed to Annibale Carracci, Portrait of an Artist at Work, probably Ludovico Cardi, National Museum, Stockholm, no date, red chalk, 21×16.5 mm.

5. Annibale Carracci, Half-length nude seen from behind, c. 1583-4, Accademia, Venice, red chalk heightened with white chalk on ivory paper.

6. Odardo Fialetti, The Artist’s Studio, from Il vero modo et ordine per disegnar tutte le parti et membra del corpo humano, 1608, etching.

7. Carracci Academy, Standing Male Nude, Princeton University, red chalk and brown ink, probably 1580s, 18.4×8.3 mm.

8. Rembrandt School (copy), Rembrandt (?) with pupils drawing from the nude, pen and wash in brown ink over black chalk with white body colour, Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum.

9. Michael Sweerts, The Drawing Class, 1656-58, oil on canvas, 76.5×110 cm, Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem.

10. Rembrandt van Rhyn, Diana at her Bath, 1630-31, black chalk and brush with light brown wash, 18.1×16.4 cm, British Museum, London.

11. Rembrandt van Rhyn, Nude Woman with a Snake, (as Cleopatra or Eve?), 1637, red chalk and white chalk heightening, 24.7×13.7 cm, Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

12. Follower of Rembrandt, Study of a Male Nude from the live model, probably 1640s, pen and wash in brown ink with white body colour, British Museum, London.

13. Rembrandt van Rhyn, A Nude Man Seated, Another Standing, with a Woman And Baby in the Background, c. 1646, etching and drypoint (second stage of three), Amsterdam, The Rijksmuseum.

14. G. B. Tiepolo, Apelles paints Campaspe, 1725-26, oil on canvas, 54×74 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal.

15. Nicolas Vleughels, Apelles Painting Campaspe, 1716, oil on canvas, 126×97 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

16. Nicolas Vleughels, Study for the Head of Campaspe, 1716, Pastel over black chalk and red chalk lines on beige/chamois paper, 262×158 mm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

17. Antoine Watteau, Study of a Woman's Head, 1710s, black, white and red chalk on light brown paper, 330×230 mm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

18. Nicolas Vleughels, Study for the Legs of Campaspe, 1716, Pastel over black chalk and red chalk lines on beige/chamois paper, 194×295 mm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

19. J H Fragonard, The New Model, 1770, oil on canvas, 52×62 cm, Musée Jacquemart- Andre, Paris.

20. Pierre-Antoine Badouin, The Modest Model, 1769, oil on canvas, 40.6×35.7 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

21. After Craut, Medallion of Charles Alix Dubosc, model, 1880, 66×56 cm, bronze, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris.

22. Victor Casimir Zier, Figure Study of Charles Dubosc, 1846, 81×65 cm, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris.

23. J.A.D. Ingres, Study of a Male Nude, 1801, oil on canvas, 100×80 cm, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris

24. Théodore Gericault, Head of an Old Man (the model Cadamour), no date, oil on canvas, 46.5×37.3 cm, Musée des Beaux- Arts, Besançon.

25. Paul Delaroche, Artists of All Ages, detail, 1841, oil on canvas, 390 cm, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris.

26. Leon Benouville, Christ in the Praetorium, 1845, oil on canvas, 146×113 cm, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris.

27. Théodore Chassériau, Sketch with a black man (Joseph the model), 1838, oil on canvas, 55×73.5 cm, Musée Ingres, Montauban.

28. Théodore Gericault, Raft of the Medusa, 1818-19, oil on canvas, 491×716 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

29. Leon Benouville, Nicolas Poussin on the Banks of the Tiber, 1856, Watercolour and paint on paper, 227×395 mm, Historisch Museum, Amsterdam.

30. Hortense Haudebourt- Lescot, Italian Women, oil on canvas, 47×38 cm, Private collection.

31. Ernest Hébert, The Women of Cervara, 1858, oil on canvas, 288×176 cm, Musée Ernest Hébert, Paris.

32. Camille Corot, Corot’s Studio: Woman Seated before an Easel, 1865-70, oil on canvas, 63×42 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

33. J. A. D. Ingres, Raphael and La Fornarina, 1813-40, oil on canvas, Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, Ohio.

34. J.A.D. Ingres, Achilles Receiving the Ambassadors of Agamemnon, 1801, oil on canvas, 113×146 cm, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris.

35. François-André Vincent, Zeuxis Choosing his Models for the Image of Helen from among the Girls of Croton, 1789, oil on canvas, 102×137 cm, Private collection.

36. Jean-Henri Cless, David’s Studio, black chalk, Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

37. Jacques Louis David, Apelles painting Campaspe, date not known, oil on panel, measurements no known, Palais de Beaux-Arts, Lille.

