I appreciate all this diverse and impassioned feedback to Hale's teaching. I checked out his "Drawing Lessons from the Old Masters" book out from the library a few times, and learned a lot from it. The only thing that was missing for me in his analysis of Old Master drawings is that he never acknowledged that these drawings were a means to an end, the end being telling a STORY, like Daniel in the Lion's Den or Icarus, etc.
I know, he's operating on a different track, and it's good to apprehend the abstract elements of a pose. But what's important (to me at least) about those old figure drawings is how the artists made decisions based on a driving narrative.
Robert Beverly Hale was the single most influential instructor of all the people I've studied under. I was 16, it was my first drawing class ever, and the registrar asked "You sure you want to be here? It's an atelier." She couldn't believe a young person would be interested in classical drawing. Hale's studio anatomy class at the Art Students League was packed every day. If you didn't stake out a seat early you had to stand in the back holding your pad, shoulder to shoulder with artists of all ages and abilities. I had no idea Hale was a celebrated teacher, nor how this special experience would influence my art. He made time for every student, sitting and marking their drawings, always asking first, and provided individual instruction. The class started with a lecture, then quick warmups, 5-15 minutes, then during the long pose he would tell stories of his youth, most likely refined at cocktail parties. Like the time he was in his 20's and raced Picasso up the Eiffel Tower. Both were smokers and Picasso could barely breathe near the top, but Hale was younger so won the bet. I wish I remembered the stories, they were fabulous and highly entertaining. He was in his 80s then, had emphysema, and needed help getting up from the chair. There were 4-6 ladies, I mean groupies, about his age who showed up to most classes, and who would kill anyone who tried to help Hale out of the chair - that was their job, and it was jealously guarded. Over 40 years later, I still hear his Boston Brahmin voice in my head while I'm painting a wrist or navigating a small bone intensive part of the figure & see in my head that long charcoal holder while he says "It goes like this, you see".
In the early 1970s, I was a student of Robert B. Hale at the Art Student's League. I was very young and unaware that I was studying with a master. I vividly remember his crowded lectures. I remember watching in amazement as he drew parts of human anatomy with charcoal attached to a long bamboo stick. Once a week he would come around to each student and give each feedback on their work. He was a kind and generous man and an inspiring teacher. I still have my notes from his class and drawings done in his class.
He is so cool! Great to see him again. When I was 14 I took his anatomy class for one month. He made a permanent influence on the sculptural way I look at things and draw...now 53 year later. I can still see the way he drew hands on the board. So dimensional and expressive. My mom and dad also studied with him and I inherited his book. Lucky me. JoryMasonFineArt.com
What I like about the lecture is that we get to learn both, the human and animal anatomy at the same time. I really like the idea of drawing with a limited types of lines such as C and S curves, and straight lines, because they help us avoid indecision, but also help I believe in building the skill of drawing quickly from a moving subject.
We aren't descended from animals ... we ARE animals. We have collarbones, many mammals don't have them. We are not even the first fully bipedal apes, one of the early ones also has the spinal column enters the skull from below, not the back - but the brainpan isn't very large.
It is interesting to compare our specializations to other mammals and map how the weight bearing points change. Bears walk on the flat of their back feet, like we do. Illustrations of bear anatomy show the proportion of upper to lower leg and even the shaping of the surface muscles up around the rump are eerily similar to our own.
"The similarities and differences among the skeletons of four-footed mammals demonstrate a wonderful economy.Many different forms are achieved simply by extending or compressing different bone passages,without major rearranging or reconstruction.And if you imagine in fast motion our transition from four-footed to upright creatures,you can understand how the same basic set of bones has settled into different configurations,and why our knees and spines are still so subject to troubles.(A horse's knees don't bear anything like the same weight-load).As I draw my cats,the horses, the goats or even the bison in Yellowstone,I tend to hunch and stretch,bend joints, instinctively feeling their gestures inside my own bones and muscles.Feel what happens to your hand when you try to draw the wing of a bat!"-
Hannah Hinchman,"A Trail Through Leaves"
Also the passages in "The Once and Future King" that describes how it FEELS to Arthur when Merlin turns him into different animals ( part of his "eddication")
I read that Native Americans called the bear the" man of the woods" partly because when skinned he looks just like a man!
