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 Aunt Rose enjoys life and wants you to enjoy life, too. You can click here to browse our products for lovers. But, honey, do you really know Auntie well enough to be fondling my cleavage like this?

Elegant nudes in Fine Art
Sensual nudes were a favorite theme in classic art
Fine art nudes. This image is 'The Wave' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'The Wave' by William Bouguereau
    The human body has had universal appeal for artists at least since "The Willendorf Venus" was carved 24,000 years ago. That earliest female nude featured prominent breasts, buttocks and vulva and has obvious sexual significance.
   Art is complex, but it's clear that nude sculpture and painting can have a sexually arousing effect, besides its less physical appeal.
   These are some examples of work by renowned artists from previous eras who saw naked women as a feast for the eyes and an endless source of delight to the libido.
 Fine art nudes. This image is 'Biblis' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'Biblis' by William Bouguereau

Painters who loved the beauty of nude women

 

William Bouguereau

This French "Academic" painter of the late 19th Century was out of fashion for many years, because he resisted the innovations of the Impressionists and other modernists. As the advent of photography spurred artistic pioneers to move toward abstraction, ultra-realistic painters like Bouguereau refined their technical skills to create ever more lifelike pictures. Few have ever equalled his mastery of the tones and textures of human skin. As these examples show, we lovers of the female nude still thank him.

  
Fine art nudes. This image is 'Woman with Shell' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'Woman With Shell'
  
Fine art nudes. This image is 'Bather' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'Bather'
  
Fine art nudes. This image is 'The Lost Pleiad' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'The Lost Pleiad'
  
Fine art nudes. This image is 'The Return of Spring' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'The Return of Spring'
  

Click on images to view larger versions of these paintings.   Fine art nudes. This image is 'Seated Bather' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'Seated Bather'
   Fine art nudes. This image is 'Venus' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'Venus'
   Fine art nudes. This image is 'The Pain of Love' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'The Pain of Love'
   Fine art nudes. This image is 'Bathers' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'Bathers'
  

  Fine art nudes. This image is 'Girl Defending Herself Against Love' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'Girl Defending Herself Against Love'
   Fine art nudes. This image is 'Nymphaeum' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'Nymphaeum'
   Fine art nudes. This image is 'Nymphs and Satyr' by the 19th-century French Academic painter William Bouguereau.
'Nymphs and Satyr'

  

 

Gustave Courbet

Active a generation earlier than his fellow Frenchman Bouguereau, Courbet was the "bad boy" of the Paris art world in his time. He shocked the establishment with the frank eroticism of his paintings, including the undisguised lesbianism of "Sleep." Some of his best works no longer exist; at least one was bought by a pious prude so it could be destroyed! Courbet's most scandalous works were openly pornographic, notably "Origin of the World." This remarkable work of art was produced for a private client and never exhibited publicly in Courbet's lifetime.

Click on images to view larger
versions of these paintings.

1884 photos
    A great resource for artists
is stop-motion photographs
made by the researcher
Eadweard Muybridge in
the mid-1880s.
   I have links to animated
versions of these series,
which were the very first
nude motion pictures.

GO to Victorian nudes
  
 
Fine art nudes. This image is 'Sleeping Nude' by the 19th-century French painter Gustave Courbet.
'Sleeping Nude'
Fine art nudes. This image is 'Sleep' by the 19th-century French painter Gustave Courbet.
'Sleep'
Fine art nudes. This image is 'Woman With Parrot' by the 19th-century French painter Gustave Courbet.
'Woman with Parrot'

  

The artist as pornographer

   If we define pornography as material intended to create sexual arousal, Courbet's painting of an open and inviting pair of labia is certainly pornographic. There is unmistakable fondness in his rendering of the buttocks' curves, the cushiony thighs, the aroused inner lips peeking through the unruly nest of pubic hair, the erect nipple. There's no doubt he wanted us to know this woman is sexually excited.
   Courbet's model is said to have been the mistress of James McNeill Whistler, the expatriate American painter. So we might think of an alternative title for this pleasant scene as "Whistler's Lover."

