Controversy surrounding the nude in art is as strong now at the end of the twentieth century as it was during the nineteenth. Victorian paintings of the nude are still hidden from view in the storerooms of galleries and museums. In this major new work, Alison Smith unravels the fascinating background of this situation, and the paradox that the nude was both an image of high culture and an object of public moral outrage.

Smith reveals how images of the nude were used at all levels of Victorian culture, from prestigious high-art paintings through to photographs and popular entertainments; and discusses the many views as to whether these were legitimate forms of representation or, in fact, pornography and an incitement to unregulated sexual activity.

With many paintings published for the first time, the painters discussed and illustrated in this book include Etty, Leighton, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Millais, Watts and the women artists, Henrietta Rae and Anna Lea Merrit.