Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - How Nudes Changed Britain

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Why were nudes so significant in Victorian England? What role did painting them play in wider social change at that time? And why didn't men think that women had the capacity for genius?Joining Kate today is Tabitha Barber, curator of the Tate Britain exhibition Now You See Us, which explores women artists in Britain over the last 500 years.You can also watch Kate in a documentary all about this, called The Fight To Paint, over on History Hit - simply follow this link.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Voting is open for the Listener's Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards, so if you enjoy what we're doing, we'd love it if you took a quick follow this link and click on Betwixt the Sheets: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/votingEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code BETWIXTYou can take part in our listener survey here.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters, fancy seeing you round here. I'm so glad that you've dropped by because I do enjoy our time together. But before we can get going, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adultery way, covering a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too. Well, I certainly feel a lot safer.

Let's get on with it. Oh, hello, betwixters. I am just applying the finishing touches. to a painting I've been working on, and as you can see, it is really starting to come together. Just adding a little bit of shadow to this buttock dimple, and yes, perfect. The year is 1894, and here in England, it was only last year that a ban was lifted on women from drawing nude life models. I mean, somebody has to protect our modesty after all. Yes, the expectation was that women artists should stick to painting,

suitably delicate subjects, watercolours of flowers genuinely, which some did and they did it marvellously, of course, because they were artists, but men were expected to learn how to paint people in the buff and women were banned from doing it. But thank fuck we can now draw and paint as many dicks and balls and fannies and boobs and bottoms as our art education can possibly supply. Hurrah! But why was we? women being able to paint people in the bollicky buff a big deal? Well, I am ready to find out if you are. What do you look for a man?

Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. To be an artist, an artist, darling, you need to see naked people. Maybe that is oversimplifying things, but it is a huge part of the artistic training process.

You need to see people in the bollicky buff. It's not a pervy thing, you have to draw them. Particularly in the 19th century, any artist worth their salt, had to be trained using life models. And speaking as someone who spent years modelling for artists in the nut, I can tell you that being a life model is not easy. It is not an easy thing to do. In fact, it's an active part of the artistic process.

Recently, I popped down to the Tate Britain in London to speak to Tabitha Barber, curator of the new exhibition, Now You See Us, which features the work of over 100 female professional artists. And I went to find out about their fight to be seen, the role that Nudes played in shaping the artistic landscape of Britain, and the social movement for equal rights all this art got caught up in. And I've also presented a documentary all about this called The Right to Paint,

which you can now watch over on History Hit. Simply follow the link in the show notes. And if you're curious to hear more about the art world, why not listen to our episode on the sexual liberation of the pre-Raphylites? Just scroll back to June 2020. Now without further ado, easels out, paint brushes at the ready, and let's get our kits off. On with the show.

So hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Tabitha Barber. How are you doing? I'm great. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. You kidding. Thank you for letting me in, because we are recording in situ.

We are in the tapes because you are the curator of the exhibit. Now You See Us. women in art. What is the story of this exhibition? When did you decide we need an exhibition of women artists? How long has this been in the making? It's been an idea going back to at least 2016, I think. Wow. But my interest in women artists goes back to 1999 when I did an exhibition at the Geoffrey Museum, which is now called the Museum of the Home. So that's how long ago it was on the artist Mary Beale, the 17th century artist Mary Beale. And I always thought that there is more to say about women artists.

And Mary Beale, who was probably the best known of the professional artist working in this country, she must have had forebears, who were the artists who came after her. It just seemed a logical thing to do to try and shine a focus and put a spotlight on women artists who have forever forgotten. And it's not an exaggeration that women artists... No. Pre-1920, not just pre-1920, post as well, but this exhibition goes 1520 to 1920, the first 400 years a woman trying to be professional artists or trying to be accepted as professional artists in a society that didn't really see that as their place. That's what this exhibition is about. If people just come to this exhibition and come away surprised in the realization that so many women artists existed, that would be wonderful.

Do you know, that's what got me. I don't know why, but I thought when I was coming to look at the exhibition, that, well, if they've got women artists going back to the 16th century, there might be a few, a precious few that they've managed to find. It's almost embarrassing how many women artists there are. There are so many of them. There are 110 in the exhibition. Obviously, that's not all the women artists there were.

We don't represent all of them. We can't. Some are more important than others, inevitably, because that's the same as male artists. I suppose if you took a sieve and shook it, these are the artists that are left behind in the sieve. I'd say it's a good chunk from the tip of the iceberg, but there were so many others.

