Study of a Female Bust

Francis Augustus Lathrop's ink study demonstrates the classical anatomical training that shaped American illustration in the 1890s. The artist employs rapid hatching and confident line work to model form, capturing both frontal and profile views on a single sheet. Lathrop worked across decorative arts, murals, and book illustration during a period when disciplined figure drawing grounded commercial art. This sketch reflects studio practice—the repeated studies and anatomical investigations that prepared artists for newspaper work, where they would soon develop the sequential visual narratives and recurring characters that defined the emerging comic strip form.