Figure Drawing: anatomy for artists

Showing posts with label anatomy for artists. Show all posts

Saturday, March 6, 2010

The Art Student's Guide to External Anatomy

The Art Student's Guide to External Anatomy. A new edition of the famous anatomy book by Dr, Julien Fau is available as a paperback at Amazon.com. If you prefer to download an e-book it is available at Figure-Drawings.com. Preview the book at Google Books.

Julien Fau, doctor of medicine in Paris, edited two different anatomic works for artists: Anatomie des formes exterieures du corps humain, a l'usage des peintres et des sculpteurs, and Anatomie
artistique elementaire.

The first was published in 1845 and the second in 1850. Art students of the time were likely to own and study closely one or the other. The first, which translates the The Anatomy of the External Form of Man for Painters and Sculptors, was published in full color stipple engravings by M. Leveille. The second which translates as Elementary Artistic Anatomy consisted of a description of the plates plus black and white engravings of 17 of the plates contained in the original color edition.

Here is a description of the books from Ludwig Choulant's History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration in its Relation to Anatomic Science and the Graphic Arts.

JULIEN FAU
Julien Fau, doctor of medicine in Paris, edited two different anatomic works for artists:
Anatomie des formes exterieures du corps humain, a I'usage des peintres et des sculpteurs. Avec un Atlas de 24 planches dessinees d'apres nature et lithographiies par M. Leveille, eleve de M. Jacob. Paris: M6quignonMarvis fils, 1845 (I0 and 214 pp.), 8° and fol. (24 lithographic plates), black and white and also colored.

The plates are very beautifully finished and comprise one plate of skulls of different nationalities; several different views of the nude bodies of a man, a woman, and a child, all drawn from nature, some of them supplemented by skeletons placed alongside of the bodies, with the body outlines; representations of the bones, and the muscles, the latter with the bones in some cases drawn in. Particular attention has been given to the various positions and flexions of the extremities. The last plate represents the myology of the Laocoon, without the sons, after Charles Clement Bervic's well-known print. This work has been translated into English, with additions, by the physician Robert Knox, and published under the title: The anatomy of the external forms of man, intended for the use of artists, painters and sculptors, London, 1848, 8°, with an atlas of 26 plates in quarto; published in black and white and also colored. The second, smaller, and less expensive work by Fau is:Anatomie arlistique elementaire. Dessins d'apres nature par J. B. Leveille, gravures sur acier. Paris: Mequignon-Marvis, 1850, 8°, with 17 steel engravings in 8°, three of which are in small folio.

In this work the representation of the shapes of skulls, of the nude bodies, and of the Laocoon are missing, but representations of three beautiful skeletons, with the contours drawn around them, have been added. The remainder deals with osteology and myology, although less exhaustively than in the previous work.

J.B. Leveille was a noted anatomical engraver among his books were: Neurologie ou description du systeme nerveux by Ludovic Hirschfeld,
A course of operative surgery by Christopher Heath,
Névrologie et esthésiologie. Traité et iconographie du système at Abebooks.com,
Hippocrate interprété par lui-même,
Traité pratique des maladies des yeux et expériences,
Traité et iconographie du système nerveux.

History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration in Its Relation to Anatomic Science and the Graphic Arts
A Course of Operative Surgery

Related Posts:

The Anatomy of the External Forms of Man by Julien Fau

Anatomy for Art Students, Painters, and Sculptors - The Art Student's Guide to External Anatomy

Human Anatomy for Artists: A New Edition of the 1849 Classic with CD-ROM (Dover Pictorial Archives) A Dover edition of the black and white plates.

The text without the plates at Google Books.

Another copy of the English translation by Robert Knox without the plates at Google Books.

Here is a quote from the Monuments of Medicine Collection at the Washington University School of Medicine, Bernard Becker Collection:

Although little is known about Julien Fau’s life, his published works highlight his various talents. As a medical doctor, he created three different artistic anatomies, which appeared in more than ten French, English and Dutch editions. This atlas of his was intended specifically for the use of painters and sculptors. His models often follow classic examples. This male figure showing the muscles of the human body is a copy of the ancient Greek statue of Laocoon. Fau’s interests also included surprisingly modern areas, such as photography: he wrote on the collodion process as early as 1854.

