Exposed: The Victorian Nude

1 November 2001 - 13 January 2002

Theodore Roussel The Reading Girl c.1886-7, Tate

The Model as Subject Around the turn of the century the conventions of the idealised nude were challenged by new, naturalistic treatments of nakedness and by the desire to see the body placed in contemporary settings. These concerns led to the making of a painting from a model becoming an end in itself rather than a stage in the process of evolving a composition. 'Boudoir nudes' by cutting-edge young artists inspired by French realists such as Manet and Degas, presented the body in seedy domestic interiors that hinted at illicit sexual activity.

The vigorous, even aggressive, techniques adopted by some of these painters appeared in certain cases to besmirch and fragment the Þgure, offending conservative critics who perceived such works as alien (that is, French) and immoral.

Naturism

From the 1860s, but especially in the years around 1900, images of nudes in informal modern outdoor settings emerged as an important category in British art. Many of these advanced pictures were shown at dissident exhibiting societies such as the New English Art Club, established in 1886 as a direct challenge to the conservatism of the Royal Academy.

The representation of naked figures in the open air also connected with ideas about the benefits of fresh air, exercise and bathing, which were in themselves a response to reformist thinking about public health. Many painters and photographers showed boys or young men enjoying the sun or engaged in athletic sports, and although sometimes deriving from, and appealing to, homoerotic sensibilities, such scenes also reflect
a universal longing for the untainted innocence and physical ease of gilded youth.