Head of a Bearded Man Gazing to His Left (1859): Art, History and Details

Head of a Bearded Man Gazing to His Left (1859) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is William Mulready (British, 1786–1863).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

For William Mulready, drawing was a lifelong preoccupation. This sheet was drawn from a model in the Royal Academy’s life school when the artist was 73. He was one of the Academy’s most devoted teachers, positioning the model for his students and then drawing alongside them. Closely observed and meticulously crafted, the work attests to Mulready’s consummate skill as a draftsman, and the weather-beaten face of the male model is as arresting today as it was in Victorian London.

Object facts

• Title: Head of a Bearded Man Gazing to His Left
• Date: 1859
• Creator attribution: William Mulready (British, 1786–1863)
• Culture: England, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 22.6 x 18.4 cm (8 7/8 x 7 1/4 in.); Secondary Support: 28.1 x 24 cm (11 1/16 x 9 7/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2013.241

A detail from the museum

This instantly recognizable model was the subject of at least one other drawing, titled Head of an Old Man, in the collection of Tate Britain today.

Collection credit

Gift in memory of Helen Borowitz

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lemonedes, Heather. British Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.