Drawing of Female Nude with charcoal and chalk 1800

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon made this nude drawing with charcoal and chalk in France, sometime around the late 18th or early 19th century. It's a preparatory sketch, likely for a larger history painting. As an image of the female nude, it participates in a long artistic tradition with complex social dimensions. Historically, the nude was a genre largely controlled by male artists and patrons, and the art academy played a central role in normalizing that power dynamic. Artists like Prud'hon would have studied the nude extensively as part of their training. This drawing is a fascinating example of the artist exploring the aesthetic conventions of his time. To fully understand an image like this, we can consult sources like the artist's letters and the records of the French Royal Academy, piecing together the social conditions and institutional structures that shaped its creation. In doing so, we learn about the ever-changing social life of art.