Related book with reproductions of old prints including black and white images from The Anatomy of the External Form of Man:

The Human Figure: A Sourcebook for Artists and Designers (Pepin Picture Collections)

Sunday, November 1, 2009

William Rimmer's Art Anatomy

William Rimmer's Art Anatomy was another book of human anatomy written and drawn by an artist. Like Gottfried Schadow he distilled his knowledge of the human form into a series of 81 plates which the art student could study.

New copies of the book and original editions are available at Abebooks.com.

From the publisher's notes:

"The book contains nearly nine hundred drawings, illustrating in the fullest manner the ethnological, bony, anatomical, and artistic construction, movement (both simple and composite), and purposes of the human form, of both sexes and all ages, as well as the expression of the passions, will full explanatory text on the same page with the drawings. The drawings are for the most part in outline, and are made with great firmness and beauty. Many of the figures are statues in their conception. There is one full-page composition, entitled the Call to Arms. The "Art Anatomy" is the most perfect compendium of pictorial and artistic knowledge on this subject that I have ever seen, and without doubt unique."

"It has been said that William Rimmer's reputation rests most soundly upon his art anatomy. I believe there can be no disputing this. In the plates of his anatomical drawings we find nearly 900 drawings, not notes or sketches, but master products of a pencil craftsman and works of art of the first order. He begins with the skull; the first chart contains nine drawings, each illustrating a different aspect of the head, beginning with its basic structure, and in the last drawing showing muscular attachments. From this he carries the student through a most exhaustive study of the human head—unquestionably the most marvelous of all created things. Of the eighty-one charts, thirty-one are given to this study of the head, physically, artistically, and psychologically. He deals with primitive and highly developed forms, comparing and emphasizing the characteristics that civilization retains and those called elemental.

"This thoroughness one finds in all Rimmer's activities. A wonderful mind, wonderful visualization, and an imagination which contemplated all that was worth while or great in nature and art."

From Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, Life Drawing from Ape to Human: Charles Darwin's Theories of Evolution and William Rimmer's Art Anatomy by Elliott Bostwick Davis.

Excerpts from Art Anatomy by William Rimmer at Scott-Eaton.com.

From the Literary Digest, Volume 70:

OUR PROPHET UNHONORED IN ART

A PROPHET IS NOT THE ONLY ONE who may be without honor in his own country. So may an artist and sculptor be unhonored and unsung, even tho, in the words of Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor, he be "the superior of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo in the delineation of various forms of art anatomy." Dr. William Rimmer, of Boston, who died in 1879, is the artist of whom Mr. Borglum writes so enthusiastically under the above title in the New York Evening Post. "In sculpture he worked more like Rodin at Rodin's best than any man in modern times," we are told. "Rimmer probably never heard of Rodin; it appears that he never went abroad, yet it is curious that he dealt with form with that strange, intense, plastic quality and that mastery of structural modeling which we see only in Rodin and one or two of his greatest contemporaries." Continues Sculptor Borglum of Sculptor Rimmer:

"How such a force could have lived in New England and thought, talked, modeled, and painted as he did for a long lifetime (in the memory of many still alive) without recognition is utterly incomprehensible. In so far as his great ability and his great productions affected the civilization of his environment, he might as well have been in Greenland. The truth is that Rimmer was not seen, not understood, because there was no one to understand him.

"What seems more remarkable still is that he is yet unknown. Artists do not know him. Recently at a little dinner I referred to him. My fellow guests were among the ablest of our painters and sculptors. Only one out of six had even heard of him. He is unknown in the schools. I did not learn of him through the regular art channels. I found his book of drawings in the possession of an American lady of the generation of Rimmer. I borrowed it. I lost all interest in the world for a week after my discovery, and grew angry and despaired over a world that knew nothing of it. Later I found that Truman Bartlett had written his life, and that the cellar of the Boston Museum had long been the vault wherein many of his fragments were neglected or lost." ,

In the sixties and seventies Dr. Rimmer was known in Boston art circles as a remarkable lecturer on art anatomy, Mr. Bartlett says in his bock, as the sculptor of several statues and busts, and as a man who had painted much without establishing a reputation as a painter. Yet,-Mr. Borglum assures us, "I have seen nothing in the records of art by the great Italian masters (excepting a few works of Da Vinci) that is comparable with Dr. Rimrner's drawings as studies not only of anatomy but of character." This modern sculptor then goes on:

"Unless it be a few of Holbein's and one or two I have seen by Velasquez, there are no drawings extant of the Renaissance, whether in France, Italy, Spain, England, or Holland, that can compare with some ninety pages of work which this remarkable man produced at the request of Mrs. W. A. Tappan, a lady who attended his lectures.....

