The first nude

Our teacher told us one day, just as a side remark that we were to draw a nude model the following week so we should bring ten sheets of wrapping paper and a handful of coal to be able to sketch her. Now, we were in our third year and had been drawing portraits and modelling for a semester at the time. So you can easily find out how we were feeling about this extraordinary announcement till the great day came. For example, the most greenhorn of our colleagues started to smoke the pipe because he felt that now it was evident that we really became artists and a genuine artist, of course, has to smoke a pipe, too, it's part of his image.

Master Somogyi actually made a big deal about our first nude: he brought enormous drawing boards on trestles to the studio so we could barely climb onto them. There was also a dais in the middle and a folding screen next to it. Our master was also eager to haunt Pest for a real beauty to be our model, who was just a little older than us and hence absolutely without any experience.

We were all waiting in a trance at the studio including the only girl among us. Then in came our master with the beauty who quickly ran behind the screen. Master Somogyi sensed our condition so he pretended as if this was a natural situation already experienced many times before but the model was really reluctant to come out...

We started to be quite unsure about what was going to happen next when our model girl practically jumped front and threw off her cloak. Just at the same moment, Josep with his pipe fell of his trestle in his excitement causing a great bang amongst big stirs of dust and smoke. He took his board down with him just as our giggling colleague, Éva Oláh.

All hell broke loose: teacher, students, model all screaming with laughter, which took away the stress at last. When I look back, I can see that we must have been really eager to learn as even on that day we were capable of concentrating on out five-minute sketches. Naturally, our master was with us doing his own sketches, too.

Leányakt
Nude girl(1968.)