And that makes it worse that they're forgotten, because we're not talking about a few rarities that there was only a handful of them anyway. There's thousands and thousands of women. There was a really pioneering lady called Ellen Clayton, and she published a book in 1876. It was about women artists in England. It was two volumes.

The first was the more historic artists. The second were her contemporaries in the 19th century. And there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of names, names that, quite frankly, I have never heard of before. And she wrote in that book that trying to research artists of the 16th, 17th and 18th century, she found so hard. She said they've only left faint footprints on the sounds of time. And she was expecting that the women that she knew personally,

that she was also writing about, to be remembered. But as well as all those artists that she said, you know, that left only faint footprints, all the other artists who are her contemporaries, including her own book, have been lost sight of. Oh, God. We're here today to talk about a particular interest of mine, which is the subject of nudes.

in art. Yeah. And it's particularly interesting to me because to earn extra money when I was a student, I did life model him. And I remember thinking, this is an easy way to earn 20 quid.

And I learned pretty quickly, no, it's not. No, it's actually really, really difficult. It's really hard. It hurts. It's, you're cold. It's so difficult. But ever since then,

I've had an absolute fascination with nudes and life models in art. But one of the things I hadn't really appreciated was how difficult it was for women artists to paint nudes. It was just regarded as improper. But that's one of the themes running through the exhibition right from the get-go, from the 16th century,

right the way through to the 20th century. It's women trying to get access to training. And the life room, painting from life, needs from life, was regarded as the cornerstone of artistic training. And women just didn't have access. And even when they were first admitted to the Royal Academy schools, as students, they still weren't allowed access to the life class. There was a very fixed curriculum that women and men followed,

and you began by copying after antique sculpture, class to casts. And then the men would progress to the life class, and women didn't. They had to progress to drawing female models, but clothes. Closed? Yes. Even in the 1890s, when Laura Knight, retrospectively she's looking back on her career and she's talking about her time in the

1890s at the Nottingham School of Art where she was a wonderful star student and we have one of the drawings that she made at art school in the exhibition. It's a wonderful short drawing of a female head. But she said she wasn't allowed access to the life class. She had to copy antique sculpture and she said looking back on my art, I I realised that it's given this woodenness to my work. And in the exhibition, we have a whole wall of paintings that she made in Cornwall, of women in relaxed, easy clothes or completely nude on rocks on the Cornish coast. And she was absolutely revelling in the freedom she had of doing precisely what she wanted.

That sort of a moment of freedom, that, you know, the modern woman who was kind of released from the corset and was going about and doing precisely what she wanted. They're wonderful, those paintings. Before we get onto the fight to be allowed to draw, needs to be allowed access into the life class, it seems kind of strange that women face such hostility being artists, that there was this line drawn in the sand, like, no, you can't do that.

When to draw was considered a very womanly occupation. I remember Pride and Prejudice, that whole conversation, about what is an accomplished woman, she must be able to draw. And do you get that coming up? It was a real thing, like, well, ladies should be able to draw. So where is this? Well, you should be out of draw, but don't draw that. Stop that.

I think the difference is art pursued as a genteel accomplishment, an art perceived as a professional artist. And it was the latter that women didn't do. It was thought that they shouldn't. Throughout the exhibition, it's not just access to training that they want. It's that ability to be seen as a professional and to be taken seriously on the same level as men. And going back to Mary Beale, I said that back in 1999, I've been focusing on Mary Beale doing research on her. And I was recently looking at the

historiography of Mary Beal, how she's been described and talked about by art historians throughout history, starting in the 17th century during her life or just after her life, when she's accepted and talked about in terms of being a good artist. She said that in her portraits, lots of character, he had wonderful colouring, he had a really successful career and was a professional. By the 19th century, the way she's talked about has slipped and she's talked about as a woman artist. And it's thought that rather than her male peers, it's proper to compare and contrast her with other women artists. And by the 20th century, the word amateur starts being applied to her. Her paintings are boring and dull, derivative weak. She has poor colouring, poor characterisation,

and in quality it said that she is little better than an amateur. And I think it's like this connection in people's minds as a woman artist is a genteel amateur, is therefore less good, so therefore is not worthy of proper study. And I think in the 20th century, when art history itself is being formed as a discipline, this concept of a woman artist as a gentle amateur less good is so hard to break.

