The Contemporary Nude

About

This year’s Annual Exhibition by  The Hesketh Hubbard Art Society London’s largest life drawing class.

The Society was founded in 1930 to offer artists the chance to draw direct from the figure, without tuition, in a friendly, collegiate atmosphere, and has been running ever since. At our weekly classes, 100 or so members come together to sketch from four models: three nude (in 15 minute, 30 minute, and 2 hour poses), and one clothed.

During these sessions, we study proportion, perspective and form as we put down on paper the human figure, perhaps the most difficult of subjects: more than just shapes and shadows, but muscles and bones; poses with dynamics, each singular in gesture and personality.

Although the classes are untutored, experience is our teacher – the more we draw, the harder we look, the better we learn to express ourselves and the bodies before us.

This year the Society welcomed three young artists under a new bursary scheme, Bartholomew Beal, Lucy Savage and Jonathan Farningham, whose works will be on display. The exhibition gives an excellent view of the excitement and struggle involved in life drawing and interpreting the contemporary nude.