38. Charles- Nicolas Cochin, The Prix de Expression, probably 1750s, black and white chalk on grey paper, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

39. Adrienne Marie Louise Grandpierre-Deverzy, The Studio of Abel de Pujol, 1822, oil on canvas, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

40. Adrienne Grandpierre- Deverzy, Interior of the Studio of Abel de Pujol, 1836, oil on canvas, 98×135 cm, Musée des Beaux Arts, Valenciennes.

41. Hortense Haudebourt- Lescot, Nude Model in the Artist's Studio, oil on canvas. 35×27 cm, Private collection.

42. Hortense Haudebourt- Lescot, Self-Portrait, 1825, oil on canvas, 74×60 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

43. Alexis Lemaistre, Under the Bust of Poussin, from Alexis Lemaistre, L’ École des Beaux-Arts, dessinée et racontée par un élève, 1889, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

44. Fame, from Delaroche’s Artists of the Ages, (model Joséphine Marix/ Bloch) École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris.

45. Ary Scheffer, Mignon pines for her Fatherland, (model Joséphine Marix/ Bloch), 1836, 171 cm × 87 cm, Museum aan de Haven, Dordrecht.

46. Leon Benouville, Esther, 1844, oil on canvas, 122×162 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Pau.

47. Henri Regnault, Salome (model “Chamma” or Aïcha), 1870, oil on canvas, 160×102.9 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

48. Hotel Pimodan, previously Hotel Lauzun, Paris.

49. Étienne Carjat, Photograph of Charles Baudelaire, 1863.

50. Jean Baptiste Auguste Clésinger, Woman bitten by a Serpent (model Apollonie Sabatier), 1847, marble, 56.5×180×70 cm, Musée d’ Orsay, Paris.

51. Jean Baptiste Auguste Clésinger, Bust of Apollonie Sabatier, 1847, marble, Musée d’ Orsay.

52. Thomas Couture, Romans of the Decadence, 1847, oil on canvas, 466×773 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

53. Gustave Courbet, The Artist’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Artistic Life, 1854-55, oil on canvas, 361×598 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

54. Julien Vallou de Villeneuve, Study after Nature, model, Henriette Bonnion? Photograph, 1906.

55. Gustave Courbet, The Bathers, 1853, oil on canvas, 193×227 cm, Musée d’ Orsay, Paris.

The Artist, the Studio & the Model: The Carracci to Courbet. 7

Two Models in the 19^th Century Studio & Art World

“I recognised, in the woman with a snake, that Maryx with her pretty postures. Jeanne, that wretched Jeanne who tortured him [Baudelaire] in all sorts of ways.” Madame Baudelaire.¹

To end we follow the trajectory of two women who modelled for artists, one of whose name and career has only recently been brought to light by feminist art and literary historians. The fortunes of these two models- Joséphine Marix (1822-1891) and Apollonie Sabatier (1822-1890)- are woven into the public and private spaces of Paris, its painting and literary culture, as well as the social history of the country where the modern model was born. Born in 1822 in Paris to Marix and Gertrude Bloch, Joséphine Bloch’s family situation is not known; but she became famous in her time modelling for painters like Ary Scheffer and Paul Delaroche; she posed for the figure of “Fame” or “Renown” in Delaroche’s hemicycle (above) in the hall of distribution in the École.² When a very young girl, Marix also posed for Ary Scheffer in 1836 as Mignon in the painting of the same name. By 1845, Marix – as she was simply known- was living in the Hotel Pimodan, 17 Quai d’Anjou with a painter Boissard, visited by the cream of the literary avant-garde such as Gautier, Baudelaire,³ Balzac; also many famous artists paid court to her- Delacroix, Meissonier, amongst others.⁴ In 1847 Marix met a foreign nobleman, Baron Herman d’Ahlefeld; they had a daughter in 1849, married and moved to Denmark where they had four more children. She returned to Paris where she died in 1891. In the above quote Baudelaire’s mother seems to have conflated several models, Marix and Jeanne Duvall- mulatto mistress of the poet- but it is known that the woman who modelled for Clésinger’s infamous Woman Bitten by a Serpent of 1847 was Apollonie Sabatier who was one of three models in Baudelaire’s complicated life.⁵ According to the writer Gautier, he met Baudelaire while living in the Hotel Pimodan “in the middle” of 1849. During this encounter two models reclined on sofas: “Maryx” and an unnamed one who was obviously Mme Sabatier who Gautier connects with the scandalous writhing woman at the Salon of 1847.⁶ Also born in 1822, Aglaé- Joséphine Savatier (adopting Sabatier at the start of her Parisian career) became the mistress of Meissonier and Richard Jackson (later Wallace of Wallace Collection fame) before becoming the lover of the sculptor Clésinger who eventually left her for Solanges, the daughter of the novelist Georges Sand. Clésinger is supposed to have cast Sabatier in plaster for the controversial sculpture. She probably met Baudelaire at the Hotel Pimodan in 1843, though some say as late as 1851, when she became the mistress of Alfred Mosselman of the Pimodan group who actually paid for Clésinger’s sculpture.⁷ The couple have been identified in one of the most famous paintings of the century which features another model- Courbet’s The Painter’s Studio of 1854-55 where they stand in front of Baudelaire who sits and reads a book.⁸ The model at the centre of Courbet’s painting is Henriette Bonnion who also posed for the artist’s controversial painting The Bathers which was a deliberate affront to the École. Much admired by anti-academic painters like Delacroix and Manet, Courbet’s use of such an unidealised model and painted copy served notice that the days of the classical academic model were drawing to a close.⁹ Indeed, the nude in the Bathers may have been based on a study after nature by the photographer Julien Vallou de Villeneuve, though Courbet’s studio was ransacked and all his photos destroyed, so it is difficult to identify the source. Sources notwithstanding, in the words of one scholar Aaron Scharf, Bonnion’s rotund figure “marks Courbet’s replacement of antique idealisation with the realism of contemporary photography.”¹⁰

