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Pierre Duval Le Camus
French, 1790–1854
The Drawing Lesson
c. 1826
In the corner of a studio, one woman copies a framed image fixed to an easel while another leans forward to offer advice. Women were not permitted to attend state-run art schools in nineteenth-century France but often took private lessons. In fact, Duval Le Camus ran a studio that taught women to draw by copying, as the student with the drawing board is doing here.

Image Caption

Pierre Duval Le Camus, The Drawing Lesson, c. 1826, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, 1955.728
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
12 15/16 x 9 3/4 in. (32.8 x 24.7 cm)
Object Number
1955.728
Acquisition
Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark before 1955
Status
On View

Select Bibliography

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Exhibit Five, Supplement: South Gallery. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1959. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1970. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1972. Cunningham, Charles C., et al. The Elegant Academics: Chroniclers of 19th-Century Parisian Life. Exhibition catalogue. Williamstown, MA: The Clark, 1974. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.. In the Studio: The Making of Art in 19th-Century France, Sept. 12-Oct. 25, 1981. Cat. by David B. Cass. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1984. Kern, Steven, ed. List of Paintings in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1992. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.

Provenance

[Vicars Brothers, London]; [Knoedler, London, sold to Clark, 31 July 1939, as The Drawing Lesson]; Robert Sterling Clark (1939–55); Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1955.