Study of Nude Figure

This anatomical study by American artist Francis Augustus Lathrop demonstrates the foundational practices underlying figure drawing in the late nineteenth century. The sheet presents a reclining female nude in profile with detailed studies of hands below—a standard exercise in academic training. Such sketches formed the basis for illustration work in periodicals and books. Lathrop's precise line work and careful attention to musculature and proportion reflect the classical method that trained illustrators of the newspaper age, who would soon pioneer the visual conventions of sequential narrative: panel composition, gesture economy, and expressive anatomy that became the visual grammar of comics.