73
L48
2K
N
1887
B 1,349,470
Qui multum metuit homines, grande aliquid pro
quam conficiet." ST. IGNATIUS.
IMMODESTY IN ART:
AN
EXPOSTULATION AND SUGGESTION;
& Letter
ΤΟ
SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, BART.
PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY,
BY
FREDERICK GEORGE LEE, D.D., F.S.A.
VICAR OF ALL SAINTS', LAMBETH, ETC.
Authors atheist, essayist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of Nature, with the living hues of Art.
Rip your brothers vices open, strip your own foul passions bare
Down with Reticence, down with Reverenceforward, naked, let them
stare.
Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer
Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure.
LORD TENNYSON.
LONDON:
GEORGE REDWAY
1887.

:
FROM THE LIBRARY OF
ROBERT MARK WENLEY
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
1896
1929
GIFT OF HIS CHILDREN
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
WH W Bracknell del at sie.
1938
777



IMMODESTY IN ART.
N
73
.248
1887
"Qui multùm metuit homines, grande aliquid pro Deo
nunquam conficiet."—ST. IGNATIUS.
IMMODESTY IN ART:
AN
EXPOSTULATION AND SUGGESTION;
A Letter
ΤΟ
SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, BART.
PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY,
BY
FREDERICK GEORGE LEE, D.D., F.S.A.
VICAR OF ALL SAINTS', LAMBETH, ETC.
"Authors-atheist, essayist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of Nature, with the living hues of Art.
Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare;
Down with Reticence, down with Reverence-forward, naked, let them
stare.
Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer;
Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure."
LORD TENNYSON.
Second Edition.
LONDON:
GEORGE REDWAY.
1887.
Fide et Constantiâ.
10-11-38

IMMODESTY IN ART.

