Contents
PART II, COPYING MASTER DRAWINGS
(MODÉLES D’APRÉS LES MAITRES)
Old Master Drawing Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course I
Old Master Drawing Bargue-Gérôme Drawing Course III
Source: Gerald M. Ackerman
Introduction
The drawings in part II were selected both for their aesthetic value- as lessons in good taste—and for their demonstration of specific techniques that can be learned in practice. Even though copying works by other artists might appear contrary to the modem stress on originality, centuries of the practice have proven it to be a good learning experience.
Under the guild system that existed prior to the French Revolution, apprentices regularly copied drawings, studies, and iconographie models, as well as travel notations, from the portfolios of their masters. They thus absorbed the style of their masters while at the same time forming a personal repertoire of useful subjects and poses. The results are apparent in the similarity of style and continuity of iconography passed from, say, Robert Campin to his student Rogier van der Weyden, from Perugino to Raphael, or, for that matter, from Gérôme to Bargue.
For the master in charge of a workshop, the apprentice system had a beneficial result: his students, having absorbed his personal style through copying, could assist on all of his projects without noticeable differences in execution. During their Wanderjahre—a two-year period of wandering between taking their master’s examination and being able to set up an independent studio—young artists sketched compositions and figures from public or easily accessible monuments, as well as from the portfolios of the masters under whom they served temporarily as assistants.
Bargue did not make all his lithographs directly from the original drawings. He made most of his plates from copies drawn by artists who were chosen by Gérôme from among his colleagues and students. The copyists either visited the collections where the drawings were conserved or they worked after photographs. The Holbeins, for example, are mostly kept in Basel and London, so it is unlikely that many of the lithographs were made after the originals. Probably only the lithographs after contemporary French masters were copied from originals; this would have been an easy matter for Gérôme and Bargue to arrange either from among the circle of Gérôme’s artist friends and students or from the artists of Goupil’s coterie of painters.
Consequently, it is difficult to look at the set of plates as an example of nineteenth-century taste without some qualifications. This is a selection with didactic purposes chosen by Academic Realists. Nonacademic and optical Realists (such as the Impressionists) might have made a different selection. It is also strange that one drawing (plate II, 6) attributed to Agnolo Gaddi, a trecento or Gothic master, is included. It has since then been reattributed to a quattrocento master. This drawing was probably chosen like the inclusion of Hippolyte Fiandrin’s neo-gothic drawing of Saint Martha in the first part (plate I, 70)—as a sop to the new fashion for the primitifs, as the Gothic masters were then called. Some critics think that Hans Holbein the Younger—whose work are amply represented in the second part—was popular with the Realists for his “primitive” or “naive” qualities.
More surprising is the fact that the academician Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, one of the greatest of all draftsmen, and an older contemporary of Bargue and Gérôme, is represented by only one figure (plate II, 33) drawn after a highly finished (and famous) oil study for a painting. (The author of the Goupil brochure announcing the Drawing Course described the drawings after painted figures included among the plates of drawings in part II as “interprétations of achieved works.”)
As a draftsman Ingres had developed a wondrously extravagant personal style. He had a fondness for fluid, curvaceous outlines and was cavalier in his disregard of anatomy—traits that could have displeased Gérôme. It is easier to understand the exclusion of Delacroix and Rembrandt, despite the fact that they were both draftsmen greatly beloved and admired in the late nineteenth century. Delacroix would have been left out because his loose, expressive but not always accurate or descriptive line was alien to the academic style. Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro was imitated bv Bargue (see painting no. 33). His inimitable drawing style, however, was too advanced for young artists to imitate and was probably thought to be beyond the Academic Realists’ goal of precision. Rembrandt was nonetheless the favorite painter of Gérôme, who thought the old master’s sincerity compensated for his loose and often “incorrect” drawing. All in all, the sixty-seven plates comprising part II must be considered a didactic collection supporting late nineteenth-century academic principles, with a few plates included under pressure from Goupil, who either wanted to exploit plates already made or to include some that would have a good sales potential in and of themselves.
It is not surprising that Bargue was more at home copying the works of his contemporaries, especially the works of modern masters of his own school: Gérôme; the students of Gérôme; Gérôme’s teachers Charles Gleyre (1808-1874) and Paul Delaroche (1797-1856); and other academics and Academic Realists who worked for Goupil. The authenticity of these works, as well as their sympathy with the principles of the Drawing Course, make them the most edifying of the drawings. A selection of those drawings possessing the highest quality appear as full-page illustrations, with expanded notes to aid those students wishing to copy master drawings.
Realism, Idealism, and Academic Drawing
It is popularly thought that a major trait of Realism is the minute recording of surface detail. This may be true of some artists and some schools (such as those influenced by John Ruskin in England and the United States). Such a practice, however, can often become a compulsive, automatic, and even brainless activity. The description of minute details is not, in fact, a trait of every Realist style. The practice of Academic Realist drawing is selective in its creation of the illusion of reality. The academic draftsman simplifies and even omits surface detail in order to amplify the effects of light and shadow, the illusion of volume, and the character of the subject. Furthermore, many drawings have specific purposes: preparatory drawings, studies, idea sketches, compositional sketches, and so forth. In fact, very few drawings are ends in themselves; they may be intended as preparation for a painting or a sculpture and might contain a notation of light effects, a study of anatomy, of balance, the movement of drapery, or the fleeting expression of a face. In drawing, you will be continually balancing the details of nature against your specific purpose. To put it more abstractly, visual facts in themselves are of interest, but they only have meaning when intelligently organized, criticized, and judged.
