Abstract:
Title: Teaching drawing through casts: an overview of the evolution of models in 19th-century Lyon
From the creation of the École gratuite de dessin de Lyon in 1757 to the upheavals in art education in the 1970s, plaster casts enabled several generations of Lyonnais artists to learn to draw “from the hump”, according to the method initiated by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in the 17th century. Material remains of this important teaching material for drawing, as well as numerous archives, can still be found in various institutions in Lyon. Our investigation is part of a doctoral thesis aimed at locating the plaster casts used to teach drawing, reconstructing their history to identify their suppliers and models, and understand the logic behind their acquisition and their place in teaching. Our paper provides an update on this research.
Keywords: Teaching, Lyon, silk, drawing, plaster, cast, print, sculpture, antiquity, collection.