Model (art)

“ The model is used for all that is on the outside—movement, proportions, physical characteristics, beauty of form,—for all, in fact, except, however, just that turn of the head and look of the eye, that movement of the lips, dilation of the nostrils, and a thousand other signs and indications on the face which reveal the inner struggles of the soul. ”

“ ARTISTS and ART STUDENTS will find a marvelous variety of FULL FIGURE STUDIES, that will answer every purpose of a model. Art Collectors and all lovers of real Art Pictures, will find this the most complete collection of genuine ART STUDIES ever offered. Almost all the world’s old masters are listed. ”

“ It is a part of the true traditional doctrine of art that no man should paint from the model, nude or draped; that no man should draw from the model, nude or draped, with the intention of using the drawing upon his wall surface or canvas. ”

“ Toil over arrangement and meditate over view-point and light, and though the result be the rudest, it will bear [pg 180] the impress of thought and of art. I tell you art begins when man with thought, forming a standard of beauty, commences to shape the raw material toward it. In pure landscape, where modification is limited, it begins when the artist takes one standpoint in preference to another. In figure composition, where modification is infinite, it begins with the first touch to bring the model into pose. ”

“ A great friend of ours, a well-known sculptor, assures us he would not dare to pose a model according to any preconceived idea, but he watches the model pose in different ways, and when he sees a striking and beautiful attitude be seizes on that and makes a rapid sketch of it. ”

“ I have observed that he who exercises little or no selection, and contents himself with the first model he sees, belongs to that class of conventional artists who allow themselves such an infinity of additions and subtractions, and corrections of the model, that generally only the remnants of nature are to be found in their works; while those who follow the opposite school copy the model minutely just as it is, and even with all its imperfections. ”

“ It is not an easy task to point out those various excellencies for your imitation which lie distributed amongst the various schools. An endeavour to do this may, perhaps, be the subject of some future discourse. I will, therefore, at present, only recommend a model for style in Painting, which is a branch of the art more immediately necessary to the young Student. Style in painting is the same as in [Pg 19] writing, a power over materials, whether words or colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed. ”

“ If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; ”

“ The French painter uses the model simply for study; for the finished picture he goes direct to life.
However, we must not blame the sitters for the shortcomings of the artists. The English models are a well-behaved and hard-working class, and if they are more interested in artists than in art, a large section of the public is in the same condition, and most of our modern exhibitions seem to justify its choice. ”

“ In the sphere of painting and sculpture it is still easier for the talented man to produce imitations of art. He need only learn to draw, paint, and model—especially naked bodies. Thus equipped he can continue to paint pictures, or model statues, one after another, choosing subjects according to his bent—mythological, or religious, or fantastic, or symbolical ”

“ I console myself by remembering that a good model has a{264} pride in his endurance in a difficult pose that is as sustaining as honest and just pride always is. Nevertheless, when I look over these studies, and see the tall magician, peering, on tip-toe, over a screen, and the High-priest denouncing the violation of the sanctuary, and the unfortunate Arab, half rising from his couch to scan the horizon, I recognise that for these models, though Art was indisputably long, Time could hardly have been said to be fleeting. ”

“ To this school all the young children are sent to model, under pain of a fine; and an art education is the result, which shows itself in the exquisite little models which come from the ateliers of Adolph Fleischmann. There are now in the German Fair models of animals that a sculptor may copy. ”

“ From the water-colour sketch in the possession of Miss Violet Dickinson.
[273]
In the matter of models, whether for illustrations or exhibition drawings, she was particular and fastidious. At all times she preferred to draw from the life. Her studies from the nude—made in her youth, with such conscientious accuracy that every form, every fold in the skin, and every undulation of high light and shadow, were rendered with the firmness and with ease that come of practice, knowledge, and skill—had carried her far enough for the model to be reckoned a servant, and not a master. ”

“ One finds one woman among a thousand whom one wants always. Therese was that woman whom one can not leave or betray.
She exclaimed, joyfully:
“I never shall be forsaken?”
She asked why he did not make her bust, since he thought her beautiful.
“Why? Because I am an ordinary sculptor, and I know it; which is not the faculty of an ordinary mind. But if you wish to think that I am a great artist, I will give you other reasons. To create a figure that will live, one must take the model like common material from which one will extract the beauty, press it, crush it, and obtain its essence. ”

“ Hence, when our great artists required an ideal of beauty in painting or in sculpture, they would take several models, each supplying some beautiful detail not to be found in the rest,—one model furnishing the features, another the general outline, each a separate limb. ”

“ Permit us, in illustration of our subject, to place before you a sketch of an American woman of fashion as she is and as she might be—as she must be to accomplish the task we would appoint her. Examine with a careful eye “the counterfeit presentment” of these two widely differing characters, and choose the model on which you will form yourselves. And first, by a few strokes of this magic wand—the pen—we will conjure within the charmed circle of your vision, the woman of fashion as she is. ”

“ When the chosen model rightly inspired him—and without that model his invention was often vapid and inert—he could succeed in a degree which no other artist has matched or surpassed in registering not only the permanent facts of beauty in form and feature, but in arresting with equal felicity the most fleeting moments of tender or passionate expression. ”

