For a history of artists’ models
In his Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, Pierre Larousse wrote that the model must “contribute to the perfection of the work”. Yet despite the model’s implied significance, the terms of their contribution to art, and the toll it exacted on the men and women who made it, have remained shrouded in controversy and anonymity. This panel seeks to confront the history of the model by exploring both the conditions of their contribution to creative work and their personal agency.
The history of the model is fundamentally rooted in a feminist history of art, even as methodological approaches have shifted over time. Early scholarship focused on the invention of the “sexually available” model as a social type (Waller 2006; Lathers, 2001), access to live models as fundamental to the training of nineteenth-century artists (Nochlin 1977) and tracing the biographical paths of these female contributors (Seibert 1986, Lipton 1992). More recent historiography has shifted towards empowering the model, moving beyond the modernist myth of the “muse” and the artist. These approaches have situated the model within the study of the live model and the anatomy courses given in art academies and drawing schools since the 17th century (Lahalle 2006 ; Brugerolles 2009 ; Guedron 2003); coexisting studio trades (Fugier 2007; Nerlich 2013), the history of the body and of gender (Solomon-Godeau 1997; Comar 2008), colonisation (Murell 2018), networks of sociability (Marsch 2019 ; Robert 2023 ; Morel 2023), and early photography (Rexer, 2021, 2023). Building on these historiographical shifts, the panel solicits contributions exploring the methodological challenges of writing the history of models.
Session Convenors:
Raisa Rexer, Vanderbilt University (USA)
Colette Morel, Université de Grenoble-Alpes (France) / LARHRA (Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes)
Speakers:
Panel 1 – Sources and historiography
Robert Brennan, University of Queensland/Courtauld Institute of Art
“Two Moors, dancers of Moorish dances” and a drawing by Michelangelo
The practice of drawing after live models is a canonical theme in the historiography of Italian Renaissance art. While the models for Italian artists in this period are often described as workshop assistants, visual evidence has at times given rise to alternative interpretations. A recurrent model in Michelangelo’s drawings, for example, has traditionally been described as a “Turk.” As Charles Robertson has recently argued, moreover, a figure in the most accurate copy after Michelangelo’s lost drawing of the Battle of Cascina has the distinctive hairstyle of an enslaved galley oarsman, and likely indicates the social status of the artist’s model.
In this presentation, I focus on a group of three sources that build upon and complicate these observations: a letter from a member of Michelangelo’s workshop proposing a religious picture based on a “Moorish dance,” a contemporaneous letter concerning “two Moors, dancers of Morish dances (moresche)” that was written by an agent of one of Michelangelo’s patrons, and a drawing by Michelangelo that corresponds in certain respects with these epistolary sources. On this basis, I consider the relationship between the “Moors” who danced in Michelangelo’s milieu and concurrent stylistic developments in Michelangelo’s work. As I argue, the wider implications of this relationship encompass the consolidation of Spanish political hegemony in Italy following the Sack of Rome (1527) and Siege of Florence (1529-30), emerging Italian attitudes toward Iberian imperial expansion across the Islamic and Atlantic worlds, and aspects of Michelangelo’s style that Vasari and other contemporaries regarded as distinctively “modern.”
Eric Sergent, Université de Haute-Alsace
A history of some male artists’ models in mid-19th century Paris : Cadamour, Dubosc and the others
Le plus beau des modèles !
Cadamour.
Qui pose sans ficelles ?
Cadamour.
Véry, Dubosc et Pécota,
C’est d’la blague à côté d’ça. (Texier :1853)
While artists’ models are generally anonymous people whose faces or muscles in art are all that remains of them, but whose names, identities and stories have been forgotten, it seems that in the mid-19th century, a small group of male models made a particularly strong impression. This ditty that appears in several literary texts bears witness of the notoriety enjoyed by these models in their day. Despite this public success, today these individuals are difficult to identify, or even to find. They remain even more obscure if we attempt to study their lives.
Based on a survey of literary sources, the press and archives, we propose an attempt to reconstruct the lives of some of these artists’ models. We also propose to study the representation of these figures. This will enable us to understand how this built-up reputation allowed them to earn a living, sometimes very substantially. This study will also offer a counterpoint to the study of female artists’ models, whose conditions of existence and representation are quite different.
By means of a prosopographical work, it is proposed to explore the lives and careers of a number of figures evoked in a popular ditty, and to put forward a methodology for the study of such forgotten figures.
Yelin Zhao, Independent Researcher
The Model’s Perspective: Autobiographical Publications by Artists’ Models
This paper examines two autobiographical works by artists’ models: Degas and His Model (Degas et Son Modèle) (1919) by Alice Michel, and Kiki’s Memoirs (Kiki: Souvenirs) (1929) by Alice Prin. Alice Michel, presumed but never firmly identified as a model, described modeling sessions in which a professional model (Pauline, likely Michel herself) posed for the French Impressionist Edgar Degas (1834–1917). In contrast, Alice Prin (1901-1953), better known as Kiki de Montparnasse, was a prominent figure in the Montparnasse circle in early twentieth century France and recounted her early life and encounters with various artists of the circle. Although differing in focus, these two works, as productions of and by artists’ models, offer rare insights into the history of modern art from the perspective of the artist’s model.
