The basis for the exhibition The Male Nude: Eighteenth-century Drawings from the Paris Academy currently on at the Wallace Collection was an exhibition in 2009-10 held at the Cabinet des Dessins in the Louvre, Paris, which arose from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts’s policy of drawing on their historic collections in order to develop and highlight the historic international reputation of French painting.

French and especially Parisian artistic life in the eighteenth century was dominated by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, the forerunner to the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Founded in 1648 by Cardinal Jules Mazarin it then came under the supervision of Jean-Baptiste Colbert as part of a centralising policy that would bring artists under government control. It also formed part of the programme to promote the ideology of Louis XIV. Members of the Académie had a monopoly on royal commissions, and also had exclusive rights to show works at its official exhibitions at the Salon in the Louvre. In order to enter the Académie a master (Académicien) had to sponsor pupils for training, and there were quarterly petits prix for various types of drawing which would enable a student to proceed through the academic system. The study of the nude male figure formed an important part of the curriculum. When they had become fully proficient draughtsmen, pupils would be entered for the Prix de Rome, which allowed them the opportunity to spend three years at the Académie Française in Rome. On their return they were expected to present an art work completed in Rome for approval, and if successful then had to prepare a special piece in order to be received as a member of the Académie.

The real theme of the exhibition at the Wallace Collection is the Académie, and the way in which it taught, trained and institutionalised art practice in France. This is a collection of drawings by former pupils, some of whom went on to be successful painters such as Charles-Joseph Natoire, François Boucher, Jean-Germain Drouais, Antoine-Jean Gros and Jean-Baptiste Isabey. Many of the other drawings exhibited are by names that are not instantly recognisable, but this is not the point of the exhibition. Whilst it is a treat to see a drawing by the young Drouais, (Jacques-Louis David’s close friend and pupil), and Charles Natoire (who become Director of the French Academy in Rome), this is not an exhibition that relies on a star-studded cast to pull in the visitors. The emphasis instead is on the visual impact of the works themselves, and their presentation all together, filling the two rooms in the downstairs gallery of the Wallace with monochrome drawings of athletic and muscular nude male bodies.

Visually this is very effective and arresting. The brightly coloured dark red and blue of the walls in each room highlight the neutral black and white or red chalk and white colour of the drawings each mounted in an identical light wooden frame. The collection of male nude bodies, in depersonalised poses with the head either turned away or the features of the face briefly sketched give the rooms a heavy masculine esprit that is in stark contrast to the colourful feminine environment of the Wallace’s collection of paintings upstairs. The framing of the drawings is important here because by standardising the mount, all the images are brought together visually. Since the purpose of the exhibition is to highlight the uniformity of pose, this creates homogeneity between the rooms despite the hundred-and-fifty-year spread of 1640-1790 that this exhibition encompasses. The drawings are then hung at the same height so that the comparison between the different angles, shapes and poses of the models is emphasized and played with. The three figures by Paul Barbier, Louis-Simon Boizot and Ferdinand-Nicholas Godefroid of a Standing man turning to his right are drawings of the same model, executed in 1782. The identical pose and rear-view perspective on the figure, executed however from slightly different angles by each artist, evokes a sense of the atelier, the students standing or sitting in a semi-circle with the model on a podium. The three images hung together create a sense of movement, reminiscent of a set of film stills. This sense of moveable replication demonstrates the formulaic and repetitive nature of these studies. The 1789 drawings of Man Sitting on a Rock by Anthelme-François Lagrenée and Jean-Baptiste Isabey are further examples of the repetitive nature of the studio machine, but they also demonstrate the different drawing skills of the respective artists’ rendering of the same subject. Lagrenée’s detailed anatomical study of the densely packed muscular chest, shoulders and arms of the figure in black and white chalk contrasts with a more luminous and less muscular version of the same man by Isabey. The different poses, and in some cases different materials used (red chalk in contrast to black and white, and blue paper in contrast to the usual beige), highlight rather than subdue the similarity and sense of repetitiveness. The drawings are studies, exercises and a means of training artists, but would not have been considered great art either by the artists themselves or their masters. ‘Great art’ belonged to the realm of full-scale history and allegorical paintings and although these sketches and drawings may have been an important preliminary study or training for the large-scale works, they would never have been exhibited in this form at the Salon. So this exhibition plays with the observer both visually and intellectually. Visually it demonstrates the role of the curator, their ability to tease the eye and to create an arresting and interesting visual show that gives the sense of flipping through a studio portfolio. Intellectually the location of the exhibition ‘below stairs’ and away from the main collection of allegorical paintings in the Wallace, physically manifests the position these drawings occupied within the artistic hierarchy of the Académie.

Whereas visually this exhibition has a strong impact, conceptually it is less clear. One can admire the playful, muscular and splayed forms of naked manhood, but its aim to tie in with some broad concept of ideal beauty is mentioned only briefly at the entrance to the exhibition, and then not followed through visually or theoretically. This is despite the antique reference of Antoine Paillet’s 1670 drawing of Man posing as Laocoön, with snakes, and other ‘heroic’ poses struck by many of the models. Instead, the idea of an exhibition trail has been developed that links other objects in the Wallace’s collection of paintings with the Académie even though the theoretical and historical links are weak. However, this does not detract from a chance to explore the museum’s delightful collection with a new set of eyes and a sense of purpose. That in itself makes this exhibition worth seeing.

The Male Nude: Eighteenth-century Drawings from the Paris Academy is at the Wallace Collection, London, from 24 October 2013 to 19 January 2014.