1Quoted in Lathers, Bodies of Art, 109 where she notes Mme Baudelaire may have confused the names of these women due to the confusing nature of accounts of models available to her.

2Waller, Invention of the Model, 87.

3Baudelaire moved to a building next door to the Hotel Pimodan -previously Hotel Lauzun- in 1850, though he probably met Marix who was brought down from her attic, thus scandalising the respectable guests of Baron Pimodan in 1844, Claude Pichois & Jean Ziegler, Baudelaire, trans Graham Robb (Verso, 1989, original 1987), 120.

4On models at the Hotel Pimodan, Lathers, Bodies of Art, 109-141.

5The other two were Jeanne Duvall and Marie Daubrun, Pichois & Ziegler, Baudelaire, 198-217. Jeanne is the most famous Baudelairean woman and was painted by Manet; Marie was an actress that the poet met around 1854.

6Lathers, Bodies of Art, 117: “The “x” of her name marks the Jewish Marix as an unusual “exotic” or “Oriental” model- it is a singular name for a singular character.”

7Lathers, Bodies of Art, 125; Pichois & Ziegler, Baudelaire, 207, 1845-1847.

8The canvas originally contained a likeness of Jeanne Duvall, but it was painted out at the poet's request.

9In addition to Henriette Bonnion, it is thought that Courbet’s sister modelled the young woman of the embracing couple, Waller, Invention of the Model, 75.

10Ibid, 74.

The Artist, the Studio & the Model: The Carracci to Courbet. 6

The Invention of the Female Model & the Private Atelier in the 19^th Century.

From the days of the French Academy of Painting in the 17^th century well into the age of the École des Beaux-Arts in the 19^th century modelling was mainly restricted to males with women modelling only for the head from 1759.¹ From the eighteenth-century the French Academy had banned female models outright from their studios, and up until 1830, the male model was considered the beau idéal.² However, it was a different story in the private ateliers or studios. Records have uncovered that female models were used in David’s workshop, though the number was few compared to men. Other sources such as Delacroix’s Journals prove that women were used as models in the Romantic master’s studio.³ But it is in the age of the big private studios run by artists of the stature of Géröme and Couture that we find more women posing for painters, either to the artist only, or to a life class. Though we can learn about the female model from studio records, memoirs, letters, and even literary sources like novels and poems, the best source are paintings of the model posing in the private studio.⁴ Studying these images, one notes the growing professionalisation of the modelling business which “heralded a change in the gender of its major professionals.”⁵ To give one example, Adrienne Grandpierre- Deverzy’s view of a model posing in her husband’s Abel de Pujol’s studio shows us the maestro- a student of David- concentrating on his work whilst payi(above) payng little attention to the model who is posed on the platform in the centre of the studio whilst an assistant turns away and warms himself at the studio’s stove.⁶ Especially noticeable is the closed door and empty sofa which reduces the idea of voyeurism as in some of the earlier scenes of models where visitors to the studio are present.⁷ This is a scene of professionalism where the erotic is downplayed probably because to show the model provocatively would have infringed certain gender boundaries. The life class would have been a different affair with a group of students drawing or painting an undressed female model; sometimes the woman might just model parts of her body like the head, hands or arms. Sometimes the model would be subjected to a “hazing” ceremony which she would either endure with good humour or flee in tears from the studio forcing the master to intervene.

1Goldstein, Teaching Art, 163. It was only from 1863 that the female model was introduced into the École, but the female model beat women art students who could not enter until 1897.

2Lathers, Bodies of Art, 4.

3For example, 9^th June, 1824: “Laure brought with her a splendid Adeline; sixteen years old, tall and well-made, with a charming head. I shall do her portrait and have great hopes of it.”

4Lathers, Bodies of Art, for the instances of artist’s models in French realist literature.

5Ibid, 4.

6Commenting on Adrienne’s academy piece, a view of women being taught by Pujol in his studio, Germaine Greer said it suggested that early ateliers for women students “seem to have been more comfortable.” The master came once a week and would criticise more than 150 works in two hours! Greer, The Obstacle Race: The Fortune of Women Painters and Their Work (Picador, 1979), 44.

