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.