Fine art nudes. This image is 'Origin of the World' by the 19th-century French painter Gustave Courbet.
'Origin of the World'

   This picture represents an artistic statement of something I believe, too. That is, it's legitimate to honor and admire the sex organs that are, in fact, the origin of everything alive. Sex, in essence, is the life force. Images and entertainments that respect that fact are life-affirming.
  

The nude
 comes out
of hiding

 

20th-Century
American nudes

   Although many 20th-Century art movements scorned realism, a healthy segment of the art community continued to refine the female nude. Influenced by George Petty's and Alberto Varga's nude and semi-nude "Esquire" pin-up paintings, World War II aircraft "Nose Art" also helped keep popular images of the female body alive and well in mainstream American culture.

   The untitled nudes shown here were painted by a midwestern female artist who studied at New York's Art Students League in the late 1940s and worked with some of Manhattan's leading magazine illustrators.
  
Fine art nudes. This untitled image was made in 1949 in a figure painting class at New York's famed Art Students League.
'Untitled Nude 1949'

The red sticker means this student work was chosen for a special exhibition.
  
   French painter Paul Chabas' romantic nude "September Morning" won him a medal at the 1912 Paris Salon. Its American debut made it world-famous, and a symbol of a liberalized attitude toward nude art.
   A savvy New York City art dealer put the painting in his gallery window and manipulated the notorious prude Anthony Comstock of the Society for the Suppression of Vice into trying to ban the painting. This manufactured controversy guaranteed widespread public and media attention.
  
'September Morn' by Paul Chabas helped make nude art respectable in America after its 1913 display in New York.
'September Morn' by Paul Chabas, 1912

   Soon this charming image of a naked beauty standing in water showed up on calendars, postcards, advertisements and trinkets of every kind. The controversy generated jokes including this ditty: "Please don't think I'm bad or bold, but where it's deep it's awwful cold."

  
  Fine art nudes. This untitled image was made in 1949 in a figure painting class at New York's famed Art Students League. Fine art nudes. This untitled image was made in 1949 in a figure painting class at New York's famed Art Students League.
'Portrait Studies 1949'

These portraits were painted from live nude models in an Art Students League studio. Click to see larger view
   Fine art nudes. This untitled image was made in 1949 in a figure painting class at New York's famed Art Students League.
'Untitled Nude 1949'

  
1940s aircraft art took nudes to war
Sexy nudes, inspired by 'Esquire' pin-up paintings, decorated the noses of hundreds of American fighting aircraft during World War II.
Original artwork decorated nose of WW-II B-17 bomber

Sexy nudes, inspired by 'Esquire' pin-up paintings, decorated the noses of hundreds of American fighting aircraft during World War II.
Modern re-creation of nose art on a restored B-25 bomber

 Sexy nudes, inspired by 'Esquire' pin-up paintings, decorated the noses of hundreds of American fighting aircraft during World War II.
An example of totally nude art

Men in war zones, far from the strict dictates of conventional morality, enjoyed nude images in magazines, calendars and on their fighting machines.
Sexy nudes, inspired by 'Esquire' pin-up paintings, decorated the noses of hundreds of American fighting aircraft during World War II. Sexy nudes, inspired by 'Esquire' pin-up paintings, decorated the noses of hundreds of American fighting aircraft during World War II.
These sensuous nudes graced noses of a P-38 fighter, left, and a B-24 bomber.

 
  Figure sketches, charcoal on paper, 1939
  
 




Fine art nudes. This charcoal drawing was made from a life in a college art class in the 1930s
Figure sketches, charcoal on paper, 1939
 

 
21st-Century art by nude artist
 Fine art nudes. This monochrome watercolor is a self-portrait made by an artist who is one of Aunt Rose's dearest friends and colleagues, and is herself a nude model for artists.
'Self-Portrait as Cowgirl' 2008

      One of Aunt Rose's dearest friends and colleagues is a professionally trained artist who has also posed nude as a life-drawing model for artists.
   These distinctive monochrome watercolors are one of this talented artist's signature styles. They are based on photographic figure studies by her partner and lover.
 
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