Figure Study

This anatomical sketch by American artist Francis Augustus Lathrop demonstrates the foundational draftsmanship underlying late 19th-century illustration. The reclining pose, rendered in graphite with selective shading, reveals Lathrop's training in figure drawing—essential preparation for commercial work in periodical illustration and design. The numbered notations suggest this served as a reference study, possibly for later transfer to finished compositions. Such studies were standard practice among illustrators who supplied the newspapers and magazines that, by century's end, were experimenting with sequential narrative and visual storytelling techniques that would eventually define the comic strip form.