Developed details are not, then, a necessary feature of all styles of Realism, just as forms and shapes are not always experienced visually as comprehensible wholes in the natural world. We all know how often a trompe l’oeil effect fools us in our daily lives. The popular works of the French Impressionists are good demonstrations of the optical Realism concurrent with the tactile values of Academic Realism. In optical or impressionistic painting, human figures often have outlines obscured by other objects or shadows. Furthermore, organic unity and structure are hidden by clothes, obfuscated by shade, and distorted by direct sunlight. Optical Realists will often pursue the distortion of forms by light and shadow; seldom will they try to correct them.
Academic Realists will organize these optical distortions within a clarified, logical structure, recognizing them while minimizing their disintegrating effect. A norm of clarity and ot unity is sought. Consequently, a clear outline is required, as is a good balance of light and dark areas to produce volume and three-dimensional shape. Poses are carefully chosen so that all parts of the body are seen and understood. There is an avoidance of distortion and ugliness. First and foremost, there is the presentation of a unit, recognizable as a body, a person, an organic unity without distracting details. These are major features, even principles, of the basic academic style. The drawing style taught in the Drawing Course is a compromise between the intellectual, generalizing qualities of Idealism and the visual accuracy and specificity of Realism. This compromise avoids both the tendency toward oversimplification of line and form common in idealistic practice and the uncertain and distorted forms recorded by optical Realists, as well as the depiction of ugliness accepted by doctrinaire Realists. Academic Realists treat the human body with respect and honor its integrity; they give the human body a sense of dignity and autonomy. Their figures think for themselves, and their motions are the result of self-conscious thought. Academic Realism is essentially a humanistic style, based primarily on an interest in human beings, their actions, their reactions, and their fate.
The drawings in the second part of the Drawing Course were selected as didactic models primarily for their developed sense of unity, simplicity, and effectiveness. There are, of course, other didactic purposes underlying the selections. Like the models of casts, the model drawings were also selected for their variety of techniques and views. Furthermore, Gérôme and Bargue are giving you models of good, selective taste (“le grand goût“), a taste formed by studying specific examples of ancient and High Renaissance art. Good classical taste is basically a matter of combining beautiful features selected from nature with an ideal of human perfection. Underlying this taste is both an ideal of simplification geared toward clear geometrical shapes in planes and outlines and an abhorrence of distortion.
Copying these drawings should give you intimate contact with an absorbed, digested, and projected classical taste, as well as with a variety of personal styles and idiosyncratic ways of seeing. absorbing, organizing, and recording visual information. The academic concerns do not hinder squelch, or make impossible a personal style, as the drawings in this part demonstrate.
Look carefully at the following three portraits: lithographs based on works by Filippino Lippi (1457-1504) (plate II, 12), Gleyre (plate II, 13), and Gérôme (plate II, 14). These drawings demonstrate both the consistency of academic conventions and the variety of expression and personal styles possible within them. Each is clear in outline, simple in procedure, and restrained in details; in all three the illusion of three-dimensional form is achieved with these simple means. Filippino’s young man looks at us with an expression of intense thought, underscored by deep shadow covering one side of his face. Gleyre’s Omphale is clearly meant to be beautiful; her face is round, with delicate, varied changes of value. Gérôme-who was one of Gleyre’s students- was a master of solid, firm form; his bodies are neither mysterious nor delicate but rather forthright present. With little or no unobtrusive detail, his young Arab is presented as solidly present, self-contained, and handsome. The solidity of form is maintained through the clarity of the outline and the incredible simplicity of the shading. The shadows are minimal, consisting of areas slightly darkened by lines. Although there is careful description in the turban, the outline of the face, and the ear, these details are not ends in themselves; the structural unity of the head still dominates the drawing.
After practicing this short exercise in the comparison of drawing styles, we must congratulate Bargue in getting the different character or personal style of each of these drawings into the lithograph. Our awe increases when we look at one more drawing (plate II, 23) entitled A Roman Woman (Femme romaine) after a drawing of Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905). It is a wonder, displaying a marvelous balance between the observation of a realist and the ideals of a classicist. Bouguereau is more concerned with anatomy than some of the other masters. The bony appearance of her nose, the sunken eyes and cheeks, and the thickness of her neck are qualities he describes so accurately that it places the woman in her late forties, at not quite overripe maturity. The outline is elegantly, sensitively drawn by means of a line that continually changes its thickness or emphasis as it gives sensitivity to the nose and lips, strength to the chin, and fullness to the neck. The hair is complex without being detailed. In this drawing Bouguereau is an absolute master of the Academic Realist drawing technique, a mixture of observation, knowledge, and ideals.
