Page 30 - James Ward - A Lioness with a Heron

been required to draw from a living model, and it is possible that he did not take formal instruction in
life-drawing until he was made a Royal Academician in 1811.38 It is also possible that his exposure to
the other artists of the Sketching Society had made him more aware of his weaknesses in rendering
anatomy. Arguably, Ward had begun his study of the human figure at the age of twelve or thirteen in
Smith’s workshop, by making copies from Charles Lebrun’s Traité des passions (1698), a series of plates
with accompanying descriptions detailing how human beings expressed certain emotions. It is possible
that this early introduction to anatomy via Lebrun limited Ward’s understanding of how physiognomy
related to human movement, not to mention encouraging him to anthropomorphise animals. In any
case, Ward’s genre paintings up to 1801, while often vibrantly coloured and energetic in composition,
are derivative of other artists and often display only a tentative grasp of human anatomy and animal
dynamics. It is probably no coincidence that, unlike the examples by Potter and Stubbs mentioned
earlier that inspired him, Ward’s cattle and horse paintings rarely include human figures.

Ward began to attend the anatomy lectures given by Joshua Brookes at Blenheim Street. These were
small classes of only three or four students and relatively inexpensive at three guineas a session (the RA
charged eight guineas a class). For a small additional fee, students could dissect and draw corpses, and
special classes were held in horse and dog anatomy.39 A few years later, when he became friends with
James Northcote, it is possible that Ward’s enthusiasm for anatomical study might have been tempered
by their discussions. Northcote supported the use of anatomy to a certain extent, but believed that artists
could overuse it to the point of objectifying their subject matter, something he found abhorrent.40
However, Jane Munro believes that Ward was initially more sympathetic to the teachings of Dr. Charles
Bell, a talented amateur artist who recognised the value of using scientific knowledge to hone artistic
skills. Bell believed that painting should not be merely a vehicle for beauty, but also for the power of
expression, and lectured against the inadequate attention paid to anatomy in formal artistic training at
the time. Bell contended that a thorough understanding of animal mechanics and the bones and
musculature that underlay them was essential for the artist to accurately portray action and expression.41
Ward may have attended Bell’s lectures and he certainly knew and copied illustrations from Bell’s later
Essay on the Anatomy and Philosophy of Expressions in Painting (1806). Bell’s lectures were definitely
attended by Ward’s contemporary Benjamin Robert Haydon, who included in his memoirs a
recollection of the dissection of a lioness that he attended in 1810:

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