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Created in 1820, the Nîmes drawing school was intended all along the 19th century for the teaching of drawing to the working classes as a priority. It met a need for instruction but also an economical need, as Nîmes was then counted among the most important manufacturing centers in France. The school found itself completed with a museum created by the municipal authorities, the prime vocation of the institution being to meet a pedagogic necessity. In addition, the drawing school acquired a collection of models that can be used directly in classes, that collection being only known today through its archives and the heritage of the Mérignargues family, which gave the school a teacher and a student. Particularly enriched in the 1880’s, these collections consist principally of molded plaster models, which represent statues, busts, ornaments, and architectural features… They become the mirror of a pedagogic system using imitation and comparison based on the antique ideal. Otherwise, the study of their constitution highlights their central role in the decorative arts development by the state in the late century, the collections thus becoming the instrument of a national policy.