ford madox brown - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

138). It focuses on the bulge of the lower arm and the foreshortening needed to keep
it in proportion. Although Brown had been thoroughly trained in the three Belgian
academies, when he returned to London in 1846 he attended life drawings classes run
by his friend Charles Lucy (see cat. nos. 96-99). He wanted to maintain and build
upon his life drawings skills so that the figures he created were as believable as
possible.
The pressure on mid-nineteenth century artists to attain anatomical accuracy in their
figures is exemplified by the preface to the 1841 edition of Costume of the Ancients
by Thomas Hope. He states that:
A thorough proficiency in drawing the external anatomy of the human
frame must be confessed the first requisite of all historical painting. It is
indispensable to the correct representation not only of the parts that are
left bare, but even of the clothing in which others are enveloped. If the
painter cannot array it according to truth; since the very folds of the
raiment must depend on the forms and motions of the body and limbs
beneath: above all, he cannot attire it with elegance; since, in order to
render his figure pleasing to the eye, the general attitude and proportions
of the frame itself should remain distinctly perceptible even through the
fullest drapery. 186
Having made studies of each figure in chalk or pencil Brown went onto make studies
for individual figures in oil such as the drapery and figure studies on one canvas for
186 Op. cit. at note 121.
136