Master Copy Class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Jean Baptiste Greuze
1870
Study Head of a Woman
I’m taking a class from the New York Academy of Art called Master Copying Class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Could anyone be a better teacher than a great master, despite, of course, being long dead? Fortunately, I also have a great living teacher, João Brandão, to help me interpret what I am looking at. Copying a painting at the Louvre or any great museum, a tradition going back many centuries, is how most of the great masters learned to paint. The MET’s Copyist program was founded in 1872, two years after The Met first opened, the program has provided countless artists the opportunity to copy the great works that fill the museum’s numerous galleries.
Master Copying Class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
This exciting class provides students with the unique opportunity to copy paintings and sculptures directly from originals in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Utilizing the Met’s collection as a primary source of inspiration, students will develop intensive technical study, problem solving, and dialogue with artists and artworks of the past. This long established practice has been crucial in the education of many of the greatest painters in history as they developed their technique and formed their styles.
As participants are guided through the steps of painting or sculpting to recreate a masterpiece with all its colors and effects, we will aim to unveil the secrets of the old masters at one of the world’s most amazing museums!
I’m so excited to take this class–in fact, so excited that I am 45 minutes early! Walking up the museum steps today (which I have done many times) felt strangely different. I really think this is going to be a great class. I loved copying the Romney painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which I did without the benefit of a class. My friend Dr. Hal Shanis and I just decided we wanted to do it. We really didn’t know the ins and outs of what we were supposed to do, but had a terrific time doing the paintings and figuring everything out. This is much more formal and feels more like it might be like the high bureaucracy of the Louvre though I don’t think there are any interviews or other hurdles. In fact, the painting schedule is already set.
The first day the class met with NYAA teacher João Brandão in a conference room near the copier office in the Uris Center for Education at the MET. We talked about the rules of the MET and the schedule. (The MET has strict guidlines for copying not only out of fear of forgeries, which would exclude large and popular paintings, but also for such practical reasons as the traffic in the gallery where the painting is located. (For all the guidelines see //www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-creates/copyist-program.) We then took a guided tour of the Thomas J. Watson, Research Library, which has one of the most comprehensive collection of books and periodicals on the history of art in the world. The rest of the day was spent combing through paintings that were on the approved list from the curators from the different galleries of the MET. Below are some of the paintings I was hoping to paint but, unfortunately, were either not on the approved gallery list or were not approved by the Curator. Sooo frustrating!
Édouard Manet
Young Lady in 1866
Ilia Efimovich Repin (Russian, Chuguev 1844-1930 Kuokkala)
1884
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin
Antonio Mancini 1872
Circus Boy
Charles Loring Elliott
1857
Mathew B. Brady
Johannes Vermeer
1656
A Maid Asleep
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