"The story runs that this benefactress of humanity asked Dr. Rimmer if ho could not or would not make some of these drawings permanent so that the world might have them. He said that he would be glad to do it. She told him that she had a couple of thousand dollars she did not need, and asked him to take the money and do as much as he felt would be right for such a sum. With it he produced these ninety-odd pages, all of which are masterpieces for what they illustrate as well as works of art in character of line and general rendering. Half of them, at least, excel any drawings extant in pure beauty and as masterful demonstrations of knowledge of the human figure. They have a character of truth without exaggeration that is not unlike the Greek. The man is inspired by the same beauty and drama as the Italian Angelo, and in his drawings of hands and feet we feel the influence of the Renaissance masters, but in the form and structure of the figure and its proportion he is Greek."

From Ptak Science Notes, Dadaist Images in 19th Century Prints: William Rimmer's Artistic Anatomy, 1877

Conscience Continuum Blog.

ART: WILLIAM RIMMER WORKS ON EXHIBITION - The New York Times Review

ArtMagick Biography.

EVENING OR THE FALL OF DAY and FLIGHT AND PURSUIT
by William Rimmer (1816 — 1879) - Mindworkshop.com a post written by William Rimmer's great-great-great nephew.

Art Anatomy

Art anatomy original edition.

Art Anatomy board edition.

From The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Volume 25:

Dr. RlMMER is one of the many figures in American art that fill one with uneasiness. The artistic genius in this country, until recently, has had no place. In other circumstances Rimmer might have achieved more satisfactory results ; here everything was against him, though perhaps nothing was so much against him as a disquiet and pride inherited from a father who believed himself a prince by birth, and his own inherent lack of patience and humble teachableness. He had a strong artistic temperament, but was thorough in nothing except anatomy. In that he was an excellent theoretic teacher, though he always disapproved of dissection for art-students, and, in explaining the most difficult parts of interior anatomy, would use the blackboard only.

Rimmer made his strongest impression not in his studied designs, pictures, and modelings, but at the blackboard. He had a most facile pencil, and would improvise on the blackboard as a musician does on the key-board, producing varied and beautiful harmonies of line. He was eminently a draughtsman, caring little for the illusion which a picture-maker is apt to cherish. He was totally ignorant of color, and took very uncertain interest in form as such ; but line as a rapid means of expressing a situation, an idea, a passion, was always at his own command, and strongly moved him in such men as Rembrandt and Michael Angelo. His enormous egotism not only prevented him from understanding and learning from his immediate contemporaries, but kept him from acknowledging indebtedness to an older artist like Allston (whom he was doubtless affected by), or to a modern master like Blake, who also evidently had a decided effect upon his thought.

Atlantic Monthly. Volume 74, Books on Architecture and Art.

How to Draw People at Figure-Drawings.com

How to Draw Proportions at Figure-Drawings.com

Sunday, July 5, 2009

The Art Student's Guide to the Bones and Muscles of the Human Body: and Lessons on Foreshortening

The Art Student's Guide to the Bones and Muscles of the Human Body and Lessons on Foreshortening is available as a download from Figure-Drawings.com, and as a printed book from Amazon.com.

Johann Gottfried Schadow was a talented neo-classical sculptor working in Berlin in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He is famous for the quadriga on the Brandenburger Tor and the bust of Friederike von Preußen.

He became director of the Royal Academy of Art in Berlin in 1816 and this book is his first work dedicated to the instruction of his students in the basic anatomy of the human body. He used the prints of Albinus as a starting point and developed clear images of the bone structure and the muscular structure of the human body so that artists and sculptors would have a firm footing as they pursued their craft.

To these plates he added three plates on human proportions, a comparison of heads of youth and adult and old age, and a comparison of male and female, a second plate of typical proportions of the human form, and a third on the proportions of ideal form using classical Greek sculpture as the examples.

A third section is a careful analysis of the human head seen from various angles using the techniques of Albrecht Dürer, Jean Cousin and Johann Preissler.

The book was a revelation to students when first published in 1830, was still in use enough to be republished in 1892 and I think today's students of the human form will find it newly valuable for today's art and new media.