Drawn from Life

Exhibition
14 Feb 1997 – 11 Jan 1998

Janet Cumbrae Stewart, Early morning, 1924, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, Purchased 1975.

About

Life drawing has been integral to the European model of art training for centuries. The centrality of the figure within the tradition of humanist art has ensured that drawing from life — from the nude or partially clothed body — has been fostered by the academy: the conglomeration of artists, teachers, critics and art historians which has defined European high culture in the modern world.

In academic art training, life drawing is conventionally understood to have a documentary and bloodless relationship to the body. Its transformation of the body into 'the figure' is grounded in the skills and techniques of drawing. However, the relationship between life drawing and the genre of the nude in European art is complex and reflexive, and the diversity of drawings in Drawn from Life attests to differing sexual and cultural meanings of the nude. A few of the works are overtly erotic, and push life drawing to the margins of art-historical respectability, to the edge of the pornographic. Many are undeniably sensual and intimate. They question the relationship between artist, model and viewer, one that is of critical significance in our understanding of the place of the nude in European culture.

Drawing is often the vehicle for an artist's most innovative work. Since many of these life drawings were made when the artists were still students or finding their style, they reflect that process of direct engagement with ideas, influences and materials. Others are the product of a longstanding devotion to the figure. Some drawings have a breathtaking bravura which may never have been repeated by the artist in other mediums. These life drawings tell a history of the Australian experience of art education and its influence over the last century, both at home and abroad.

Deborah Clark
Assistant Curator, Australian Drawings
National Gallery of Australia

Text sourced from: Sayers, Andrew, and Deborah Clark. Drawn from Life : A National Gallery of Australia Travelling Exhibition. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1997.

Touring Dates & Venues

1997–1998

  • Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, TAS
    14 February 1997 – 6 April 1997
  • Ivan Dougherty Gallery, NSW
    17 April 1997 – 17 May 1997
  • Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, VIC
    30 May 1997 – 13 July 1997
  • Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, WA
    25 July 1997 – 28 September 1997
  • Noosa Regional Gallery, QLD
    10 October 1997 – 9 November 1997
  • Orange Regional Gallery, NSW
    21 November 1997 – 11 January 1998

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