The 1970's were a wonderful time at the Art Student's League. The Soyer brothers, Isaac and Raphael were teachers, as well as Daniel Greene, Steven Leffel, Frank Mason, Robert Brackman, Huey Lee Smith, Normal Lewis, and other great artists of the late 20th century. If only I knew then what I know now, I would have taken full benefit of what these artists offered.
I watch the Hale lectures every couple of years. I find them fascinating. Wish someone would remaster them to higher resolution and re-release them. His book "Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters" is in my top tier of art books. I even followed his recommendation to get some real human bones to draw from. Having a clavicle and scapula helped me understand that area of the body, and rotating a radius bone around the ulna in 3D was educational in a way that no video or book could possibly match. I also had a tibia, ulna, sacrum, and some miscellaneous bones. Great stuff.
At 1 minute, he says, "Function makes form." Is this a paraphrase of the "form follows function" dictum? Or is there some subtle difference I'm missing?
I enjoyed learning that horses walk on one toe. And I enjoyed his style of elegant explanation combined with dramatic gesture.
I enjoyed listening to the lecture, as I have heard about his teaching for many accomplished artists such as Steven Assael. I have taken many an anatomy class in lecture, drawing and sculpture formats, and each new nugget of information builds on previous understanding. If I knew nothing, I might have found this lecture confusing, but as interested as I am in understanding, it would have motivated me to learn more.
P.S. By family legend, Robert Beverly Hale was a distant cousin of my mother, with whom there were shared Hale ancestors. Hers went North and pioneered in northern Maine, but retained that distinctive pronunciation common to the first colonial settlements, from Boston all the way South to Charleston and Savannah.
Back in the early '80's at Art Center College of Design, I asked Gene Fleury if there was a book he could recommend on drawing. He recommended Hale's "Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters". I went to the Norton Simon Museum's book store and found one there. In doing so, I DISCOVERED that you and Mr. Kinkade had written a book on drawing/sketching and of your adventures doing so! I went home with two new favorites!
Back to Hale's book - I read that book like the Bible beginning with the "divine Raphael's" circles and the discussion of what a line can represent and progressed to making my own geometric shapes, moving into conceptualizing the spacial orientation of forms in space before drawing. Just looking at the collection back then of the master drawings was an education, but now seeing them with more understanding as drawings. He then moves into anatomy with the recommendation of drawing bones! Crazy, who does that? I bought a medical cast of a human skeleton and began to do so, and then began learning more of the origins and insertions of the muscles. I only took that part as far as my questions when drawing the figure called for. All in all, I thought is was the most brilliant, simplified book on drawing I have ever seen.
I'm glad you brought up the underlying purpose of Old Master drawings. This is something I eventually learned from following your posts and from reading artist biographies, art history etc.. This understanding has helped my drawing and my art grow, and I get more out of studying books such as Hale's
I love this! I like the "pace" that he takes and the way he talks about life and art at the same time,not separating them.In the 1970's,when I was in my 20's I dreamed of going to the Art Students'League.But was never able to go.After all these years it makes me happy to hear first - hand accounts that tell me it was surely every bit as cool as i thought it would be!!
I appreciate all this diverse and impassioned feedback to Hale's teaching. I checked out his "Drawing Lessons from the Old Masters" book out from the library a few times, and learned a lot from it. The only thing that was missing for me in his analysis of Old Master drawings is that he never acknowledged that these drawings were a means to an end, the end being telling a STORY, like Daniel in the Lion's Den or Icarus, etc.
