Camille Pissarro

This double-sided drawing contains a study of an academic male nude on both the recto and verso. Dr. Cora Michael (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) suggested the sheet was made during Pissarro's studies at the Académie Suisse in Paris, sometime around 1860 (written correspondence, June 2010). At the Académie Suisse, for 10 francs, Pissarro could draw from a male model for three weeks, a female model during the fourth week, from early morning until ten at night. (Ralph E. Shikes, Pissarro, his life and work, p. 53). Pissarro commonly used both the recto and verso for nude studies, as evidenced in an unrelated, though stylistically similar Study of a Seated Male in the Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford (Richard R. Brettell and Christopher Lloyd, A catalogue of the drawings by Camille Pissarro in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Oxford: 1980, p. 105-106, no. 38). In both the Ashmoleon and Morgan Library & Museum drawings, Pissarro makes little effort to idealize or heroicize his model.