Practical Matters
On Choosing a Master Drawing to Copy: The Benefits of Copying
When you choose a model to copy, there is something about the drawing that attracts you. What is it? What entices you? Why do you think it matches your level of ability? Once you choose a drawing as a model, you are going to have a long, intense period of intimacy with a realized, perhaps great, work. You will more or less memorize it in the concentration of copying, as well as learning the techniques or solutions the artist employed. This experience will mean more to you after you have been drawing from nature for a while and consciously or subconsciously recognize some of the problems of drawing from nature.
You might have chosen the drawing for the image, in which case you can copy it in any medium that seems appropriate. Or you may want to copy it for the techniques used, in which case you should use the same materials as the artist did. At first you might be concerned with the shape or outer contours. You might want to copy a drawing for solutions to problems that you have already experienced—for instance, the transitions at the edges of shadows or the overlapping lines of the outline that enter a form to become anatomical features. Gradually you should choose more challenging drawings.
Some passages may not make sense at all until you succeed in copying them exactly and they take shape on your paper. Some distinctions will only become visible as you copy, such as the variety of shades and forms, of light and shadow. The techniques or the solutions may be absorbed without your consciously knowing it through the intensity of the experience of careful copying. That does not mean you should copy slavishly and brainlessly; always keep your mind engaged in the act of transcribing.
What you and the artist are trying to do is produce an illusion, a convincing imitation of nature. These drawings all teach the effectiveness of simplicity and economy—how even a few elements are enough to create the illusion of three-dimensional shape on a flat surface. This is an achievement even in a copy. Finally you will witness a mystery: a series of lines abstracted from nature and recorded carefully suddenly assume shape, depth, and character—with an aura of beauty.
Getting Down to Copying
Putting your drawing board on an easel, with your model and a piece of drawing paper alongside each other is a good way to copy. Attach the papers with white tape you can get at an art-supply house (masking tape will leave a sticky, dirty residue and may be hard to remove). Make sure the easel is upright (check with your plumb line); this will give you a view of the model without perspectival distortions. You can judge the shape and seek out the salient outline points and transfer them to the paper in several ways. You can proceed as you did for your cast drawings, using your held-out plumb line to create vertical reference lines and to estimate distances. As part of this process you are simultaneously learning how to use tools to ascertain measurements and how to use your eye to estimate them. Eventually it is the eye that has to do the judging, so use your eye from the beginning; it will gradually take over more and more of the measuring and estimating from your tools. However, the tools—very useful at the beginning—will remain useful in laying out the shape of objects, checking your measurements, finding concordances of distances, and solving technical problems. No matter how good your eye is, do not abandon the measuring tools; knowing how to use them is part of your craft as an artist.
Since working with shadows will mean getting values right in your copy, it would help to draw a scale of appropriate values at the bottom of your drawing, from the lightest to the darkest, to use as a guide. As you did with the cast drawings, develop the outlines of the larger forms first; put in the linear shapes and refine them; work on the shadows next, starting with the largest, darkest shadow; leave the halftones till last. Remember, you want the outlines of the forms and shadows to be exact before you fill in the details. Some areas you may not understand until you get them down correctly; so study the special and subtle effects before you attempt them. How does the master handle the edges? How does he use his materials? Are the shadows hatched, stumped, or veiled? Does he vary the strength of his line? Is the type classical, idealized, realistic, general? Is something happening in the picture? What? Can you capture the same projection of thought and movement in your transcription? Copying a drawing should be an act of concentration, just like working from a live model. There is a tendency when copying to flatten out shapes. The artist was probably working from a three-dimensional form; you, as a copyist, are working from a flat image, and this fact usually reveals itself in the copy. Carefully study how the artist achieved a sense of form and space in his drawing.
Notes on the Plates II
Although all the lithographs in part II are reproduced, not all are recommended for copying. Those thought to be the best models for beginning students are accompanied by technical notes.
The Plates 7,10,12,13,14,15,17,18,22,23,25,31,34,35,52,54 and 67 are most suitable for copying.
Plate II, 1. Michelangelo (1475-1564), Angel Blowing a Trumpet. (Ange sonnant de la trompette.) Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.
This drawing is an “interprétation” of a famous figure in the grand fresco The last Judgment (1536-1542) in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
Plate II, 2. Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864), Study of a Woman. (Étude de femme.)Whereabouts unknown.
Flandrin, a student of Ingres, was most famous for his decorations of churches and palaces. This is a preparatory drawing for the decorations done in 1841 for the duc de Luynes at his chateau in Dampierre.See also plates II, 15 and II, 25.
Plate II, 3. Hippolyte Flandrin, Italian Shepherd, study. (Pâtre italien [tête d’étude].) Whereabouts unknown.
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Plate II, 4. Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Head of a Fellah, three-quarter view. (Tête de fellah, vue de trois quarts.) Private collection.
See the comments to plate II, 14.
Plate II, 5. Andréa del Sarto (1486-1530), Head of a Child. (Tête d’enfant.) Louvre Muséum, Paris.
