Academic Drawing. Encyclopedia

The book "Academic Drawing" is a legendary edition from the late 19th century, "Drawing Manual" "Course of Drawing Education," created by Charles Bargue and Jean-Léon Gérôme between 1867 and 1870 and compiled in 2003 by art historian Gerald Ackerman. The compiler of the reissue has done truly titanic work in collecting historical information about the prerequisites for creating the course and shed light on the life and work of Charles Bargue. Widely used until the early 20th century, the "Course of Drawing Education" is now a bibliographic rarity. The collection, consisting of more than 200 lithographs, was copied by students around the world before they began drawing from life. The manual consists of several large-format album plates, accompanied by a brief methodological note. It combines the achievements of realism and academicism. Training begins with drawing parts of the human face and the whole head, first with plaster, then with a living model. After that, it is recommended to move on to drawing the details of the human figure: first the hands and feet, then the whole arms and legs, and finally the torso. The drawing of the human figure also starts with a plaster cast, followed by drawing a living clothed figure. The course concludes with representations of animals. The book is an outstanding manual for artists; it formed the basis of European art education from the late 19th to the early 20th century, and several generations of artists around the world grew up on this book. Among the artists who carefully studied Bargue's course were Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh, who copied all the lithographs of the manual in 1880/1881, and part of them again in 1890. The book will be useful to a wide audience, including artists, students, art historians, and collectors.