Open IIIF manifest What is IIIF IIIF viewers

Écorché arm

Maker

(artist)
1710-1788

Formerly attributed to
(artist)
1727-1785

Title

Écorché arm

Date of Production

(?) 1730 - 1739

Medium

graphite and red chalk on laid paper

Dimensions

Height: 14.9 cm
Width: 31.3 cm

Accession Number

D.1952.RW.2625

Mode of Acquisition

Robert Clermont Witt, bequest, 1952

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Copyright

Work in the public domain

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords

Label Text

Students at the Royal Academy were encouraged to make drawings such as this in order to familiarise themselves with the musculature of the human body. They worked either from actual dissected and prepared limbs, or from plaster casts taken from them. Such understanding was vital to the representation of human figures upon which their future careers as history painters would depend. However, the heroic ideals of human endeavour which such paintings presented were greatly at variance with the circumstances in which such studies were made; the bodies for dissection were taken from London hospitals or from executed criminals. William Hunter, the Academy's first Professor of Anatomy, is known to have made a plaster cast from the body of a man recently hanged at Tyburn for use in his lectures.

Provenance

Spencer (London); purchased there by Sir Robert Witt, London (1872-1952), n.d.; Witt Bequest 1952

Inscriptions

Watermark: Watermark: Recto, right centre: a fleur-de-lis in a circle with a double border (no match found in Heawood).

Inscription: none.

Collector's mark: none.

Information on this object may be incomplete and will be updated as research progresses. We are particularly committed to addressing any discriminatory or offensive language and ideas that might be present in our records. To help improve this record, and to enquire about images of The Courtauld Gallery Collection, please email gallery.collectionsonline@courtauld.ac.uk. Find out more about using and licensing our images.

____________________________

Buy a print from our collection