{"id":36488,"date":"2025-12-09T05:40:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T05:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=36488"},"modified":"2025-12-09T05:40:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T05:40:45","slug":"anatomical-exhibition-includes-rare-victorian-era-drawing-of-a-black-body-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=36488","title":{"rendered":"Anatomical exhibition includes rare Victorian-era drawing of a black body | Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n<\/p>\n

It is an image of an unnamed black man with his eyes closed and his innards exposed. Drawn with care and precision, the image may be the only anatomical drawing of a black body made during the Victorian age.<\/p>\n

Now it is part of a new exhibition that focuses on the work of Joseph Maclise, a surgeon and artist whose work \u2013 including his 1851 atlas Surgical Anatomy \u2013 made the human anatomy accessible to the general public, and who was the brother of the celebrated artist Daniel Maclise.<\/p>\n

Jack Gann, the curator at Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds, which is hosting the Beneath the Sheets: Anatomy, Art and Power exhibition, says Joseph Maclise\u2019s work also broke new ground by centring black bodies and focusing on queer desire.<\/p>\n

The portrait of the black man featured in Surgical Anatomy, which sold widely. But when the book was published in the US that image was the only one omitted, with racial prejudice and segregationist attitudes in the lead-up to the American civil war blamed for the decision.<\/p>\n

Maclise used living models from the streets of London and Paris to create his drawings, combining their figures \u2013 often idealised visions of the human body \u2013 with dissections of corpses taken from the morgues of the French capital.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Maclise used living models from the streets of London and Paris, combined with dissections of corpses, to create his drawings.<\/span> Illustration: Mark Newton Photography<\/p>\n

His drawings were intricate and delicate, often homing in on small details that other artists might have avoided. \u201cHe drew little scars or blemishes,\u201d says Gann. \u201cOne of them has an ear piercing, they aren\u2019t like Greek gods.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The artist also consistently drew the genitalia of his subjects, even when the drawing concerned another part of the body. \u201cHe drew these beautiful portraits and lavished attention on the body far beyond the bits that the anatomist needed to show,\u201d says Gann.<\/p>\n

The American medical historian Michael Sappol describes Maclise\u2019s work as \u201ca catalogue of irrelevant penises\u201d and that recurring feature has led to speculation about Maclise\u2019s sexuality.<\/p>\n

Although there is no evidence to confirm it, Gann says some believe Maclise was gay and that the drawings doubled as erotica. \u201c<\/strong>He never left any real records of his personal life \u2013 he never wrote letters or diaries and he never married,\u201d Gann adds. \u201cThe story is most clearly told by just looking at the pictures and coming face to face with that sensuality.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span>Maclise\u2019s drawings were intricate and delicate, often homing in on small details that other artists might have avoided.<\/span> Illustration: Mark Newton Photography<\/p>\n

Sappol argues in his book Queer Anatomies that Maclise\u2019s images are part of a \u201clost archive of queer expression\u201d, alongside the work of artists including the French anatomist and painter Jacques Fabien <\/strong>Gautier d\u2019Agoty and the English surgeon William Cheselden.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Maclise\u2019s work was eclipsed by the popularity ofGray\u2019s Anatomy, which was much more accessible and cheaper. But his work has continued to fascinate: one of his illustrations was used to promote the National Theatre\u2019s production of Frankenstein in 2011.<\/p>\n

Female bodies also feature in the exhibition, including the case of Mary Paterson, whose body was sold for medical study after she was a victim of Burke and Hare, the most notorious serial killers in Scottish history. She is described by the Thackray as \u201ca posthumous object of anatomical fascination, medical men marvelled at her preserved beauty, raising troubling questions about class, violence and the male gaze\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Drawing of Mary Paterson, taken from William Roughead\u2019s Trials of Burke and Hare, 1948.<\/span> Illustration: Thackray Museum of Medicine<\/p>\n

Charles Estienne\u2019s 1545 book, De Dissectione Partium Corporis Humani Libri Tres, with images that were essentially collages, or \u201cbody parts stitched together like Frankenstein\u2019s creation from sketches of many dissections\u201d, also features.<\/p>\n

As does Andreas Vesalius, whose 1543 De Humani Corporis Fabrica publication was the first major work to show human anatomy drawn directly from dissected bodies.<\/p>\n