Study after Eugène Durieu's Seated Female Nude 2, Drawing, Pencil/Colored Pencil on Paper, 2021

Corné Akkers  

After my last drawing of Geesje Kwak, I did not have many new ideas. Then I remembered I had a photo of a seated female nude by Eugène Durieu. It contains a lovely sequence of folds in a cloth draped loosely around a nude. Often, these 19th-century photos show old-fashioned motifs. Victorian clothing and old-fashioned hairdos are not my favorites, but this one has a timeless look. The photograph could almost have been taken yesterday and could even be considered contemporary art for eternity.

Durieu’s Work
You have to know I have known Durieu’s work for a long time. Like me, he was also a lawyer who turned to art later in life. My pastel L’Odalisque was based on his picture, and I am not the first—Delacroix also used it for one of his oils. It was time to do another one, and I was eager to continue studying the texture of fabrics.

Variation in Repetition
The working method this time was basic but essential. I used only straight contour delineations. Unlike in previous drawings, I did not long for the invention of new forms. Therefore, I used my own style of cubism from the past, more or less. Some forms are defined by dark linear structures; some are bounded by soft tonal gradients. This way, I was able to create variation between harsh- and soft-looking objects. As in many of my artworks, I use the principle of repetition in variation and variation in repetition. Although the dominant object in the motif was very charming, I was not particularly impressed by its background. Therefore, I decided to extrapolate plain delineations from within the body outward and turn them into a division of dark and light planes. Only the folds in the top right corner are vague reflections of the original ones in the photo.

Graphite pencil (Sakura 0.5 mm, Pentel 4B) drawing on Talens Bristol paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.1 cm).