“ A secret of her appeal may lie in the fact that the artist is the father of the model. The little girl, crowned with a wildflower, posed with the pertness of a wayside blossom, her hands extended like pointed leaves, has a roguishness and playful grace that charm. ”

“ PASTEBOARD MODELS FOR A HOME DRAWING
CLASS
Study drawing at home and make your own models; form a class of several girls and work together; criticise one another’s drawings, and get a criticism from an artist whenever you can. Much may be accomplished in this way if you have the enthusiasm, perseverance, and will to carry it through. Starting with one object, complete in itself, a variety of forms may be evolved, and combinations can be made until an entirely new model is produced. ”

“ It is impossible to say in the presence of work of this kind how much has been contributed by the model, how much conferred by the artist; but that the artist’s share in the result is predominant is proved by the fact that nobody else has combined in the same fashion the portraiture of individual features with the most delicate suggestion of the emotion that moves them. ”

“ I became infatuated with the idea that through some occult and mysterious influence I had had the opportunity of utilizing as a model the fairest of womankind. It was not by her own volition that she became my model. To hang her picture at the exhibition would be a crime. The most beautiful model in the whole world should not be gazed upon by the vulgar herd. ”

“ It will, doubtless, excite the admiration of every one in the slightest degree conversant with the Arts, that these figures, so full of life, ease and character, were thus actually executed without model, or drawing, or palpable archetype whatsoever. The artist, indeed, knows nothing of modelling; and so little of drawing, that we question if he would not find difficulty in making even a tolerable sketch of his own work. ”

“ Never try to place a model in a pose which he can only hold by an unnatural strain. You will not get a satisfactory result from it. Study your model; see what poses he most naturally falls into, and then take advantage of one of these, and arrange your picture with reference to it.
Never attempt to represent a character in your picture by using a model of a different class or type from it; you will not be successful either in painting a lady from a model who is a peasant, nor in painting a peasant from a model who is a lady. ”

“ A face like that described, could not belong to an ungainly form. When nature designs beauty, it is rare that she does her work by halves. Unlike the artists of the anatomic school, she makes the model for herself—hence the perfect correspondence of its parts. ”

“ The invitation was gladly accepted and I promptly began casting about for a suitable theme—a matter that often constitutes the most difficult part of the artist’s labors. The department of painting in which I was particularly adept was the study of the nude and I quite naturally resolved to produce something in the line of my308 favorite work. And then came the search for a model.
“Contrary to the popular notion, a satisfactory model is a very scarce commodity. The human form divine rarely stands the keen professional criticism of the eye artistic. ”

“ I heard of one young artist, whose circumstances did not permit his going to Europe, but who being nevertheless determined that his studies should, as nearly as possible, resemble those of the European academies, was about to commence drawing the human figure, for which purpose he had provided himself with a thin silk dress, in which to clothe his models, as no one of any station, he said, could be found who would submit to sit as a model without clothing. ”

“ That they are precious and beauteous no one can deny. How sparkling are the successive descriptions of women—blonde, brune, Spanish, contralto-voiced, coquettish, etc.—whom the poet, like some capricious artist, invites into his atelier, drapes hastily with old Moorish or Venetian or diaphanous costumes, and then reflects in a diminishing mirror, changing the model into a fine statuette of ivory and enamel! ”

“ I am unknown as an artist, and who wants studies from the antique and sketches from the living model, or my unfinished Love and Psyche, or the perspective sketch of my room, or my portrait of Nikíta, though it is really better than the portraits painted by any of your fashionable fellows? ”

“ Nothing could be simpler. First you get your model;—she’s most probably stood for hundreds of other men, and knows more about the business than you do yourself; your master tells you how to pose her; you put her in a cabbage-patch or kitchen prepared for the purpose, like those in Chailly, for example; paint the background as carefully as you know how, and your picture’s made. It’s easier to learn how to paint than to find motives for yourself; so follow as closely as possible in other men’s steps ”

“ Our aim just now is to keep them to facts. Some of them,” the artist added with a smile, “are rather too much inclined to draw upon their imagination. Now there is one girl there who is, humanly speaking, certain to paint the model’s hair jet-black, or as black as paint can be made. And yet, you see, there is not a black thread in it.” ”

“ Try to imagine how a Michael Angelo or a Raphael would have conducted themselves, and work yourself into a belief that your picture is to be seen and observed by them. Even enter into a kind of competition with these great masters; paint a subject like theirs; a companion to any work you think a model. Test your own work with the model.... Let your port-crayon be never out of your hands. Draw till you draw as mechanically as you write. But, on every opportunity, paint your studies instead of drawing them. Painting comprises both drawing and coloring. ”

“ By degrees, however, my growing love for Form made me intolerant of the restraint and exigencies of costume, and led me more and more, and finally, to a class of subjects, or, more accurately, to a set of conditions, in which supreme scope is left to pure artistic qualities, in which no form is imposed upon the artist by the tailor, but in which every form is made obedient to the conception of the design he has in hand. ”

“ Here again I find a similitude among the artists who paint or model. Studios are full of such caricatures, and the hard-working, honest souls who have made them believe that they are true reproductions of nature and life. ”

“ Daniel Webster, struggling as district school teacher in New England, clothed in ill-fitting garments, would somehow furnish a better model for the sculptor or painter who would make a statue or picture or a head of him who was, indeed, a mighty man. ”