Sheet of Studies

In 1867—the year inscribed on this sheet—Lebourg abandoned his studies in architecture to pursue a career as an artist. By this time, he was two years into his training under Gustave Morin at the Académie de peinture et de dessin in Rouen. Executed when he was just eighteen, this sheet of studies hints at the kinds of subject matter and effects that would preoccupy him in the late 1870s and 80s, when he became especially known for his drawings in black media and exhibited with the Impressionists. The jug and bowls casting shadows against the wall as well as the vignette of the woman holding a candle at a window prefigure the quiet still lifes of household objects and intimate figure studies of women sewing in candlelit interiors of his mature drawings.