This is a drawing for a figure in the painting Caritas, painted in Paris in 1518. The painting is also in the Louvre Muséum in Paris. See also comments to plate II, 31.
Plate II, 6. Agnolo Gaddi (1345-1396), Portrait of a Man. (Portrait d’homme.) British Museum, London.
Plate II, 7. Léon Bonnat (1833-1922), Young Roman, study. (Jeune Romain [tête d’étude].) Bonnat Muséum, Bayonne.
Bonnat was a good friend of Gérôme and accompanied him on excursions (on safari) in Egypt and Palestine on several occasions. A portrait painter noted for the illusionistic qualifies of his realism, Bonnat was also a famous collector of master drawings; his collection is now in the Bonnat Museum in Bayonne. Vîgorous cross-hatching establishes the hair, showing both its growth pattern and its general planes. The roundness of the globe of the eye is described by careful construction of its darkest parts as well as by the placing of a few accents that follow the form. The subtle structure of the children’s heads taxes any artist’s knowledge of anatomy because the surface does not reveal the body structure.
Plate II, 8. Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), Gentleman from the Court of Henry VIII. (Gentilhomme de la cour de Henri VIII.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
Hans Holbein the Younger was born in Augsburg, where he was trained by his father, Hans Holbein the Elder, a noted artist. He worked first in Prague and Basel. After traveling in Italy and France, he went to London, where he became court painter to Henry- VIII. He sketched and painted many members of the court in a frank and objective style. His drawings are the most frequently reproduced in part II.
Plate II, 9. Hans Holbein the Younger, Sir Nicholas Carew. (Sir Nicolas Carew.) Ôffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kupferstichkabinett.
Sir Nicolas was an écuyer, or squire, in charge of the stables of Henry VIII.
Plate II, 10. Hans Holbein the Younger, The Daughter of Jacques Meyer. (La fille de Jacques Meyer.) 1525. Ôffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kupferstichkabinett.
This drawing of Anna Meyer is a preparatory drawing for a portrait in the Gemâldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden. If you look ahead to the portraits by Paul Dubois (plate II, 18) and Adolphe-William Bôuguereau (plate II, 23), you will see that Holbein has more carefully delineated each element—including facial features and costume— than either artist. Yet both Dubois and Bôuguereau have outlined the contours of the face with great subtlety, noting the sitter’s anatomy: the forehead, the brow, the cheekbone, the nose, the fullness of the cheek and of the muscles around the mouth, and the protuberance of the chin. Study each drawing. Try to understand the reason for each bump or depression of the face; refer to an anatomy book for guidance. The light is frontal but diffused. Lighter areas are modeled by veiling. Compare this drawing with the photograph of the original drawing, done in black and colored chalks against a green background (see fig 23).
Plate II, 11. Raphael (1483-1520), Kneeling Woman. (Figure de femme agenouillée.) Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City.
The drawing is after a figure in Raphael’s oil painting, The Transfiguration (painted between 1517 and 1520), in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City.
Plate II, 12. Filippino Lippi (1457-1504), Portrait. (Portrait de Filippino Lippi.) Ufizzi Gallery, Florence.
This is an “interpretation,” that is, a drawing after a finished work, in this case a self-portrait in fresco (probably a fragment of a wall decoration). Fresco technique requires broad handling. Whereas Bonnat (see plate II, 7) had used hatching for shading, here the artist uses a sfumato—a gentle modeling by means of an overlapping, blended succession of values—in a dramatic chiaroscuro. The light on the right side reveals the fleshy roundness of the artist’s parted lips. The direction of the illumination—frontal lighting slightly off to one side—causes a raking shadow and sets the mood of the portrait. A slightly agitated youth emerges from the shadowed uncertainty of adolescence.
Plate II, 13. Charles Gleyre (1808-1874), Omphale, study. (Omphale [tête d’étude].) Whereabouts unknown.
Gleyre was one of Gérôme’s teachers. This is a study “from nature” for the painting Hercules at the feet of Omphale (Hercule aux pieds d’Omphale), now in the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne. William Hauptman thinks the drawing was done by Gleyre expressly for the Drawing Course; he also notes that Diego Rivera (1886-1957) copied this lithograph while a student in Madrid. Cleyre’s interpretation of the Greek portrait style is modified by his working from life. The frontal lighting pushes most of the darker tints to the edges, emphasizing the outline. The expression is tender yet ambiguous, as is the modeling, which describes Omphale’s features in a thin veil of tone.
Plate II, 14. Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Head of a Fellah, profile. (Tête de fellah, vue de profil.) Private collection.
A fellah is an Egyptian peasant. This sketch was made while traveling on safari in Egypt during the winter of 1856-57; the young man was probably a retainer. Gérôme also engraved the portrait. Gérôme uses a device that successfully focuses our interest on the face: he finishes the features, while handling the clothing in a sketchier style. His cross-hatching is very vigorous. Gérôme was obviously attracted to the pronounced, punctuated features of the young Arab.Compare the handling of this head with Gleyre’s treatment of a young girl’s head in plate II, 36.
Plate II, 15. Hippolyte Flandrin, Study of a Woman. (Étude de femme.) Whereabouts unknown.