7Waller distinguishes between private teaching ateliers “spaces where artists learned to adopt the aesthetic gaze and models learned unmodesty” and private ateliers “where artist and model worked in intimate seclusion” where the “erotic potential” was greater, Invention of the Model, 47. An example of the first would be Géröme’s studio; the second could be represented by the fictional studio of Claude Lantier in Zola’s novel L’Oeuvre.

The Artist, the Studio & the Model: The Carracci to Courbet. 5

The Decline of Le Beau Idéal & the Male Nude in the 19^th century/Emergence of the Italian Model.

“The male nude fades out in the nineteenth century. The male body is determinedly and nervously covered up; and as the male goes out of focus, the female nude becomes the central symbol of art. For the first time, nude is automatically taken to mean a woman,” Margaret Walters.¹

The cause of the “disappearing male” to use Walters’s phrase meant that the notion of the beau idéal faded too because of that ideal of art was thought to be present in the male body, at least until 1830. Why this “crisis in representation”?² Whatever the precise reasons for the disappearing male, the signs were that it was undergoing a period of transition marked by changes in style and new attitudes towards the practice of posing. Analysing a number of paintings by Paul Delaroche and Leon Benouville, Waller has shown these works register the decline of the beau idéal due to greater interest in physiognomy, which heralded a greater degree of realism in both portraits and narrative pictures.³ Delaroche’s hemistyle which shows a huge amount of painters on either side of Apelles and four allegorical female nudes representing the Greek, Roman, Gothic and Renaissance, mixes beau idéal and the emergent realistic attitude towards the body. Apelles whose body conforms to the beau idéal, is flanked by two male nudes whose bodies do not; their sagging flesh is the complete opposite of the virile nudes found in, for example, Ingres’s earlier 1801 Prix de Rome winner the Ambassadors of Agamemnon which are based on somatic types as well the styles of Greek sculpture, the epitome of the beau idéal ⁴But when we compare Ingres’s classical epic with Benouville’s Christ in the Praetorium, there are even greater disparities since most of the models in the religious painting came from different races which not only alludes to the influx of different peoples in Paris, but also a broader view towards the choice of model in studio practice.⁵ Here we have an Andalusian, a Neapolitan, as well as a black man.⁶ The inclusion of mixed race models seems to chime with Benouville’s realistic ambitions which are also seen in a curious painting (above) showing the classical 17^th century painter Nicolas Poussin drawing some Italian women from real life on one of his walks along the river Tiber; but it need hardly be said that Poussin’s models were the antique, the classical sculptures that surrounded him in Rome, not flesh and blood models!⁷ Benouville won the Prix de Rome in 1845, but this work was painted after his return to Paris which begs the question: were these Roman women based on sketches of models in Rome during Benouville’s tenure there; or are they models garnered from the group of Italian immigrants who came to France in the 1850s?⁸

1Margaret Walters, The Nude Male: A New Perspective, (Paddington Press, 1978), 228.

2The phrase is Abigail Solomon-Godeau’s. In her Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation (Thames and Hudson, 1997, 43f) Solomon- Godeau computes the ratio of male nudes to female ones in the French Salon over a forty year period from 1781 to 1831, the time of the July Monarchy.

3Waller, Invention of the Model, 14f.

4Solomon-Godeau’s, Male Trouble, 62.

5Waller, Invention of the Model, 13f.

6In this connection, it should be noted that there was a famous black model, Joseph from Haiti, who figures in a drawing by one of Ingres’s students Chassériau, a drawing that contains an instruction from the master to the pupil: it stressed Ingres wanted “a portrait of the model identical in the rendering of form and colour.” Ibid, 15. And Lather’s entry in Dictionary of Artist’s Models, 15f.

7The idea is that Poussin found his motif for his Saving of Moses in a scene from everyday life, which given his classical predilections, seems highly unlikely.

8On Italian models and French artists, Waller, Invention of the Model, 89f. And Lathers, Bodies of Art, 34, who notes that a distinction was made between Italian models in Rome and Italian models in Paris.

The Artist, the Studio & the Model: The Carracci to Courbet. 4

Notes on the Model in the 17^th & 18^th Centuries in France.

“Several models of different ages and characters are necessary...otherwise even work after nature may become mannered. I would suggest that that practice of always relying on the same model and working from the same forms can become a routine” Charles-Nicolas Cochin, 1777.¹

