Drawing the Nude: From Manet to Auerbach

Since the Renaissance the discipline of drawing in Western art has been devoted to achieving a particular representation of the human body based upon the classical ideal. In the early 1900s artists began to break away from this academic convention and sought to capture the nuances of the living body.

Similar precision and clarity of line is evident elsewhere in the work of RB Kitaj, Keith Vaughan and Peter de Francia, whose particular interpretations of the human body were each supported by their strict adherence to drawing from life.

While the drawings of Manet, Sickert and Auerbach focused on the female form, later artists in the 20^th century began to re-explore the male form, which had also been a central tenet of the classical ideal. Drawn two years after homosexuality was legalised in Britain in 1967, David Hockney’s Peter (1969) is a joyful celebration of Hockney’s relationship with his boyfriend and muse, Peter Schlesinger. It stands in contrast  to Keith Vaughan’s deeply personal sketches of full frontal male nudes that reveal much about his personal struggles with his homosexuality.

The exhibition was held in the De’Longhi Print Room.