This is a preparatory drawing for the decorations done in 1841 for the duc de Luynes at his chateau in Dampierre. See also comments to plates II, 2 and II, 25. Flandrin has reserved the most pronounced modeling for the contours, an effect produced more naturally by Gleyre (see plate II, 13). These are not actual shadows but rather a darkening of light areas with cross-hatchings, the effect of frontal lighting. Like Gérôme, Flandrin has described the drapery sketchily, although not enough to disturb the classical, intellectual imitation of Greek vase painting behind the pose of the woman and her chair. Compare the idealized portrait of the woman with the cast drawing of a Roman empress (plate I, 43), the depiction of her body to Raphael’s clothed figure (plates II, 11 and II, 43), and the modeling of the outstretched hand to that of the cast drawing of a woman pressing her breast with her hand (plate I, 15).
Plate II, 16. Raphae, Self-Portrait. (Portrait de Raphael.) Uffizi Gallery, Florence This drawing is an “interprétation” after an eaHy painting by Raphael also in the Uffizi.
This drawing is an “interprétation” after an early painting by Raphael also in the Uffizi.
Plate II, 1 7. Jean-Jacques Henner (1829-1905), Laughing Boy, study. (Le Rieur [tête d’étude].,) Whereabouts unknown.
Henner was famous for nudes painted in a developed chiaroscuro. His house in Paris is now the Musée national Jean-Jacques Henner. Strongly animated heads are in the tradition both of Hellenistic sculpture and of the sculpted têtes d’expression, or expressive heads (that is, heads showing specific emotions) produced by students at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (see also concours in glossary). Henner combines all three methods of shading—stumping, hatching, and veiling—in this lively head. Seen from above, the hair becomes the dominant feature. The view was chosen to add movement to the figure and to support the expression on the boy’s face. The hair is decorative yet still true to the values one might see in nature. The part breaks the hair up into sections that follow the growth pattern.
Plate II, 18. Paul Dubois (1829-1905), Roman Woman. (Femme romaine.) Whereabouts unknown.
Dubois was an excellent sculptor whose work was influenced by Florentine quattrocento sculpture. He was a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where even sculptors were taught to draw well. By deliberately putting his model in profile, Dubois emphasizes the abstract and formal qualities of the picture rather than the personality of the sitter. Her features are described in halftones that contrast with the light background and further distinguish the contours. Both stumping and veiling techniques could have achieved the painterly qualities of this drawing. Whereas Gérôme suppressed most of the values of the face in his portraits of Arabs, Dubois describes every change in values—and he finishes the clothing and accessories as well.
Plate II, 19. Hans Holbein the Younger, Sir Charles Elliot. (Le chevalier Charles Elliot) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
Plate II, 20. Hans Holbein the Younger, Gentleman from the Court of Henry VIII. (Gentilhomme de la cour de Henri VIII.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
Plate II, 21. Michelangelo, Study of a Man. (Étude d’homme.) Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.
This is another “interprétation” after a figure in the Last Judgment fresco (1536-1542) in the Sistine Chapel. It is a lesson in foreshortening.
Plate II, 22. Auguste Toulmouche (1829-1890), Young Woman Kissing Her Child. (Jeune femme embrassant son enfant.) Whereabouts unknown.
Like Gérôme, Toulmouche was a student of Gleyre. He and Gérôme also belonged to the Néo-Grecs, a group of young painters of the mid-nineteenth century who painted genre scenes set in antiquity. Toulmouche soon switched to contemporary genre scenes, depicting middle-class women and their children. This pair was also used in a lost painting entitled The Maternal Kiss (Le Baiser maternel), which was shown at the Salon of 1857. The lighting is frontal. Both interlocked figures are seen in profile. Toulmouche uses subtle changes in perspective to create rhythms that move forward as well as up and down.
Plate II, 23. Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905), A Roman Woman, study. (Tête de femme romaine [étude].) Whereabouts unknown.
Bouguereau was almost an exact contemporary of Gérôme. Along with Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891), they were the most famous representatives of French Academic Realism of the second half of the nineteenth century. Bouguereau’s use of loose hatch lines is closer to Gérôme’s methods than to the hatching of Dubois. He probably drew this in pencil—the shadows of the hair and figure are rather light reserving the darks for the accents in the eye, nose, mouth, and ear.
Plate II, 24. Archer from Aegina. (Sagittaire Éginète.) Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich.
This is a figure (480 B.C.) from the east pediment of the Doric temple of Aphia on the island of Aegina. The lion-head cap identifies him as Hercules. In the early nineteenth century the twelve figures of the pediment were restored by the great Danish Neoclassical sculptor Bertl Thorvaldsen (1770—1884). The draftsman has chosen view of the statue where the restorations are least evident, which includes the right forearm, the left hand, the left thigh, part of the right foot, and parts of the hem of the skirt (see also plate II, 40).
Plate II, 25. Hippolyte Flandrin, Study of a Woman. (Etude de femme.) Whereabouts unknown.
