The Model

Karna Birmingham is best remembered as an illustrator of children’s books, but she was also a painter, author and teacher at the Julian Ashton School, a private Sydney art school established by artist Julian Ashton Art School in 1896 and still in operation today.
The Ashton school employed traditional teaching methods based on the French model which placed strong emphasis on painting and drawing the figure in the studio as well as painting landscape outside it en plein air. Life drawing was considered a foundational discipline for all artmaking and both students and teachers were expected to undertake regular life drawing as part of their everyday practice. Following Birmingham’s time as a student at the school she was appointed a teacher there in 1921, two years before this drawing was made.

This life study feels resolutely modern, not just in its simplification of form, but also the soft femininity of the model’s body. Perhaps the fluid ease of the drawing reflects the familiarity of the artist in occupying a female body as well as rendering one.