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The artist and the nude

An inconsistent and prurient puritanism has succeeded in evolving an ideal
which it seeks to dignify by calling it the Nude, with a capital N, and placing
it in opposition to the naked.
Walter Sickert ‘The Naked and the Nude’ in The New Age (1910)

Throughout the 19th century artists used traditional themes to elevate their subjects. They created images that referenced classical ideals, placing nudes within a ‘perfect’ world.

During the Edwardian era artists scrutinised their own image in self-portraits and began painting nudes in everyday settings. Walter Sickert depicted aspects of life that his contemporaries would have preferred not to have seen: a shameful world where prostitutes lived in squalid bed-sits in the North London area of Camden Town, notorious for the murders that took place there.