And I was talking to one because we consulted so many people in the formation of this show, scholars who've been working on women artists for decades. One of them who did a fantastic PhD decades ago on Victorian women artists. When she was trying to establish her topic, her tutors, university tutors, said, did you have to focus on women artists? Can't you think of something proper to study? Shit. Wow. Wow. It's unbelievable, isn't it? The misogyny at work there. And this idea that, well, you're a lady so you can do lady things and you can do lady, presumably sketching kittens and kind of nice, sweet things like that. Well, there were autosy sketched kittens. We should have disparaged them. No, no, but the notion was that women lacked the capacity for genius and they were very good at imitating, copying, drawing what was in front of them.

But if you had to pursue something or create something that was high-minded from the imagination, women didn't have the creative capacity to do that. And it's something that really sticks, having to shake it off and they can't get rid of it. In the 19th century, the early 19th century, some men, because, you know, it's not always the fact that men kind of collectively disparaged women. They didn't. Some were really supportive. But the language they use, nevertheless, about women in applauding. them, it's always very gendered. And in the 19th century, this phrase began to be used, genius has no sex. And it was intended as being, you know, encouraging to women, saying actually

you can possess genius, but it was only applied to certain women artists who were regarded as the exception. So these huge names that punctuate art history like Artemisia Gentilesky or Angelica Kaufman or Rosa Bonner in the 19th century. She was, the starry artist who sort of made this fantastic career against the odds and she was the artist that all women artists of the era wanted to be and that phrase genius has no sex was applied to her and there was a book published using this phrase and you sort of read it and think sort of wow she's she's being really supported here and then the author ruins it all by saying well of course not all women can be Rosa Bonnors and nature is their domain so so they they

you know, there should be painting flowers. We do have an entire room on flowers. Do you do, there's some very much. No, and I don't care that there's this prejudice about women artists. You think of a woman artist, amateur, watercolour paintings of roses. Yeah. Yeah, you do. And I don't care about that prejudice.

We're confronting it. And we have a whole room on flowers, and they are absolutely brilliant. And pursued professionally, wonderful paintings that were exhibited at the Royal Academy, but also women who had these dual careers who are also botanical illustrators working for leading on botanical publishers of the day. And they're never talked about. And they're not. I feel about guilty now because we're talking about nudes, but you do have a nude room as well. Well, it's not quite a nude room. It's women on the stage of grand exhibitions in the 19th century. So throughout the exhibition, we're looking at public exhibitions,

which is the vehicle to create your public name, to establish your name, where you exhibit your works and are noticed by critics and you were then talked about and via that route you build your career because people know about you. In the 19th century, I think people will be really surprised to learn

not just how many women artists there were, but the fact they didn't just exhibit at the Royal Academy in London, but they exhibited internationally. It was the age of the... great world fairs. So a lot of the works in the exhibition are the prime pieces that they made for exhibition

at the summer exhibitions at the Royal Academy, but also the World Fair in Chicago in 1893, et cetera. And at the time, history painting was at the top of the hierarchy of art. And history painting involved, work of the imagination, you're taking classical scenes or mythological scenes, it involves the new, the female nude, and that's where women come into a spot of controversy.

We'll be back with Tabitha after this short break. For as long as women have been trying to be professional artists, they must have been fighting to have access to the life model, which seems a very central part of this. But does it become more prevalent in the 19th century just because more women are trying to access these spaces? What's the fight that's going on? And also you have the establishment of more art schools,

but also the concept that because women are accomplished amateurs, they don't need access to life models because access to life models enables you to draw anatomy and figurative art well, which is what you need in history painting, but women don't paint history, you see, so they don't need to. And also, it's regarded as so improper for women to be confronted by nakedness. So a lot of women go to Paris to train because they can't, London and there are accounts of women their first encounter in the life school and they're

fainting. It's really funny. But I suppose if you are surrounded by a society and tradition and you're constantly being told that it's how you should feel and behave, it takes a brave person to knock against that. Yes, it does. It does actually and it must have been quite a sight. Even when I was a life model and that wasn't at a time when women were prohibited from seeing it, is there was a moment when like the robe comes off and you can see it in the room there everyone's faces new as well as this moment of like there's a naked person in the room oh my god and then kind of everyone gets on with the artwork but it must have been very shocking well in 1871 when the slayed school of art was founded it was always regarded as a really progressive school and men and women students were always regarded on an equal level and women did have access to the life school in drawings and paintings of the life model, the men are always wearing a pouch. So not completely nude. But there are accounts in the early days when women's students went back to their families and described what they'd been doing and their fathers were horrified and shot and didn't allow them to go back.

