Academic study of a male nude, 1876

Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret Hon RA (1852 - 1929)

RA Collection: Art

Painted when Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929) was a student at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, this study depicts a male nude, standing in a set pose on what appears to be a rotating platform. The poses used by models at the École were typically derived from classical sculpture or from well-known academic paintings. The neutral background curtain helped artists to concentrate upon the figure and the play of directional light upon it.

From 1869-1878, P.A.J. Dagnan-Bouveret studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, in the ateliers of Alexandre Cabanel and Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1875 three of his works were accepted at the Salon. In 1876, the year in which this academic nude was painted, he won a first prize at the École des Beaux-Arts for painting the figure and second place in the Prix de Rome for his painting 'Priam Asking Achilles for the Body of his Son'.

After leaving the École des Beaux-Arts, he and the genre painter Gustave Courtois (1853-1923) went to the latter's home region of Franche-Comté. There, Dagnan-Bouveret's observations of provincial life and the countryside formed the basis for many of his landsape and genre paintings. During the 1890s he focused on painting portraits and mystical religious subjects. Among the many awards he received, Dagnan-Bouveret was nominated as Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur (1885), elected a member of the Institut de France (1900) and an Honorary Royal Academician in 1908.

The English painter and sculptor J. M. Swan, R.A. (1847-1910) went to the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1874, where he studied alongside Dagnan-Bouveret under Jean-Léon Gérôme. Dagnan-Bouveret presented this academic life study to Swan in 1876.