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Artistic Endeavour versus Decency: Women Art Students and the Male Nude Model in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris

© Jessica Cresseveur

According to most scholarship, women art students in Western Europe were barred from the study of the live nude model until the late nineteenth century. While it is true that government-sanctioned art schools only allowed men to study from the live nude model, Vivian Cameron and Gen Doy discuss evidence that some women artists, including pupils of David, had access to such lessons as early as the 1790s. After all, the ability to represent the human anatomy--especially the male anatomy--was crucial in the production of history painting. Cameron states that novice artists of both sexes studied prints and sculpture in a coeducational environment.(1) Even Etienne Delécluze, a pupil of David who neglects to discuss most of his teacher's women pupils, recalls drawing with a Mme de Noailles during the early part of his time in the atelier.(2)

What is important here is that existing evidence shows coeducational study of prints and sculptures. One of these media is most likely the source of an académie by Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier, as it was produced in 1786.

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However, as the years progressed, the restrictions of some ateliers were somewhat loosened. In addition to prints and sculptures, several anatomy texts, which included illustrations, were obtainable. Furthermore, several drawings by Pauline Auzou, a pupil of Regnault, appear to have been produced from studies of male and female models clothed only in loincloths.(3) More relevantly, Amélie Romilly, another pupil of Regnault, attests to the existence of coeducational life drawing classes in the ateliers of her teacher, David, and Pierre-Narcisse Guérin by 1813.(4) Having already established that David encouraged ambition in his women pupils, we cannot discount the possibility of life drawing classes for women before this date. However, the lack of evidence as such also makes it difficult to prove.

So, why the lack of consistent evidence? The issue of the decency standard of the time offers an explanation. While mores have been known to shift from era to era, at this point in history (at least Parisian history), many believed that the notion of pre-marital chastity for a woman included never even laying eyes on a naked man.(5) Romilly's diary includes entries on her mother's objections to her studying antique sculpture in the Louvre for fear that the young artist would be corrupted by the sight of a nude male figure,(6) despite its non-living state. Even in Adrienne Grandpierre-Deverzey's Interior of Pujol's Studio (c.1822), which depicts the artist's husband amid a class of women pupils, the cast of a nude male torso resting on a shelf faces the wall and is flanked by a wooden beam to the right and a sculptural bust to the left. For further measure, the torso's left leg bends forward to further shield the genitals from view. A cast of a female nude torso, however, remains readily accessible for class study, facing the viewer.