It is generally thought that the model used in academies was mainly female, but in fact this was not the case, despite all the many depictions of Apelles painting Campaspe and Zeuxis choosing his models as in Vincent’s 1789 version of the subject. Until the 1830s in France it was primarily the male model that was drawn. Cochin’s remark above underlines the artist’s need to be selective which included being judicious about the model that should be used. Entrenched throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries was the idea that “humankind’s greatest and noblest characteristics were embodied in the idealised nude male.”² In the Académie Royale de Peinture de Sculpture- established in 1648- a student would initially encounter the live model by study from “the flat,” i.e. prints or drawings after respected masters. Then he would progress to drawing from casts of antique sculpture, and only after the student had fully familiarized himself with the proportions of the antique would he be allowed to draw from the live model.³ As several scholars have noted, tension built up between having to conform to the ideal of the male nude and the reality of the live model; this would force through changes in studio practice in the following century. By studying académies- “a study of a single nude figure isolated against a plain ground” (Waller) it is possible to track these changes in the use of the model. For example, we note a change from an idealised, classical head to a real physiognomy as in the case of the model Charles Alix Dubosc (1797-1877) (above) who became one of the most successful models of his time, amassing a fortune in the process which he left to found a fund to help artists to pay for models.⁴ Dubosc had a great rival, the Italian Cadamour who was discovered performing at a fair in Dijon. Persuaded to come to Paris, he quickly established a lifelong career as a male model working for important artists like David and Gericault. Leading models like Cadamour and Dubosc took pride in their work which required having a professional knowledge about the muscles in the body. On one reported occasion Dubosc and Cadamour had an anatomical “duel” in which they tried surpass each other in knowledge of the body. Dubosc proved to have superior anatomical knowledge rendering a defeated Cadamour speechless.⁵ In future the Italian vowed that he would only model for the head which can be seen in a fine drawing by Gericault.

1Quoted in Waller, Invention of the Model, ibid, 16.

2Ibid, 4.

3Ibid.

4According to Waller, Dubosc amassed 180,000 francs which he put towards a fund for Prix de Rome competitors to pay for models, Invention of the Model, 35. And Marie Lathers, Bodies of Art: French Literary Realism and the Artist’s Model (University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 35-38.

5Waller, Invention of the Model, 33-34.

The Artist, the Studio & the Model: The Carracci to Courbet. 3

Apelles & Campaspe in the 18^th Century

“in this act of his [Alexander] he won as much honour and glory, as by any victory over his enemies; for now he had conquered himself, and not only made Apelles partner with him, of his love, but also gave his affection clean away.” Pliny the Elder.

There are more painted versions of the story- recounted in Pliny’s Historia Naturalis- of Apelles falling in his love with his model Campaspe than in any other century. Perhaps the most famous is Tiepolo’s version (above) done between 1725-26 where Campaspe is modelled on Cecilia Guardi whom Tiepolo had married secretly in 1719; here, Tiepolo casts himself in the role of Apelles.¹ In his treatment of the subject in 1715 the Franco-French artist Vleughels emphasised the academic over the erotic, though it would be naive to imagine that the two elements could be completely divorced. Apelles and Campaspe was Vleughels exhibition piece; though studies of the model’s legs and heads show the influence of his contemporary and friend Antoine Watteau, a most unacademic painter. In this period, Campaspe is usually shown semi-nude as in Falconet’s standing statue of 1765 which is heavily idealised and based on the antique. The story of Campaspe who was the mistress of Alexander the Great who gave her to Apelles when he saw the painter was in love with the model had great erotic potential. This was because it showed a visitor in the studio- Alexander- looking at a female nude, a position that the male viewer could imagine themselves occupying. Perhaps the most erotically charged of painters and their models in the age of the rococo is Fragonard’s The New Model where a young girl is being undressed by a chaperon while studied by the painter.² Susan S. Waller has called this type the “immodest model” which can be contrasted with a “modest” type by Fragonard’s contemporary Badouin who painted a scene of a painter throwing up his hands in horror as a model is covered by an older woman, probably the girl’s mother.³ Badouin’s painting, The Modest Model, is thought to have been based on a “thought painting” in which the critic Denis Diderot said that the artist Greuze asked him for a subject to paint; and though Greuze never did the work, Badouin exhibited a painting that resembled Diderot’s imaginary painting.⁴ Both Fragonard’s and Badouin’s paintings show three figures (artist, model and chaperone) but sometimes the last type would be omitted as in Gabriel de Saint-Aubin’s The Private Academy where nude women were allowed to pose unlike the French Academy. The other triadic combination was Apelles, Campaspe and Alexander, though only two eighteenth-century showed Alexander in attendance, Tiepolo and the neo-classical artist Jacques Louis David. Though the male nude – as embodied in David’s Alexander here- was the pinnacle of the art for the neo-classical school, the records show that David did eventually permit a few female models in his studio.⁵

1Dictionary of Artist’s Models, entry on Campaspe, 100f.

2Mary D. Sheriff, Fragonard: Art and Eroticism, (University of Chicago Press, 1990), 185-186.

3Susan S. Waller, The Invention of the Model, 1830-1870, (Ashgate 2006), 39f.

4Sheriff, Fragonard, 189.

5Waller, Invention of the Model, 17.

The Artist, the Studio & the Model: The Carracci to Courbet. 2

Rembrandt & the Model.

