Episode 41 - The Naked Uncivil Savant

It was twenty past ten and the spotlights were hot and bright. The raised dais and carefully draped couch were still empty, our pencils were all sharpened, there was a muttering in the life room. The tutor said, ‘Right then, who’s volunteering? One hour each, we’ll need five of you.’It was 1989, early in the first term of my two years at Shelley Park1 art college, housed in the repurposed, characterful clifftop home of Percy Shelley, son of the writer Mary Shelley. The life drawing studio was on the top floor, accessed via a wide sweeping staircase, leading to the Photography, Graphics and Illustration studios, and then via a narrow flight to the garret, (originally for the servants, and reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a young chambermaid). This was the first time that term that a model had not turned up. Models were booked via an elaborate system of a self-appointed guardian of the list of Bournemouth artists’ models, and were supposed to let the hirer know if they would be delayed or unable to come, but before mobile phones or email, this did not always happen. I was one of the five who volunteered to model (clothed) for my classmates so that we could get a good day’s drawing in after all. The tutor said I could have a stretch half way through. I chose a reasonably comfortable pose, or so I thought, and settled in…First published here with full transcript, notes and more images, August 28th 2023. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe