Standing Academic Male Nude (recto); Sketch of Upper Arm (verso)1816
A male model stands posed in the studio, modelled in black chalk and charcoal, softened by stumping and lifted with white highlights on tan paper. More about this work
About this work
A male model stands posed in the studio, modelled in black chalk and charcoal, softened by stumping and lifted with white highlights on tan paper. Delacroix made the drawing in 1816, at about eighteen, while training in the studio of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin and at the École des Beaux-Arts, where drawing from the live model was the foundation of an artist’s education. Such academic studies were exercises in anatomy and light, and this one shows the young artist mastering the discipline he would later bend to the passionate ends of Romanticism. On the back is a sketch of an upper arm.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
A work made of black chalk and charcoal with stumping, heightened with white chalk (recto), and black chalk and charcoal with stumping (verso), on dark tan laid paper.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
How it was made
- Chalk
- Natural black, red and white chalks. Used together on toned paper they could give the warmth of flesh with very little effort, and they were favourites for studies from life.
- Charcoal
- Burnt willow or vine. It smudges and wipes away easily, which made it the natural tool for working out a composition.
- Laid paper
- Handmade on a mould of close-set wires, which leave fine parallel lines you can see when the sheet is held to the light.
Eugène Delacroix
French, 1798–1863 · Born in Charenton-Saint-Maurice; died in Paris.
Delacroix trained under Pierre-Narcisse Guérin and emerged in the 1820s as the leader of French Romanticism, with dramatic, richly coloured canvases such as The Death of Sardanapalus and Liberty Leading the People. A six-month journey to Morocco and Algeria in 1832 gave him a store of sketches and memories that fed his work for decades. Later he decorated public buildings in Paris, among them the Chapel of the Holy Angels at Saint-Sulpice, and his journal is a key record of his thinking.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1977.350
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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