Alfred Edward Chalon

With her head modestly lowered and gaze averted, a female model sits nude before a group of young male art students. The hourglass on the table governed the length of each pose. In the 1830s, London offered many opportunities for life-drawing classes of this type, at institutions including the Royal Academy and smaller private art schools and clubs. Women were present in these spaces as models, and in limited numbers as students. They were not, however, allowed to draw nude models, due to social taboos of the time. 

With her head modestly lowered and gaze averted, a beautiful female model sits nude before a group of young art students; the hourglass nearby would have governed the length of each pose. In the 1830s London offered many opportunities for life-drawing classes of this type, at institutions including the Royal Academy and numerous smaller private art schools and clubs. Alfred Edward Chalon, the painter of this watercolor, organized and ran one such club out of his own home, primarily for specialists in history painting, genre scenes, and portraiture, categories of art for which skill in drawing the human figure was essential. It is therefore not surprising that all the students in this life class are male, as social taboos continued to exclude women artists from working from the nude.