Exposed: The Victorian Nude

1 November 2001 - 13 January 2002

William Etty Candaules, King of Lydia Shows his Wife by Stealth to Gyges... 1830, Tate

Although standards of taste and morality were expected to be maintained in public exhibitions, artists occasionally transgressed conventions of decency by displaying bodies in daring couplings or engaging provocatively with the viewer. At the same time a market existed for intimate, smaller scale works which allowed for close scrutiny and the indulgence of sexual feeling. Private commissions also enabled artists to explore more subjective ways of representing the nude, giving full expression to desires marginalised by mainstream culture.

Technology drove social change throughout the Victorian era, and the development of photographic processes created a new demand for the nude which could not easily be controlled by obscenity legislation. Photography blurred the boundary between the real and the imagined body, offering an immediacy not possible in painting. Although some photographs were conceived as works of fine art, others were more explicitly pornographic, catering to heterosexual and homosexual fantasies.