No. So what is happening? Because this fight is it's not just people going, we really want to paint news, please let us paint the news. It becomes quite formalized. There are petitions and things, Yeah, especially in relation to the Royal Academy, where the first woman who was a student at the Royal Academy schools in 1860 got there because she submitted her admission work with her initials, using her initials, not her Christian name. So people thought she was a man. And so once in the door, everyone looked through the rule books and realized actually there was nothing. There was nothing saying, actually women weren't allowed. So they did, women were allowed, but not to the life drawing class. And it kickstarts this campaign that lasts for decades.

And they submit petitions. And they say in those petitions that if life drawing is regarded as so important for male students, then why not women too? Because as well as men, we want to pursue art as a career. We aren't accomplishment students. We're serious. This is our career. livelihood. What was the first painting by a woman that showed a nude? It was in 1885

works that were exhibited by Henrietta Ray. She's in the exhibit, isn't she? She is. She exhibited two paintings, a Bacanti and Ariadne. Ariadne is lost, which is also a theme throughout the exhibition. These works you can't locate, key works by major artists who were so well known in their day, can't locate them. So we got an engraving of Ariadne in the exhibition. A Bacanti still survives and that is in the show. And it's kick-started, not just women artists, artists exhibiting the news, particularly in 1885. It was sort of become so prevalent by 1885. It kicked-started a morality debate. Of course it did. And a letter was written to the times signed by a British matron, who was later found out to be the Academy Treasurer, J.C. Horsley.

You lying swine. Yes. And he said that it was shocking. He went on this kind of morality, purity crusade. Why didn't he be a matron? Why didn't he just sign it with his own name? I think he thought it would have more impact coming from a woman, because it's a woman's sensibility that was the problem. Right, okay. And he was trying to say that this sort of show of nakedness in the academy, which was veering away from the ideal classical nude and was showing real people, naked, was immoral.

And women pursuing this route, copying men, was degrading their sex. Do you know what Henrietta's reaction was to any of this? She was a very determined woman, and she hated being, categorised as a woman artist and she was determined to follow the path that would get her renown as an artist on the same level as men. So if history painting was the genre of art to pursue and men were doing it and that was your route to critical acclaim then she was going to do it. And she did and she stuck to it. Now I've seen this painting and it's very very beautiful. It does that very Victorian thing of there's no pubic hair. We go we're like full Barbie

where it's just there's a gesture of something. There are some areas where you don't go. No, there's just an area. But I would have said that that's drawn from life, even if she wasn't supposed to be drawing life models. That looks like that's drawn from life to me. I think she was because, I mean, there's a difference between being in a public institution

and a public training academy and having access to a life model. But of course, you can hire models privately yourself. And she must have done. Looking at that painting, she must have done. And back in the 18th century, Angelica Kaufman, there's a drawing in the exhibition of a life model with a drapery in appropriate places. And that is an academy model that she hired privately, but she had to make it very clear that when he came to her house to pose for her, her father had been present on all occasions, and that the model had been semi-draped, so it was all appropriated and above board.

So there probably was a culture of women just drawing from life. anyway, but in the privacy of their own homes and sort of secrecy. And some women, before they had access to the Royal Academy, they sort of helped themselves. They formed a group and they had life classes in their dining rooms. It was illegal, was it? It wasn't illegal. No, no, no, no, it wasn't. So, yeah, they helped themselves.

Of course they did. So when were women finally allowed in then? I mean, when they're not going off to Paris to faint, what about in Britain did they finally say, all right then? At the Slade, they always had access. In 1893, it takes until 1893 for the Royal Academy to bend the rules. Yes, it's so late. Wow. Women have this constant criticism that their paintings aren't as good as men

or their figurative painting is weak, yet they don't have access to training, so they can't win. No. Do we know much about the models themselves? Sometimes we know about the models. There were certain models that some artists used. Men who hired models, if you go to... Layton House in London that you can see the studio upstairs and there's a separate entrance

that the model would use because it wouldn't have been appropriate for them to be seen coming and going from the main entrance. It's quite a stigmatised thing was it? I think so, yes, definitely. And what I kind of like about that is, well, I know that they recruited some of the male models who were sort of impoverished people who just needed the money and some of the women would have been sex workers as well. I think this equation of model and prostitute, it goes hand in hand. It's quite long and it's established. Yeah, yeah, it is. Maybe another reason why it was thought inappropriate

