These rapidly drawn life studies were made on a page from a sketchbook Constable seems to have been using in 1808. Constable first entered the Life Schools of the Royal Academy on 19 February 1800, he continued to attend regularly.
Constable’s friend and mentour, the landscape painter Joseph Farington recorded a visit from Constable noting that: ‘He attends the Life Academy every evening.’[1] Farington records an illustrative precis of Constable’s conversation regarding his time at the Life Academy: ‘Rigaud is the present Visotor at the Life Academy & is one of the best Visitors that the Academy affords & sets very good figures. Tresham who was the last Visitor, said that He never saw so many good drawings in the Academy at one time before. Mulready a man Twenty one or two years of age is reckoned to draw the best, but sets Himself high upon it as if He had done His business. He was a pupil of Varley & married His sister. Hilton, another student draw very well. He is abt. 25 or 6 years old.’
Constable seems to have made these two studies rapidly on a small sketchbook, perhaps trying out a pose before moving to a larger format. We know that he was also producing large-scale finished drawings in the Life Academy and, more unusually, painted studies at this date. The two drawings show a female model lying and standing. Female life models were a peculiarity of the British academy system. Constable suggests the figure with a series of subtle hatched lines, avoiding outline, a method which was particularly noted by contemporaries.