Écorché (Figure Study of Musculature)

In this suite of three drawings, Daniel Huntington rendered the idealized male figure—based on an ancient Greek sculpture of a dancing faun that he most likely knew from a plaster cast—in progressively complete anatomical states. Using different colored media and a combination of crisp outlines and soft hatchings, the artist rendered the human form with great precision and sensitivity to the distinct properties of skin, muscle, and bone. As a group, these sheets provide a virtuoso demonstration of the academic principle that an understanding of anatomy is fundamental to figural representation.