Figure Study

This ink sketch by Robert Frederick Blum documents the artist's anatomical research through a standing male figure drawn from behind. The economical line work and careful attention to musculature reveal Blum's training in figure drawing—essential preparation for his later work as an illustrator and muralist. Working in the late nineteenth century, Blum participated in a tradition of academic study that influenced American commercial art and illustration. Such studies formed the foundation for the visual vocabulary that newspaper cartoonists and comic artists would soon develop into sequential narratives with recurring characters, establishing the visual grammar of the modern comic strip.