I know, he's operating on a different track, and it's good to apprehend the abstract elements of a pose. But what's important (to me at least) about those old figure drawings is how the artists made decisions based on a driving narrative.
How true! Thanks for pointing that out, James.
Anne, you're right that he was part of a noble Boston family of artists. Other famous Hale artists include:
Ellen Day Hale (1855-1940): American Impressionist painter, printmaker, and mentor
Philip Leslie Hale (1865-1931): Painter, teacher, and art critic.
Lilian Westcott Hale (1881-1940): Impressionist painter of the Boston School.
Susan Hale (1834-1910): Watercolorist and Philip Leslie Hale's aunt.
....and the contemporary painter Phil Hale, too.
Robert Beverly Hale was the single most influential instructor of all the people I've studied under. I was 16, it was my first drawing class ever, and the registrar asked "You sure you want to be here? It's an atelier." She couldn't believe a young person would be interested in classical drawing. Hale's studio anatomy class at the Art Students League was packed every day. If you didn't stake out a seat early you had to stand in the back holding your pad, shoulder to shoulder with artists of all ages and abilities. I had no idea Hale was a celebrated teacher, nor how this special experience would influence my art. He made time for every student, sitting and marking their drawings, always asking first, and provided individual instruction. The class started with a lecture, then quick warmups, 5-15 minutes, then during the long pose he would tell stories of his youth, most likely refined at cocktail parties. Like the time he was in his 20's and raced Picasso up the Eiffel Tower. Both were smokers and Picasso could barely breathe near the top, but Hale was younger so won the bet. I wish I remembered the stories, they were fabulous and highly entertaining. He was in his 80s then, had emphysema, and needed help getting up from the chair. There were 4-6 ladies, I mean groupies, about his age who showed up to most classes, and who would kill anyone who tried to help Hale out of the chair - that was their job, and it was jealously guarded. Over 40 years later, I still hear his Boston Brahmin voice in my head while I'm painting a wrist or navigating a small bone intensive part of the figure & see in my head that long charcoal holder while he says "It goes like this, you see".
You described the atmosphere in his class so well.
In the early 1970s, I was a student of Robert B. Hale at the Art Student's League. I was very young and unaware that I was studying with a master. I vividly remember his crowded lectures. I remember watching in amazement as he drew parts of human anatomy with charcoal attached to a long bamboo stick. Once a week he would come around to each student and give each feedback on their work. He was a kind and generous man and an inspiring teacher. I still have my notes from his class and drawings done in his class.
He is so cool! Great to see him again. When I was 14 I took his anatomy class for one month. He made a permanent influence on the sculptural way I look at things and draw...now 53 year later. I can still see the way he drew hands on the board. So dimensional and expressive. My mom and dad also studied with him and I inherited his book. Lucky me. JoryMasonFineArt.com
What I like about the lecture is that we get to learn both, the human and animal anatomy at the same time. I really like the idea of drawing with a limited types of lines such as C and S curves, and straight lines, because they help us avoid indecision, but also help I believe in building the skill of drawing quickly from a moving subject.
We aren't descended from animals ... we ARE animals. We have collarbones, many mammals don't have them. We are not even the first fully bipedal apes, one of the early ones also has the spinal column enters the skull from below, not the back - but the brainpan isn't very large.
It is interesting to compare our specializations to other mammals and map how the weight bearing points change. Bears walk on the flat of their back feet, like we do. Illustrations of bear anatomy show the proportion of upper to lower leg and even the shaping of the surface muscles up around the rump are eerily similar to our own.
You might enjoy this!!
