John Bell: Rebelling against the artist
Since the monumental work of Vesalius, the relationship between anatomist and artist has been one of support and dependency. The anatomist depends on the artist to convey complex anatomy in a visually pleasing and clear way and the artist depends on the anatomist for accuracy. They both, in a sense, function to keep each other in check making sure that accuracy isn’t sacrificed for aesthetics and clarity isn’t sacrificed for detail.
But what happens when a stubborn anatomist doesn’t trust the creative eye of an artist?
He decides to do the illustrations himself. (You can almost hear the collective gasp of medical illustrators everywhere!)
The stubborn anatomist here is John Bell (1763-1820). You may recognize the name of his younger brother, Sir Charles Bell of Bell’s Palsy. Bell didn’t believe in the ability of artists and their “vicious practice of drawing from imagination.” Harsh words from a man that had quite an artistic talent himself.
He believed that there was “a continual struggle between the anatomist and the painter, one striving for elegance of form, the other insisting upon accuracy of representation.” In a commitment to true anatomical representation, he decided to solve the problem by drawing, etching and engraving his own illustrations, which would not suffer from “the capricious interference of the artist, whose rule it has too often been to make all beautiful and smooth, leaving no harshness…”
And he truly meant what he said. There’s nothing beautiful about his anatomical illustrations.
The illustrations succeed in being quite harsh. Without the guidance of a skilled artist Bell’s illustrations lack focus, depth, perspective and composition. He illustrates everything with the same amount of emphasis and in doing so loses the focus on the anatomy. The result is an ineffective anatomical illustration.
The artist’s role isn’t simply to make things “beautiful and smooth” as Bell states. It’s to provide clarity, to guide the viewer, to provide the illusion of depth, and above all to make anatomical illustrations effective and educational. Otherwise it’s just copying without interpretation, as Bell did in these illustrations.
Too bad Bell didn’t live long enough to see the invention of photography (1830). He would have loved the camera’s ability to capture the graphic harshness of dissection.
Sources: Vaulted Treasures, Dream Anatomy
Hi Vanessa,
I disagree with you on this one. There are several reasons for this: first of all: I have seen too many bad illustrations made by so called professionals. Putting the focus on the wrong structures, and such, does do the purpose of an illustration more harm than drawing everything with the same emphasis. Second: John Bell is a child of his time. If you look at drawings in the same time frame, you will notice that he isn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t that far from other medical illustrators. And the man is a good artist. Third: although in the USA and the UK medical illustration is a craft that is given on university and you are able to get a Masters degree in it, in a lot of other countries you aren?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t able to go and learn to be a medical illustrator. And in John?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s time probably most of the artists that made medical illustrations had a medical background themselves. And last, but not least: Medical illustration as a full time occupation is very young: only at the end of the 19th century it became a recognized profession.
Mieke – You bring up a good point stating that even today with professional medical illustrators, there are still terribly made anatomical illustrations. I completely agree.
I wrote about John Bell specifically because he was one anatomist that didn’t want to use a trained artist to do his anatomical illustrations. You’re right in saying that medical illustration didn’t become a profession until the early 20th century, but before then anatomists generally relied on trained artists for their illustrations, especially if they were publishing a text.
A great way to compare and contrast Bell’s work with that of another anatomist from around the same time is in the work of William Hunter (1718-1783). He used the extremely talented Jan van Rymsdyk as the artist for his anatomical illustrations. His famous “anatomy of the human gravid uterus” is stunning. And while Rymsdyk drew from dissection, his illustrations are still clear and there is a gracefulness to his line that is not present in Bell’s work.
What I think is great about Bell is that he somewhat set the stage for the union of anatomist and artist into what we now know as a medical illustrator.
Thanks for providing another opinion Mieke!
You’re welcome.
And thank you for the great link to the historical anatomies database!
Mieke
Do anyone of you got John bell’s picture or self portait? could anyone please send me?
Well said.