Drawing of the month #9
Sarah Stone (British, 1762-1844)
Standing male nude, c. 1772-3
Chalk on paper, 320 x 200 mm, Karen Taylor Fine Art
Amy Lim, Curator of the Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, has kindly chosen our ninth drawing of the month. She was a researcher and catalogue contributor for the current Tate Britain exhibitions ‘Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920’
It is something of a surprise to encounter this study of a male nude in an album of early drawings by Sarah Stone (1762–1844), on display in the Tate Britain exhibition ‘Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520–1920’. Along with three more nude studies, it is bound among juvenile sketches of hands and feet, vegetables, spiders, and facial features, showing Stone’s systematic efforts to develop her drawing skills. The presence of a nude study (and of a man, to boot) among these drawings challenges our expectations of Stone – principally known for her ornithological watercolours – and pre-modern women artists in general.
Life drawing was the cornerstone of artistic training. It was particularly championed by the Royal Academy of Arts, founded in 1768, just a few years before Stone made these drawings. In the Academy’s Life School, students learned anatomy and honed their drawing skills in preparation for creating the dynamic, multi-figure compositions required by history painting, considered to be the highest genre. Women, however, were excluded from the Academy Schools until 1860, and for reasons of ‘modesty’, from its Life School until 1893.
As Stone’s study shows us, aspiring women artists took matters into their own hands. Whilst some arranged private, extra-curricular life-drawing classes, Stone’s study is more likely to have been copied from a drawing manual. Her source has not yet been identified, but Gérard de Lairesse’s Principles of Drawing (London, 1764) contains three plates of similar male nudes, each seated or leaning on a stone plinth, after Natoire, van Loo, and Boucher. Yet Stone’s drawing is remarkably lifelike, achieved through her skilful shading and imaginative use of red and black chalk, in contrast to the monochrome print.
The study also suggests that the young Sarah Stone may have nursed ambitions to enter the field of history painting. Women artists were frequently told to confine themselves to landscape, still-life or flower painting, which were considered suitable subjects, and within their capabilities. Nevertheless, many women were determined to paint histories, with Angelica Kauffman achieving notable success in this field. Kauffman’s study of a semi-nude male figure, also on display in the exhibition, shows that she too found a way to study life-drawing.
We do not know whether Stone ever attempted to create figure compositions. When she was still in her mid-teens, she was commissioned to draw the natural specimens and ethnographic collections of the Leverian Museum, a task that would occupy her for three decades. Thanks to her highly-esteemed watercolours, she became the first female British painter of birds and animals to achieve professional recognition. The rare survival of this nude study indicates the resourcefulness and ambition of the teenage Stone, as she embarked on her career.
‘Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain, 1520-1920’, is at Tate Britain until 13 October 2024.