This is yet another drawing for the decoration of the chateau of the duc de Luynes in Dampierre comments to plates II, 2 and II, 15. This drawing shows a woman drying her hair after a bath. The most remarkable feature is the continuous, broken line describing the left contour of the figure. Even though the character of the figure is round and voluptuous, the outline is stabilized by straight passages. Moreover, its linear, decorative quality vies with its ability to express volume. As with the other nude studies prepared for the Dampierre decorations, there is verv little interior modeling. Dark accents are prominent only in the features of the face. With a little practice the student will be able to see how the drawing differs from nature, how Flandrin abstracts and flattens the figure to achieve his conception of the ideal, and which aspects of the figure he chooses to stress—such as the facial expression—and which he chooses to suppress. The simplicitv of the drawing is deceptive. Flandrin’s style is practiced yet truthful in its larger concepts: the muscles and morphological forms fit together, and a minimum of tones reveals these forms. The lighting is similar to the drawing of the cast of the Achilles (see plate 1, 68).
Plate II, 26. Hans Holbein the Younger, Citizen of Basel. (Bourgeoise de Bàle.) Ôffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kupferstichkabinett.
Plate II, 27. Hans Holbein the Younger, Anna Grisacria. (Anna Grisacria [Cresacre].) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
Plate II, 28. Hans Holbein the Younger, John Poines. (John Poines.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
Plate II, 29. Hans Holbein the Younger, Thomas, Count of Surrey. (Thomas, comte de Surrey.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
The sitter is now identified as Henry Howard, earl of Surrey.
Plate II, 30. Hans Holbein the Younger, Anne Boleyn. (Anne Boleyn.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
Plate II, 31. Andréa dei Sarto (1486-1530), Self-Portrait. (Portrait d’Andrea dei Sarto.) Whereabouts unknown.
This is an “interprétation,” a drawing after a finished painting, Charity, (1486) in the Uftizi Gallery, Florence. Andréa dei Sarto was one of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance, whose major works are in the Pitti Palace in Florence. Andréas treatment is more realistic than that of Gleyre and Flandrin. He attends to all the major forms of the face, putting them in tonally by means of stumping. The eyes are circumscribed bv halftones that give clarity to the skeletal sockets. Compare this with plate II, 12.
Plate II, 32. Raphael, Dante. (Portrait du Dante.) Stanze di Raffaello, Vatican City.
This is a drawing after the figure of Dante in the fresco Rimassus located in the Stanza délia Segnatura (1508-11) in the Vatican. Raphael developed his likeness from older, traditional portraits of Dante.
Plate II, 33. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), A Lictor. (Licteur.) Ingres Muséum, Montauban.
This is an “interprétation” after a famous oil sketch in the Ingres Muséum in Montauban. The oil sketch was a study for a large painting entitled The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian (Le Martyre de saint Symphorien) (1834) in the Cathedral of Saint Lazare, Aulun.
Plate II, 34. Jules Lefebvre (1836-1912), Head of a Child. (Tête d’enfant.) Whereabouts unknown.
Lefebvre was a successful academic painter, famous for his nudes, and a longtime teacher at the Académie Julian in Paris. Although he received many decorations, honors, and State commissions, he is hardly remembered today, although several of his works are still admired and reproduced. This is a preparatory drawing for his painting Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi (Cornélie, mère des Gracques), whose present location is unknown. This is a masterful study of a foreshortened head, seen from below, as well as an example of “stopped modeling.” The halftones are produced both by stumping and hatching. Thick and thin lines form the contours, which are darkest on the shaded side of the head. The neck is a cylinder that meets the shadowy underside of the chin. The mastoid muscle (sternocleidomastoideus) is fully described under the ear, as is its attachment to the clavicle below the lightly hatched Adam’s apple.
Plate II, 35. Émile Lévy (1826-1890), Head of a Young Italian Girl. (Tête de jeune fille italienne.) Whereabouts unknown.
Émile Lévy was a student of François-Édouard Picot (1786-1868) and Alexandre Denis Abel Pujol (1787-1861 ). Winner of a Prix de Rome in history painting in 1854, he had a long career as a history and genre painter. Since his death he has slipped into obscurity. Although a contemporary of Gérôme and Bouguereau, he adhered to the conventions of Neoclassicism and avoided the more strident traits of Realism. To copy this, use red or sanguine conté or chalk. It might be helpful to look again at the classical profiles in plates I, 33 and I, 40. The design of the hair is especially fine in its controlled ornamentation. The contour is stressed, as in many of the drawings. The lips are parted but still planar. Although each feature of the profile is carefully articulated, there is less detail in the interior modeling, with its sfumato, diffused shadows, and nebulous halftones.
Plate II, 36. Charles Gleyre, Head of a Young Italian Girl. (Tête de jeune fille italienne.) Whereabouts unknown.
On Gleyre, see comments to plate II, 13. William Hauptman has identified the subject as either a study for or after the figure in the painting La Charmeuse of 1878, in the Kunstmuseum Basel. He postulates that the drawing might have been commissioned by Goupil for the Drawing Course. Use red or sanguine chalk. This is another unusual and instructive view complicated by the plumpness—more fat than muscle of the child. Axial and vertical hatching describe the top and lower planes of the simplifier hair. The prominent ear is fully finished, as are the values of the face. Note that the ear does not distract from the beauty of the modeling along the contour of the neck and face. The integrity of the head is maintained because the ear is seen in proper value relationship to the whole. The dark values inside the ear are lighter than the dark values under the ear and chin. If the values in the ear were too dark, they would draw attention to the ear.