for a woman to paint a female nude. Yes, of course. Maybe. There is a painting in the exhibition by Louise Joplin called a modern Cinderella. The theme is that she has hired a model and has been posing for her and the painting shows the end of the painting session

and the model is disrobing out of her finery and she's hanging it up and there's a reflection in the mirror and the clock in the mirror is showing midnight because it's Cinderella and there's this kicked off slipper. But in a pile on the chair, you can see the model's humble clothes that she's about to put on her real clothes

and her sort of scuffed boots rather than this fancy slipper. So I think that is very descriptive of the class and the level in society that these models came from. Wow. How close is the fight of these women artists to get access to these spaces? Because it's not really about, I want to paint someone with their clothes off, because they can do that on their own in their home. It's about recognition, isn't it?

It's about recognition and acceptance. It goes hand in hand with wanting to be accepted as a professional to be given the same dues as their male peers, being able to be a member of an art academy, which gives you professional kudos. And that denied all this. How close do you think that this fight is linked to women's suffrage, the fight for women's suffrage, and we're going to. I think it begins before that. We have a group of works by women who I think you could regard as feminist working in the 1850s and 60s and it goes hand in hand with this focused campaign for women's rights. There's an artist in the exhibition called Barbara Beauchampere who is better known today as a women's campaigner but she was also an artist and she was at the forefront

of arguing for women to be regarded as professionals. She wrote a pamphlet called Women and Work, and I think that stimulated one of the paintings in the exhibition by Emily Osborne, which is called Nameless and Friendless, and it shows a young widow artist in a dealer's shop trying to sell her work. And there are a group of men who are kind of ogling her and siding her up, and the dealer is looking quizzically at her painting,

obviously thinking, I'm not going to buy this. And it's part of that campaign to be. be seen, or demand really to be seen as a professional. There's another painting by Florence Claxton. She was a graphic satirist, really. This is an oil painting, so quite unusual for her. But the work is called Women and Work, a woman's work a medley. And it's a satire on the place of women in society and their kind of false adulation of man who's sitting enthroned on the golden calf. So he's a false idol. And they're enclosed with. a wall and there are tableau around the edges of women trying to make it in professions.

So there's a woman who's kind of slumped at the locked door of the medical profession and there are women, a group of women arguing over a young boy wanting to be his governess because being a governess was the only professional avenue open to them at the time. And there's a tomb slab at the forefront of the painting which you don't notice unless you know it's there. it's the concept that a woman who was denied a useful pursuit in life, so died of boredom. That's her epitaph on the two. I'd love to say that all of this is consigned to history and that, oh, look at those

silly Victorian and all the people before them and isn't it tough? But the simple fact is if I went out on the street now with a microphone and I found random people and said, name me five famous artists, they'd all be men. I mean, it's not because they're trying to be sexist. It's that's the way it's stacked. It's still very male-dominated. It is very male-dominated. I do get a sense that it's changing.

And I think that this exhibition and all the other exhibitions that are happening now are part of that narrative of change. And this time, I feel that there is momentum and the change is real. Because there have been so many exhibitions in the past. I mean, how long ago is it since Linda Nocklin posed her famous question? Why are they no great women artists? And that was supposed to have kick-started all the research into women to reveal them. But it went nowhere because this exhibition is still revealing them.

Because they're still unknown. It's like Groundhog Day. Oh, Tabith, you've been amazing to talk to. My final question is, let's imagine now that all the fire alarms go off. There's a huge fire in the tape. Everything's going to be destroyed. We've got five minutes. What painting are you grabbing from the wall? I'm grabbing Marianne Stokes' is the passing day.

Stokes is the passing train. I absolutely adore the painting and it shows a young girl in a brilliant red cloak holding a pile of tinder. But in the background, she's out in the field and in the background there's this misty smoke of a steam locomotive. And I think it's about this sort of transition in society where sort of the old traditions are being taken over by the modern age. It's a fantastic atmospheric painting and she was part of the kind of the school the plenary school when you go out into nature and paint what was in front of you. It's a wonderful painting.

Tabitha, thank you so much and if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? They can find me here at Tate Britain. How long is the exhibition running for? It's on until the 13th of October. It is amazing. Thank you so much for showing me around.

Oh, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Tabitha for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com.

We have got episodes on everything from the real Ambellin to the history of beds all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delaggy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit.

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