The Artist, the Studio & the Model: 19th Century to Lucian Freud. 2

The Male & Female Model in British Nineteenth- Century Academies & Private Studios.

“He was confronted by a fellow statue. A member of the race which has learned to sleep standing up ‘posed’ upon the throne...he was as torpid as the Model was, as indifferent as these mechanical students. The clock struck. With a glance at the Massier, the Model slowly and rhythmically abandoned her rigid attitude, coming to life as living statues do in ballets; she reached for her chemise.” Wyndham Lewis, Tarr.¹

One of the leading painters of the nude in the mid nineteenth- century was William Etty who not only used male models like Stanley Strowger, but also took an interest in selecting female life models for the Academy. Most of the male models came from the ranks of soldiers, boxers and labourers.² Names such as James Dyer- a trooper in the Horse Guards- or John Malin- the porter at the Royal Academy appear in the history of modelling.³ Where women were concerned, things were more problematic: the female nude model was equated by some with prostitutes and apart from a moral crusade against it, it was nearly voted out of the Academy in favour of the male model which was the only type allowed for the Academy’s painting prize. There were other spaces however like the publicly funded art schools such as the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh which opened in 1760 and which produced Scottish artists like Sir David Wilkie. However, William Dyce (1806-1864) who was appointed Master of the Academy in 1837 was lukewarm about drawing from the live model.⁴ Some one who was more enthusiastic was Sir William McTaggart (1835-1910) who painted extensively from the live model as demonstrated by his studies of male and female nudes, though the Scottish Academy did not admit the live model until 1830.⁵ McTaggart’s nudes (above) may have posed in the morning so that they did not have to go home in the dark, or possibly as a way of avoiding unwelcome attention from male students who – unlike French students- could be disciplined if they spoke to a female model on the street.⁶ Yet despite the more relaxed attitudes in French ateliers, the description by the fictional German painter Kreisler above – based on Lewis’s own experiences in Paris- suggests the discipline of the model responding obediently to the massier- the student who posed the model.

1Wyndham Lewis, Tarr, (Oxford, 2010), 100.

2Postle, “Naked Civil Servants,” 11.

3Ibid.

4Stuart MacDonald, The History and Philosophy of Art Education (London, 1970), 82.

5Postle and Vaughan, The Artist’s Model, 28.

6Ibid. On the differences between behaviour in French and English studios, Martin Postle, “From Academy to Art School” in The Artist’s Model, 9-18, 9.