Head of a Woman Looking Up 1800 - 1862

Wilhelm Schadow made this drawing, Head of a Woman Looking Up, in pencil on paper. We see the head and shoulders of a young woman, gazing upward. Schadow trained at the Berlin Academy of Art. He later became the Director of the Düsseldorf Academy. In his role as director, Schadow moved away from the popular Nazarene style and instead advocated for a more naturalistic approach to painting. This echoed a wider set of cultural and institutional changes happening at the time. European academies of art were moving away from a rigid system that promoted historical and religious themes and instead, encouraging students to look to nature and contemporary society for subject matter. A drawing like this reflects the renewed emphasis on close observation and suggests the changing social role of the artist at that time. To fully understand the institutional forces at play here, look to period sources that can help us trace Schadow's impact as a teacher and director.