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An Alcove in the Art Students' League
Charles Courtney Curran (American, 1861–1942)
1888
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 21.6 × 29.2 cm (8 1/2 × 11 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- New York City
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Bequest of Kate L. Brewster
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Charles Courtney Curran documented the atmosphere and activity of the Art Students’ League in New York, where he studied and later taught. Here male and female students practice rendering the idealized human form. Students worked from casts of Greek and Roman sculptures, as well as from reproductions of classically inspired Renaissance objects, such as Michelangelo’s allegorical sculpture Night from the tomb of Giuliano de’Medici, which occupies the lower left corner of this painting. In the 19th century Night would not only have served as an effective demonstration of the art of antiquity but would also have represented one of the more difficult poses to illustrate. Once students mastered drawing antique and antique-inspired sculptures, they would have advanced to a class with live models.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
