The Artist, the Studio & the Model: 19th Century to Lucian Freud. 1

Defining the English Model.

“The English models form a class entirely by themselves. They are not so picturesque as the Italian, nor so clever as the French, and they have absolutely no tradition, so to speak, of their order.” Oscar Wilde, “London Models.”¹

Had Oscar Wilde been alive to comment on English models in the early nineteenth-century instead of the modern age, he would have found it difficult as the type didn’t really exist, at least in France.² As we saw previously, in addition to pose- nude, semi-nude, draped, hands and feet etc, models were classified by type, or more accurately stereotype- Italian, Jewish, “Parisienne”- but English models were mainly conspicuous by their absence until later in the century; the most memorable of these was the fictional tragic heroine, “Trilby,”created by George Du Maurier whose book of the same name became a sensational bestseller much to his unwelcome surprise- see below. If there was such a thing as an “English” model in the mid- nineteenth-century, it would probably be the women- both real and mythical- found in the Pre-Raphaelite art of Burne-Jones, Millais and others of that ilk. Yet long before them, in the eighteenth-century, in 1720, the St Martin’s Lane Academy had encouraged studying from the nude model, both male and female, as an interesting painting by Zoffany shows. Recalling his times there, William Hogarth noted “the addition of a woman figure” designed to make the Academy “more inviting to subscribers.”³ In 1768 the Royal Academy of Arts dislodged St Martin’s Lane “as the capital’s centre for the study of the living model” and codified the practice by introducing a set of rules. The academic year was divided up into two terms “The Winter Academy of Living Models” (29^th Sep-9th April) and the “Summer Academy of Living Models” (26^th May- 31^st August).⁴ This rule would remain unchanged until 1862 when models would be required to sit through six consecutive evenings. A drawing of 1864 (above) by Charles West Cope (1811-1890) showing another academician drawing a posed female nude model is instructive: the model’s pose would have been retained for two hours, with a break after one hour- these would be timed by the R.A.’s hourglass- and Cope’s drawing would have been done in the evening between 6 and 8 on the R.A.’s winter schedule.⁵

1Oscar Wilde, “London Models.”

2Wilde is mainly talking about the female model, but he does comment on the male model towards the end of the essay; he sees the English male model as a vanishing breed.

3Hogarth, quoted in Martin Postle, in “Naked Civil Servants: the professional life model in British Art and Society” in Model and supermodel Jane Desmarais, Martin Postle and William Vaughan (eds) (Manchester University Press, 2006), 11.

4Ibid, 10-11. There were two hour modelling sessions from 4.00 p.m. to 6.00 p.m. The life class was open every day, except Sunday and models sat for three evenings in a row.

5Martin Postle and William Vaughan, The Artist’s Model: From Etty to Spencer (Merrell Holberton, London, 1999), 28.