"The similarities and differences among the skeletons of four-footed mammals demonstrate a wonderful economy.Many different forms are achieved simply by extending or compressing different bone passages,without major rearranging or reconstruction.And if you imagine in fast motion our transition from four-footed to upright creatures,you can understand how the same basic set of bones has settled into different configurations,and why our knees and spines are still so subject to troubles.(A horse's knees don't bear anything like the same weight-load).As I draw my cats,the horses, the goats or even the bison in Yellowstone,I tend to hunch and stretch,bend joints, instinctively feeling their gestures inside my own bones and muscles.Feel what happens to your hand when you try to draw the wing of a bat!"-
Hannah Hinchman,"A Trail Through Leaves"
Also the passages in "The Once and Future King" that describes how it FEELS to Arthur when Merlin turns him into different animals ( part of his "eddication")
I read that Native Americans called the bear the" man of the woods" partly because when skinned he looks just like a man!
The 1970's were a wonderful time at the Art Student's League. The Soyer brothers, Isaac and Raphael were teachers, as well as Daniel Greene, Steven Leffel, Frank Mason, Robert Brackman, Huey Lee Smith, Normal Lewis, and other great artists of the late 20th century. If only I knew then what I know now, I would have taken full benefit of what these artists offered.
I watch the Hale lectures every couple of years. I find them fascinating. Wish someone would remaster them to higher resolution and re-release them. His book "Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters" is in my top tier of art books. I even followed his recommendation to get some real human bones to draw from. Having a clavicle and scapula helped me understand that area of the body, and rotating a radius bone around the ulna in 3D was educational in a way that no video or book could possibly match. I also had a tibia, ulna, sacrum, and some miscellaneous bones. Great stuff.
At 1 minute, he says, "Function makes form." Is this a paraphrase of the "form follows function" dictum? Or is there some subtle difference I'm missing?
I enjoyed learning that horses walk on one toe. And I enjoyed his style of elegant explanation combined with dramatic gesture.
I think it means exactly the same thing!In fact grammatically it does!And it applies to everything in nature.
I enjoyed listening to the lecture, as I have heard about his teaching for many accomplished artists such as Steven Assael. I have taken many an anatomy class in lecture, drawing and sculpture formats, and each new nugget of information builds on previous understanding. If I knew nothing, I might have found this lecture confusing, but as interested as I am in understanding, it would have motivated me to learn more.
P.S. By family legend, Robert Beverly Hale was a distant cousin of my mother, with whom there were shared Hale ancestors. Hers went North and pioneered in northern Maine, but retained that distinctive pronunciation common to the first colonial settlements, from Boston all the way South to Charleston and Savannah.
Back in the early '80's at Art Center College of Design, I asked Gene Fleury if there was a book he could recommend on drawing. He recommended Hale's "Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters". I went to the Norton Simon Museum's book store and found one there. In doing so, I DISCOVERED that you and Mr. Kinkade had written a book on drawing/sketching and of your adventures doing so! I went home with two new favorites!
Back to Hale's book - I read that book like the Bible beginning with the "divine Raphael's" circles and the discussion of what a line can represent and progressed to making my own geometric shapes, moving into conceptualizing the spacial orientation of forms in space before drawing. Just looking at the collection back then of the master drawings was an education, but now seeing them with more understanding as drawings. He then moves into anatomy with the recommendation of drawing bones! Crazy, who does that? I bought a medical cast of a human skeleton and began to do so, and then began learning more of the origins and insertions of the muscles. I only took that part as far as my questions when drawing the figure called for. All in all, I thought is was the most brilliant, simplified book on drawing I have ever seen.
I'm glad you brought up the underlying purpose of Old Master drawings. This is something I eventually learned from following your posts and from reading artist biographies, art history etc.. This understanding has helped my drawing and my art grow, and I get more out of studying books such as Hale's
I love this! I like the "pace" that he takes and the way he talks about life and art at the same time,not separating them.In the 1970's,when I was in my 20's I dreamed of going to the Art Students'League.But was never able to go.After all these years it makes me happy to hear first - hand accounts that tell me it was surely every bit as cool as i thought it would be!!
Thank you for this! FYI there's another YouTube site with several more of his full-length lectures: https://www.youtube.com/@haleslectures/videos
Really well done and enjoyed listening to him and quite impressive the way he draws with that pointer to illustrate the talk.