On view
Academic study of adolescent boy, seen from behind,
ca. 1807–10
The model for this life study was posed to recall sculptures of the god Apollo, who in antiquity was often given a youthful, even androgynous, form. Vernet’s image is hardly idealized or historicizing, however. The artist shows the model’s dirty fingernails and includes the props—stacked boxes and an old, frayed pillow—used to help the young man hold his classical stance.
This painting reflects the academic training required of students at the École des Beaux-Arts in nineteenth-century Paris. First, they learned to draw using prints and other drawings as their guides. Then, they graduated to drawing after sculpture, often using ancient works or plaster casts as models; finally, they drew or painted from live models.
More About This Object
Information
ca. 1807–10
- Forgotten French art from the First to the Second Empire: autumn exhibition November 23-December 22, 1978, (London: Haeim Gallery, 1978)., cat. no. 16 (illus.)
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1981", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 41, no. 1 (1982): p. 16-31., p. 20
- Nina Maria Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, "Horace Vernet's "Academic Study of an Adolescent Boy" and the artist's student years," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 45, no. 2 (1986): p. 16–24., p. 18, fig. 1
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 252 (illus.)