Plate II, 37. Adolphe-William Bouguereau, A Pifferaro. Study painted from lif’e (Pifferaro. [Etude peinte d’après nature].) Whereabouts unknown.
A pifferaro was a music-playing Italian shepherd, usually equipped with a rustic bagpipe or a bassoon. (The duet for oboe and bassoon in the country dance movement of Beethoven “Pastoral” Symphony imitates the pifferari.) In the nineteenth century they were for hire as party entertainers and models for painter.
Plate II, 38. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Sir John Godsalve. (Portrait de Sir John Godsalve.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
On Holbein, see the comments to plate II, 8. This plate is not a facsimile but rather another “interprétation” of a finished work. The features are precise; the eyes have both upper and lower lids. The sharpness of the features differs from the two Italian portraits (plates II, 12 and II, 31). The device of a fully modeled head contrasting with a strictly linear body—although extrapolated from the finished drawing by the copyist—was nonetheless employed by Holbein in other drawings.
Plate II, 39. Hans Holbein the Younger, Erasmus of Rotterdam. (Érasme.) Louvre Muséum, Paris.
This is a partially finished “interprétation” of Holbein’s oil portrait of the great humanist scholar. The oil is also in the Louvre Muséum in Paris.
Plate II, 40. Archer from Aegina, Wearinga Helmet. (Sagittaire Éginète, casqué.) Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich.
This statue (480 B.C.) is a concoction of ancient and modem parts assembled and carved by Thorwaldsen to completethe damaged figure of an archer from the west pediment of the Doric temple of Aphia on the island of Aegina. Thorwaldsen was attempting to make an archer for the left side of the triangular pediment to balance the relatively lightly restored Hercules as archer from the other side of the pediment (see plate II, 24). New are parts of the helmet and its crest, the head, both forearms, the hem of the skirt, the lower part of the left leg and foot, and part of the right leg and foot. These restorations are not identified in the drawing. although they were evident in situ because of the differences in color of the old and new marble. Thorwaldsen’s additions were removed in the 1960s, making the remains purely antique but destroying a great nineteenth-century conception of a primitive Creek warrior.
Plate II, 41. Michelangelo, Man Pulling a Rope. (Homme au chapelet.) Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.
This is yet another figure from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, painted between 1536 and 1542.
Plate II, 42. Michelangelo, Eve. (Eve.) Sistine Chapel, Vatican City
This figure was painted between 1508 and 1512.
Plate II, 43. Raphael, Woman Carrying Vases. (Femme portant des vases.) Sistine Cnapel, Vatican City.
This drawing is after a famous, oft-copied figure in the fresco Fire in the Borgo (Incendio di Borgo), completed in 1514-17.
Plate II, 44. Raphael, The Violinist. (Le joueur de violon.) Sciarra Collection, Rome.
Now ascribed to Sebastiano dei Piombo (1485-1547), it was much admired as a Raphael in the nineteenth century. As a student in Rome in the early 1840s, Gérôme painted a copy; perhaps he supplied the painting or a drawing as the model for the lithograph. He certainly suggested its inclusion. The oil was not only admired by Gérôme but was also praised by both Bouguereau and Eugène-Emmanuel Amaury-Duval (1806-1885). Although most of the Sciarra collection was sold in 1898-99, The Violinist is still in the collection in Rome.
Plate II, 45. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Brooke. (Portrait de Brooke.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
The sitter is George Brooke, ninth baron of Cobham.
Plate II, 46. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of a Lady. (Portrait de femme.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
Plate II, 47. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Lady Elliot. (Portrait de lady Elliot.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
The sitter is Margaret, Lady Elliot. Her name is misspelled on the drawing.
Plate II, 48. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of William, marquess of Northampton. (Portrait de William, marquess de Northampton.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
The sitter is William Parr, first marquess of Northampton.
Plate II, 49. Jules Breton (1827-1905), The Servant. (La servante.) Whereabouts unknown.
This is a “facsimile of a drawing after nature.” A contemporary of Gérôme, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1848) and Bouguereau, Breton was a famous and prolific painter of peasant scenes.
Plate II, 50. Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Dog of Alcibiades. (Le chien d’Alcibiade.) Baron Martin Muséum, Gray, France.
A study (“painted from nature”) for Alcibiades’s dog in the 1861 painting Alcibiades in the House of Aspasia (Alcibiade chez Aspasie).
Plate II, 51. Michelangelo, Man Sitting on a Sack. (L’homme au sac.) Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.
This drawing is after a figure in a fresco (1508-12) on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The anatomy in the original is not totally correct, and the copy compounds Michelangelo’s errors. The right shoulder and arm are exaggerated in size. Michelangelo’s ability, however, comes through in the rhythmical disposition of the parts, which gives the body a sense of grace and movement.
