The Life Class at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture

Natoire was an instructor at the Royal Academy in Paris. He depicts himself here in a red cloak correcting a pupil’s drawing. Other students are drawing from the two life models posed on the table in the centre. The paintings on the walls and casts of antique statues, including the Farnese Hercules seen from the back at left, serve as honoured prototypes. Natoire kept this ambitious, elaborately finished work until his death, suggesting it was a personal manifesto of the importance of academic drawing.