“What was in his mind when he felt impelled to set down these painful visions of human nakedness?” Kenneth Clark.¹

The Carracci Academy used male models- the feminine form was drawn after classical sculpture- but attitudes were less restrictive in northern Europe, especially in the Netherlands. In drawings by Rembrandt and his workshop we see live female models, though most of their identities are lost to us.² In Amsterdam around the middle of the century it was possible to work het collegie van schilders (an assemby of painters) one of whom used his customary model Maria le Mot for a “Penitent Magdalene.”³ It is not known if Rembrandt participated in these sessions, though drawings in his oeuvre clearly indicate that he did use female models. For example a studio drawing in Darmstadt shows Rembrandt instructing his students on how to draw a reclining female model. The artist was no stranger to female flesh, but he had his own ideas about how women should be drawn.⁴ His nudes are not slim, super-model style, but quite the opposite which led Kenneth Clark to comment on their obesity. Another pen drawing from Chicago shows a seated model which is also related to a drawing in the Rijksmuseum showing a reclining nude; this nude made have found its way into the lascivious “Jupiter and Antiope” (Fitzwilliam).⁵ We can add to that the beautiful red chalk drawing of a standing woman- usually called Cleopatra- in the Getty Museum (above).⁶ Though it is erotic in the tradition of his predecessors like Rubens and Titian, this nude is not idealised which is typical of Rembrandt’s approach to painting the nude generally. Rembrandt's earliest known study of a female nude (British Museum, c. 1630-1) is in black chalk, a preparatory study for a painting of Diana.⁷ This isn’t likely to be Saskia as it would have been extremely perverse for the daughter of a burgomaster to pose nude for a painter. Moreover public nudity-which would have included posing without any clothes before an artist- would received the severest reprimand from such a sober and puritanical culture.⁸ In addition to female models Rembrandt drew live male figures, though not so many are known. The most significant is an etching in the Rijksmuseum which shows two men- or possibly the same man- sitting and standing- while in the background is a woman using a walking frame to help a baby walk. It has been suggested that the combination of nudes and the walker is an observation on how practice leads to better drawing.⁹

1Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art (Penguin, 1956), 325.

2Volker Manuth, “’As stark naked as one could possibly be painted...’: the reputation of the nude female model in the age of Rembrandt” in Rembrandt’s Women, (National Gallery of Scotland, 2001), 47-53, 47.

3Ibid.

4There are a number of other drawings and prints which show an artist drawing the model, e.g, Rembrandt’s Women no. 75, a drypoint etching.

5Rembrandt’s Women, nos 132, 134, 135.

6Rembrandt’s only surviving drawing of a female nude in red chalk: Rembrandt’s Women, no. 71; the first drawing acquired by the Getty Museum: George R. Goldner, European Drawings, J P Getty Museum, 1988), no. 114.

7Rembrandt’s Women, no 10.

8Manuth, “’As stark naked as one could possibly be painted, 48.

9Rembrandt’s Women, no. 107.

The Artist, the Studio & the Model: The Carracci to Courbet. 1

The Carracci Academy & the Male Model.

“They [the Carracci] founded schools; indeed, it is true to say that schools as we know them today began with the Carracci- those schools I mean, in which a careful study of the living model came first and almost entirely replaced the unremitting study of every branch of art, of which the study of the model is only part.” Eugene Delacroix.¹

Founded in Bologna around 1582 by three members of the Carracci family, Ludovico and his cousins Annibale and Agostino, and usually called the Accademia degli Incamminati, or simply the Accademia d’ Carracci, this private organisation made the drawing of the male nude central to their practice.² Completely undogmatic unlike other studios such as Guido Reni’s, they believed in the analytical teaching of art within a training program. The Carracci drew from antique sculpture as well as after works by Renaissance masters. Anatomy was extremely important although they had a problematic relationship with doctors and surgeons; Agostino warned against painters poking around in the body like doctors. Despite this, drawing from the live model, the ‘academy’, was the most important aspect of their workshop operation. A student drawing at Princeton gives some idea of how teaching from the live model was conducted in the Carracci school.³ One of the inscriptions reads “Agostino makes a large studio of the leg that poses, or rests.” Another states that “the leg loses the serpentine angle or direction.” This suggests that the student was being corrected by his teachers, a common way of teaching art in the 17th century. Although Delacroix’s critical observation about the Carracci school would imply that they slavishly copied the model in an academic way, their drawings do suggest an equally important inclination towards truth and not simply “academies”- see below- where an almost dogmatic attitude towards drawing the male body would prevail. A good example of Annibale’s matter of fact attitude towards drawing the nude can be seen in a chalk study in Venice capturing the body in movement

1Journal, 22^nd February, 1860.

2The most important book on the Carracci Academy remains Carl Goldstein, Visual Fact over Verbal Fiction: A Study of the Carracci and the Criticism, Theory, and Practice of Art in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Also the references to the Carracci in Goldstein’s Teaching Art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to Albers (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

3Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Joseph F. McCrindle, (Art Museum, Princeton University, 1992), no. 25.

