The Drawing School

A seventeenth-century academy or artist’s studio: a teacher, seen from behind, gives a group of boys a drawing lesson. Between them, in the centre, stands a nude male model. In the past it was thought that this was the studio of Frans Hals and his pupils (among them some of his sons). However, there are no good arguments to support this interpretation. This is probably not meant to be a particular workplace but rather a depiction of one of the phases in the training to be an artist: drawing from life. Other stages were copying the work of ‘good masters’ and drawing plaster and marble statuettes. Sweerts also devoted paintings to other phases. For some time the artist ran his own drawing academy in Brussels.