Plate II, 52. Thomas Couture (1815-1879), Portrait of a Young Boy. (Portrait d’un jeune garçon.) Whereabouts unknown.
Couture had a distinguished career, although several large commissions from the French government remained unfinished because of the political upheavals during his lifetime. Known primarily for his large hist-paintings executed in a loose, individual style, he had many students, among them Anselm Feuerbach (1829- 1880), Edouard Manet (1832-1883), William Morris Hunt (1824-1879), and Puvis de Chavannes. Couture utilizes another manner of drawing the hair; compare it to the handling of hair by Henner (plate II, 17) and by Gleyre (plate II, 36). Couture uses long strokes of the charcoal for the general direction of the growth patterns and general veiling to indicate the top and lower planes of the head. Praiseworthy skill is evident in the drawing of the foreshortened ear, in the slight toning for the depression between the nasal bone and the nasal eminence, and in the gradual shading on the left cheek. The end of the nose has a planar quality, separating it from its sides.
Plate II, 53. Jules Lefebvre, Head of a Woman. (Jéte de femme.) Whereabouts unknown.
On Lefebvre, see comments to plate II, 34.
Plate II, 54. Timoléon Lobrichon (1831-1914), Study of a Baby. (Étude d’enfant.) Whereabouts unknown.
Lobrichon was a student of François-Edouard Picot. In the 1850s he was associated with the Néo-Grecs, a group of painters, headed by Gérôme, who composed genre scenes set in antiquity. Later he painted mothers and children in modem settings. This complete figure will aid you in understanding the difficultes of drawing babies, where baby fat and the surface bones dominate the shape and contours of the body and limbs. Note how the hair radiates from the crown of the head. Throughout outlines are strong, even in interior forms. The technique is similar to Holbein’s in plates II, 19 and II, 60.
Plate II, 55. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of N. Poyntz. (Portrait de N. Poyntz.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
The sitter is Sir Nicolas Poyntz. The plate is inscribed with an added signature N. Poines Knight.
Plate II, 56. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Lady Hanegham. (Portrait de lady Hanegham.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
Plate II, 57. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of the Wife of Jacques Meyer. (Portrait de la femme de Jacques Meyer.) Ôffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kupferstichkabinett.
Dorothea Kannengiesser and her husband, Jakob Meyer, the mayor of Basel, were drawn twice by Holbein, and the Kunstmuseum has both sets of drawings. This is from the second set and is dated 1525-26.
Plate II, 58. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of a Young Man. (Portrait d’un jeune homme.) Whereabouts unknown.
The style of this drawing is very close to that of Holbein’s illustrious father, Hans Holbein the Elder (ca. 1465-ca. 1524). It may be an early drawing by the younger Holbein.
Plate II, 59. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Lord Vaux. (Portrait de lord Vaux.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
The sitter is Thomas, the second Lord Vaux.
Plate II, 60. Hans Holbein the Younger, Thomas, Count of Surrey. (Portrait de Thomas, comte de Surrey.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
The sitter is now identified as Henry Howard, earl of Surrey. Holbein’s naturalistic observations vie with the almost perfect oval of the face, as if he were subordinating nature to geometry. The faintly indicated clothing contrasts with the high finish of the face, individual strokes describe individual hairs; and the features of the face are very precise. Holbein is a master of the facial structure around the eye.
Plate II, 61. Philippe Parrot (1831-1894), Bather, study of a young girl. (Baigneuse. [Étude de jeune fille].) Whereabouts unknown.
Another “interprétation” of a painting. Now almost forgotten, Parrot specialized in portraits and elegant nudes in mythological guise.
Plate II, 62. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of a Man. (Portrait d’homme.) Whereabouts unknown.
Before Word War II this drawing was in the collection of the duke of Weimar, in Weimar, Germany. The attribution to Holbein the Younger is not certain.
Plate II, 63. Hans Holbein the Younger, Clinton. (Clinton.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
The sitter is Edward, ninth earl of Clinton. Although the drawing is located at Windsor Castle by Goupil, it cannot be found in any catalogue of the collection.
Plate II, 64. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of a Lady. (Portrait de femme.) Whereabouts unknown.
Plate II, 65. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of a Man. (Portrait d’homme.) Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Library, Windsor Castle
Plate II, 66. Hans Holbein the Younger, Lady of the Court of Henry IV. (Dame de la cour de Henri IV.) Ôffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kupferstichkabinett.
The sitter is Lady Guildford. This is a poor rendition of a masterful drawing by Holbein.
Plate II, 67. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of a Man. (Portrait d’homme.) Ôffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Kupferstichkabinett.
This is a sketch (1516) for one of the two paintings on panel of Jakob Meyer and his wife, also in the Kunstmuseum Basel (see comments to plate II, 57). In an extremely efficient manner Holbein has given much attention to the features of the face—such as the slight sag of the skin around Meyer’s mouth and his chin without detracting from the simplicity of the presentation. The clothing is simply outlined. In the finished oil it is painted from life. In the original preparatory drawing (see fig. 24) Holbein used silverpoint and red chalk.