4Various, The Drawings of Annibale Carracci, (National Gallery of Washington, 1999-2000), no. 3.

The Art of the Portrait 3: Late 19th Century to Modern. Slides

Slides

1. Walter Sickert, The Juvenile Lead: A Self-Portrait, c. 1907, oil on canvas, 51×45.8 cm, Southampton Art Gallery.

2. Walter Sickert, Ennui, 1914, oil on canvas, 152.4×112.4 cms, Tate, London.

3. Paul Mathey, Portrait of Edgar Degas, 1882, graphite, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

4. Edgar Degas, The Bellelli Family, 1858-69, oil on canvas, 200×250 cm, Museé d’ Orsay, Paris.

5. Walter Sickert, Mamma mia Poveretta, 1903-4, oil on canvas, 46.1×38.2 cm, Manchester Art Gallery.

6. Walter Sickert, Jacques Blanche, c. 1910, oil on canvas, 61×50.8 cm, Tate, London.

7. Jacques Emil-Blanche, Portrait of Marcel Proust, 1892, oil on canvas, 73.5×60.5 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

8. John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Pauline Astor, 1898, oil on canvas, 98 × 50 cm, Huntington Library, California.

9. William Strang, Bank Holiday,1912, oil on canvas, 152.7×122.6 cm, Tate, London.

10. Mark Gertler, Jewish Family, 1913, oil on canvas, 66×50. 8 cm, Tate, London.

11. Augustus John, An Old Lady, 1898-9, oil on canvas, 68.6×55.8 cm, Tate, London.

12. William Orpen, Augustus John, 1900, oil on canvas, 93×98 cm, NPG, London.

13. Augustus John on the cover of Time Magazine, 1928.

14. Augustus John, Madame Suggia, 1922-23, oil on canvas, 101.6×76.2 cm, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.

15. Gwen John, The Student, 1903, oil on canvas, 56.1×33.1 cm, Manchester Art Gallery.

16. Gwen John, Chloë Boughton-Leigh, 1904-8, oil on canvas, 58.4×38.1 cm, Tate, London.

17. Sir William Orpen, Self-Portrait as Chardin, 1908, oil on canvas, 92.8×72.1 cm, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle.

18. Sir William Orpen, The Mirror, 1900, oil on canvas, 50.8×40.6 cm, Private Collection.

19. Detail.

20. William Orpen, Winston Churchill, 1916, oil on canvas, 148×102.5 cm, Winston S. Churchill.

21. William Orpen, Field-Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, KT, GCB, GCVO, KCIE, Commander-in-Chief, France, 1917, oil on canvas, 74.9×63.5 cm, Imperial War Museum, London.

22. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, begun winter 1905-6, partially re-worked Paris, autumn 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

23. Man attacked by a lion, Iberian sculpture, Osuna, stone, 6th-3rd century B.C., 41 cms high, National Archaeological Museum, Madrid & Stein portrait.

24. Pablo Picasso, Celestine, 1904, oil on canvas, 81×60 cm, Musée Picasso, Paris.

25. Man Ray, Photograph of Stein with her portrait, 1922.

26. Att. to Roger Fry or Vanessa Bell, The Matisse Rooms at the Grafton Galleries, c. 1910, oil on canvas, Museé d’Orsay, Paris.

27. Paul Cézanne, Vieille_au_chapelet, (An Old Woman with a Rosary), 1895, oil on canvas, 80.6×65.5 cm, National Gallery, London.

28. Henri Matisse, Femme au Yeux Verts (The Girl with Green Eyes), 1908-9, oil on canvas, 66×51 cm, San Francisco Museum of Art.

29. Sir Frank Dicksee, The Lady Inverclyde, exh R.A., 1910, whereabouts unknown.

30. Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Clovis Sagot, 1909, oil on canvas, 82×66 cm, Kuntshalle, Hamburg.

31. Oskar Kokoschka, Elisabeth Reitler, 1910, oil on canvas, 65×54 cm, Von der Heydt-Museum Wuppertal.

32. Oskar Kokoschka, 'Self Portrait', 1917, oil on canvas, 79×62 cm, Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.

33. Gustave Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907, 1.38 m x 1.38 m, Neue Galerie New York.

34. Oskar Kokoschka, Portrait of Adolph Loos, 1909, oil on canvas, 74×91 cm, Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany.

35. Oskar Kokoschka, Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat, 1909, oil on canvas, 76.5×136.2 cm, MOMA, New York,

36. Paul Gauguin, Tahitian Woman and Boy, 1899, oil on canvas, 94.6×61.9 cm, Norton Simon Art Foundation, California.

37. Paula- Modersohn- Becker, Self-Portrait with an Amber Necklace,1906, oil on canvas, 61×50.2 cm, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland.

