Charles Bargue

The Cours de dessin commonly called the Bargue Drawing Course was devised and published in the 1860s by Charles Bargue with the scholarly collaboration of Jean-Léon Gérôme and the publishing house Goupil & Cie. Although several sources contradict each other, the course was probably published between 1868 and 1873[4] by Goupil & Cie, comprised 197 lithographs printed as individual sheets. The course was intended to guide students from plaster casts (Part I - published in 1868), to the study of great master drawings (Part II - published in 1870), and finally to drawing from the living model (Part III - published in 1873). The Charles Bargue Drawing Course is used by many academies and ateliers which focus on Classical Realism. Among the artists whose work is based on the study of Bargue's plate work are Pablo Picasso[5] and Vincent van Gogh, who copied the complete set in 1880/1881, and again in 1890. Van Gogh wrote sixteen letters to his brother Theo in which he discusses Charles Bargue's Cours de dessin (Drawing Course), even attributing his newfound ability to draw what he previously could not to this course. • Illustration — Twenty-second plate of Charles Bargue's Drawing Course, from a total of 197. “The careful study, the constant and repeated drawing of Bargue’s Exercices au fusain has given me more insight into figure drawing. I’ve learned to measure and to see and to attempt the broad outlines, etc. So that what used to seem to me desperately impossible is now gradually becoming possible, thank God.” — Van Gogh, Letter to Theo 172, September 1881.[6] The Bargue Course was produced as a set of individual lithographic plates intended as precise models for students to copy. This method has been resurrected in several contemporary ateliers aiming at training artists on realist drawing, following the only known surviving complete set kept in the National Art Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London. In 1991 two further complete sets were made public as a result of the founding of the Musée Coupil in Bordeaux.[7] Although the course was not originally intended to be executed using the sight-size method, it was eventually conflated with that technique, as the two approaches proved to be mutually beneficial when used together.