Curman’s Skull: Scientific Racism and Art

Abstract

In a group portrait by the Swedish painter August Malmström from c. 1894, the professor of anatomy Carl Curman is seen lecturing a group of students at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, most of them women. The painting has often been used to illustrate the change that came to the Academy of Arts in 1864, when a separate Ladies’ Department, opened. This article investigates the painting from another perspective, raising the question: what exactly was Curman teaching? As a result of the analysis, Malmström’s group portrait reveals the impact of Scientific Racism on nineteenth-century art education. Hereby, Curman’s lecture is put in the context of among others Petrus Camper’s idea that the different races differ in skull shape, and particularly in facial angle and Anders Retzius’ classification system for skulls.