38. Max Pechstein, On the Beach at Nidden, 1911, oil on canvas, 50 × 65 cm, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

39. Percy Wyndham Lewis, Praxitella, c. 1922, oil on canvas, 142. 101.6 cm, Leeds Art Gallery.

40. Percy Wyndham-Lewis, Portrait of Edith Sitwell, 1923-35, oil on canvas, Tate, London.

41. Salvator Dali, Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, 1940, 47 cm × 66 cm, Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida.

42. Francis Bacon, Three Studies For Figures At The Base Of A Crucifixion" (1944), oil on canvas, Support, each: 940×737 mm [2891×1227], frame, each: 1162×960×80 mm.

43. Francis Bacon, Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne, 1966, oil on canvas, Support: 813×686 mmTate, London; frame: 943×793×59 mm.

44. Francis Bacon, Triptych of Isabel Rawsthorne, 1966, oil on canvas, each: 35.5 by 30.5cm.; 14 by 12in, Art Market, London.

45. Patrick Heron, Portrait of T. S. Eliot, 1949, oil on canvas, 30 in. x 24 3/4 inches, NPG, London.

46. Patrick Heron, Yellow Painting: October 1958 May/June 1959, oil on canvas, Support: 1524×2138×30 mmTate, London.

47. Patrick Heron, Portrait of Dame A.S. Byatt: Red, Yellow, Green and Blue, , 1997, oil on canvas,38 1/8 in. x 47 7/8 inches, NPG, London.

48. Patrick Heron, Very Soft Yellows and Formal Reds, April 1968, oil on canvas, measurements not known, Mercer Art Gallery

49. Patrick Heron, Dame A.S. Byatt, 1995, charcoal drawing, 19 3/4 in. x 13 3/4 inches, NPG, London.

50. Photo of A.S. Byatt with her portrait.

51. Tom Philips, Dame Iris Murdoch, oil on canvas, 80×55 cm, 1984-86, National Portrait Gallery

52. Titian, The Flaying of Marsyas, 1570-76, oil on canvas, 212×207 cm, National Museum, Kroměříž.

53. Tom Philips, Dame Iris Murdoch – Air conté on paper, 138.4×101.6 cm, 1986, Private Collection.

54. Tom Philips, Portrait of Michael Kustow, 1987, oil on canvas, 110.6×75 cm, Private Collection.

The Art of the Portrait 3: Late 19th Century to Modern. 9

Two Literary Portrait Painters: Patrick Heron & Tom Philips

We end with two artists, Patrick Heron and Tom Philips. This also brings us back to the link between portrait painting and literature as they both painted two well-known modern novelists, A.S. Byatt and Iris Murdoch (above). As a member of the St Ives Group Heron was at the forefront of abstraction even claiming that he’s invented abstract expressionism before the American crowd. Though Heron was mainly known for his open air “garden paintings” he had painted portraits earlier in his career; in 1949 he painted a “semi-cubist” portrait of T.S. Eliot which inspired Byatt to chose Heron as her portraitist; she also wanted an abstract artist as she said she did not like to look at images of herself; and rather than a likeness she wanted “the presence of the idea of me.”¹ The result- after three visits to St Ives- is a cross between Heron’s spatial experiments in colour and the human form which certainly has the semblance of the novelist rather than an exact likeness. Sadly, Heron died just after the portrait was completed. The second artist Tom Philips painted Dame Iris Murdoch in his studio in Peckham; the portrait took many sittings and was not finished for three years. The portrait shows the writer against Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas which seemed to have gained greater prominence as the commission progressed. The writer and artist had talked about Titian’s Marsyas at the Venice Exhibition held at the R.A. in 1984 According to Philips he was “more at home” with Murdoch’s books on philosophy rather than her novels because, as a Plato don, Murdoch could teach the artist about such concepts as Plato’s “Realm of Forms” which had implications for his own activity as an artist; though at the same time in her novels Murdoch uses painting to explore certain themes like love and ambition, even using the Marsyas theme.² The portrait generally was well-received by the critics, though one dissenting individual was unreserved in his horror at the R.A. accepting the portrait.³

1On the NPG’s website: “'I think there were two reasons why I wanted an abstract painting. One is that I do not like looking at images of myself, the second reason is because I don't like, to be truthful, most representational portraits I see nowadays. What I wanted was the presence of the idea of me, not of a record of the whole of my face that I don't much like

2For example, The Black Prince (1973) The Good Apprentice (1985) both exploit the .Apollo and Marsyas myth.

3Brian Sewell of course! “...by far the most deplorable new acquisition is Tom Phillips' portrait of Iris Murdoch. It is accompanied by bewildering preparatory material. There is a frankly appalling copy of Titian that would have been better done in chalk by a pavement artist outside the Gallery. There are huge hideous and wilfully distorted drawings of the novelist herself, out of focus, with the complexion of flaking distemper ... an inoffensive study of a Ginkgo leaf ... more plastic than real. And all these are brought together in dreadful disunity in the final portrait where poor jaundice-eyed Miss Murdoch is as flat and grainy as an overblown holiday snap. Could none of the trustees see how bad it is? Did none of them want to reject it?”