The paper begins with a close reading of the format and content of both publications, investigating the models’ agency and shifts in their social status and visibility during the early twentieth century. It then explores the impact of these works by tracing their publication, translation, and dissemination histories. Through a critical analysis of art historians’ engagement with these autobiographies, this paper argues that art historical discourse has enacted an epistemological violence on the history of artists’ models by marginalising them and their contributions.
Panel 2 – Consent, Agency and Social History
Appoline Malevez, Universiteit Gent
Non-professional Models: Agency, Privacy and Consent
Using two case studies, my paper explores how the use of non-professional models raises interesting questions about agency, privacy and consent. Within this framework, I consider modelling as an embodied activity which was more or less willingly taken up by the artists’ entourage on a temporary or more structural basis. Many artists could not afford to hire professional models, and relied on those around them, be they relatives or domestic servants.
Nel Duerinckx (1886-1971), the wife of the Belgian artist Rik Wouters (1882-1916), took pride in distinguishing herself from a professional model, by emphasising her constant availability, her willingness to try experimental poses, and the fact that she worked for free (Wouters 1944, 12– 13, 24–25). In the biography that she dedicated to her husband, she wrote about posing when she was ill and relishing the days when Wouters chose to paint a still life, as it meant an occasional day off (Wouters 1944, 13,19, 28, 55–56).
When the Belgian painter Theo Van Rijsselberghe (1862-1926) stayed in Tangier for long periods, he used the domestic servants he hired locally as models. Moroccan models were not readily available because of different cultural and religious norms regarding representation (Jlaidi 2006, 25). Nevertheless, painting from life models was crucial for Van Rysselberghe as he strove for authenticity in his depictions of everyday life in Morocco. Van Rysselberghe’s domestic servants had agency, but, as employees, the power imbalance was in their disfavour. Did they want to be painted? Were they asked to pose?
Both cases illustrate the need for an history of artists’ models to reckon with potentially problematic practices, which have often remained invisible and yet lie at the heart of modelling.
Cassandra Levasseur, Université Rennes 2
Women artists and images of the model in the studio reappropriations and negotiations in early 20th century parisian avant-gardes
The iconography of the – female – model in the – male artist’s – studio was, in avant- garde circles in Paris, central to the affirmation of one’s credibility as a professional and modern artist. These images, as they evoke gendered power dynamics and often include female nudes, were rarely created by women artists.
This paper will analyze the strategies women artists use to reappropriate the image of the model in the studio, and how it relates to their efforts to assert themselves as professional artists in the avant-garde. The iconography of the artist’s self-portrait with the nude model in the studio, as exemplified by male artists like Matisse, is near-impossible to recreate for a woman artist, because of the association between the model, the nude, and the sexually available female body. Therefore, women artists usually either evacuate the problematic depiction of the female nude by representing a clothed model – like Marie Laurencin in Femme Peintre et son modèle (1921) – or they remove themselves from the picture to attenuate the dynamic of sexual domination contained within the artist-model relation, like Georgette Agutte in Dans l’Atelier (c.1919). However, some women artists do attempt to create an image of themselves with their nude female model in the studio, such as Mela Muter in her Nu devant le miroir (Autoportrait)(c.1915). These works illustrate the ways women artists navigate an iconography which is both problematic for them and a powerful pictorial affirmation of an artist’s status as professional and integrated in avant-garde circles. They also allow for a broader discussion on the ways women artists can assert their own subjectivity as artists through the representation of the female figure, with both self-portraiture and the image of the female model.
Oriane Poret, Université Lyon 2
Beyond human. Looking at non human models during the 19th century.
In addition to portraying the human figure, 19th century artists increasingly looked to non- human models as subjects of inspiration. As Paul Dollfus noted in Modèles d’artistes (1896), artists sought « models foreign to the human race ». By the latter half of the century, both academic and private studios established practices specifically to accommodate these non-human figures. Rosa Bonheur, for instance, welcomed animals from across the globe into her home, while Gustave Courbet introduced cows and ponies into his Parisian studio. In Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts, a Tier-Atelier was built in 1895 and supplied with animal models from the city’s tramway service, while Düsseldorf’s Academy established an « open-air » Modellraum für Tiere.
These examples prompt a reevaluation of the artistic practices and model identities of the time. How did these non-human models challenge and shape the practice of painting? Who were they, and through what networks were they brought into the artists’ studios? The archives reveal their names, but what stories lie behind their presence? How can we write a history of models that take non-humans into account?
This paper aims to delve into these questions, examining the conditions under which art was practiced with non-human models and the impact of their involvement on artistic technique and subject matter. By investigating visual sources and archival documents, it seeks to uncover the dynamics between artists and their non-human subjects. Turning to the study of non-human models seems a necessary step for the discipline, enabling a more animal-related history of art to be written.