ཤེས་
IR,—I venture to trouble you with
the receipt of this Letter, which I
hope you may do me the honour
to read. Although it is termed
"an Expostulation," and complains of what
many regard as a scandal and a nuisance, I
need not, I feel sure, apologize for having de-
spatched it to you, because the very honourable,
dignified and influential position you hold as
President of the Royal Academy will, I believe,
allow you to consider without prejudice. or
offence the complaint it sets forth; more espe-
cially when its closing sentences are found to
embody a practical Suggestion.
In the course of last summer, in the ordinary
intercourse of friendship, I received three letters
6
dealing incidentally amongst other subjects,
with current English Art. Their writers are
not unknown, nor are they incapable of express-
ing their sentiments in intelligible sentences.
Nor are their criticisms unusual or peculiar, or
only worthy of cynicism and prompt condemna-
tion. The names of the writers are not given,
as I failed in each case to obtain permission to
do so.
I quote those parts of each of the three
Letters which concern my subject:-
1. "The Academy this year is much below
par. It seems to me that English Art is suffer-
ing from dry-rot, when one comes to wander
through room after room, finding little or no-
thing upon which to fix one's attention as likely
to edify or elevate. The exhibition of the
Nude' I quite believe to be at once the cause
and outcome of this national degradation."
2. "I fail to find any picture except land-
scapes ever-lovely and attractive, (and those
depicting the nooks and valleys of dear old
England I like best,) which dwells on the
memory. Can our Art be in a healthy state, or
can there be any high-toned and high-spirited
7
leaders of taste left, who tolerate without pro-
test the introduction of some of the worst
features of Parisian licentiousness?"
3. "Such pictures as those which are being
introduced in greater number year by year in
our public Picture-galleries, serve to show that
our advance is not forwards.
Religious
Art appears to be banished, at the R.A.
without one single exception. As a conse-
quence, some of the pictures there are gross
in conception and sensuous in execution. Such
should not be allowed; and would not be if
taste were healthy, which I fear it is not. The
nude figures are disgraceful."
For myself, I believe, Sir, that the feeling
expressed in these three extracts is deeper, and
more generally entertained, than some persons
imagine. And I take leave to add that, on the
whole and in the main, I most thoroughly and
heartily agree with it.
Permit me, in the remarks being made, to
start with the axiom that nothing should be
represented by the artist's brush for exhibition
in public which may not be rightly and properly
looked upon by people in general.
8
A few years ago, and this postulate would
have received an almost universal assent: but
the dogmatism of naturalistic philosophers, the
decay of Religion, the introduction of foreign
morals and alien tastes-the reeking flood of
literary filth with which we are deluged; the
gutter-garbage so minutely and graphically
described in dirty novels and canting news-
papers whose conductors mistake License for
Liberty, have unhappily tended to weaken
that postulate's recognition.
Now, to go to the root of the subject at once.
As all admit, persons do not clothe themselves
solely because the wind is cold, the sun hot or
the weather wet; but because, in all civilized
countries, it is universally regarded as only
right, proper and decent to do so. In England
it would be such an offence against the common
law for naked people to appear in the streets
that, if they so appeared, the Police and the
Magistrate would very summarily and properly
deal with them. Cases of walking somnambu-
lists and wandering lunatics have occurred.
The common law of the land, founded upon
Christianity, is against such immodest and im-
9
proper exhibitions, which would tend to excite
the lowest animal passions,-wild and dis-
organized since the Fall of man, and which re-
quire to be kept under due and reasonable con-
trol;-exhibitions, moreover, which thus directly
tend to general demoralization.
Dealers in immodest photographs have quite
lately had their goods seized, and found them-
selves heavily fined for having exposed and
sold them. Many of these representations-dis-
posed of under the plausible plea of elevating and
advancing Art-are not a whit more immodest
than several of the paintings which of late years
have been exhibited in the public picture galleries.
Such representations, therefore, as those
which have appeared on the walls of the Royal
Academy during the last few years-women
without a veil or shred of covering, perfectly
naked; in postures which are asserted to be
artistic, -seem to me to be distinctly reprehen-
sible. There may, as I am quite aware, be
heathen precedents for such; but these, for
obvious reasons, should not be followed in a
civilized Christian country. The pretence that
such exhibitions of nakedness serve the purposes
A 2
IO
of Painting and Sculpture, and instruct the
public in true Art principles and sound artistic
taste, is but a disingenuous pretence. They do
nothing of the sort. On the contrary, they
offend against Christian morals, directly pervert
good taste, and distinctly maim modesty.
How these good and righteous natural gifts
are in certain cases being utterly lost may be
gathered from the following astounding state-
ment and repulsive prediction taken from the
leading article of a daily newspaper :-
"For a long time past the lady students of
the Royal Academy have been agitating to be
put on an equal footing in the life classes with
the male pupils, and be allowed to study the
masculine form from the male model. . It
seems highly probable, however, that what is
urgently demanded in the name of Art Educa-
tion will in the end prevail."¹
The mere contemplation of such a proposal—
without in any way dwelling upon it-is suffi-
cient to indicate how effectively this moral
gangrene is helping to poison the body politic,"
1 "Daily Telegraph," May 21, 1885.
"Those who "proclaiming themselves unbelievers or
I I
and effectually degrading some of the women of
England.
I venture to believe and hope that nine per-
sons out of ten amongst the general public have
not the remotest idea how rapid is the growth of
this virulent cancer.
One endeavour, however, has been publicly
and powerfully made to meet the evil. In a
bold and masterly paper read at the Portsmouth
Congress in October, 1885, by that distinguished
Academician Mr. J. Callcott Horsley, I find the
following arguments and incident related, which
deserve still wider and more general considera-
Agnostics, and scoff at all we hold most dear, would calmly
tell you, as they have told me, that existence is now to be
relieved from the incubus of absurd and worn-out prejudices ;
and confidently assert in respect to the art-question under
consideration that all sorts and conditions of women will
ere long as soon sit to artists naked as they now do clothed.
This shocking prophecy has been partially fulfilled. I
know of a young lady art-student calling upon an amateur
artist, whom she had met only once in society; and, under
the influence of the madness I have spoken of, offered to sit
to him naked, and did so. I know of a young sculptress who
required a male model to sit to her day after day absolutely
naked, whilst she modelled a figure from him. And were I
to speak of these as isolated cases of the dementia now
afflicting some female students I should be jeered at."
MR. J. C. HORSLEY, R.A.
12
tion than they have as yet received. My own
admiration for the high-minded and high-prin-
cipled artist who penned them-though I have
the honour of but the slightest acquaintance
with him--is as sincere as it is hearty. Many,
I feel confident, will share it :
"There are estimable men and admirable.
artists," he writes, "who are so imbued with
what they deem (erroneously as I shall presently
venture to contend,) 'the exigencies of Art,'¹ that
they simply shrug their shoulders at such argu-
ments as I am using, and pass the question by
on the other side. There are others who affirm
that if they employ fallen women as models, a
little additional degradation to them matters
not. To such I commend the laying to heart
the following story, related to me in my youth
by an eyewitness of the incident described, and
from the hearing of which I date my own deep
convictions on the subject I am dealing with-
¹ This is only one of the numerous empty phrases made
to do duty for principles, nowadays. In politics, religion,
social life, art and literature, phrase-mongers are in the
ascendant; while phrase-mongering is constantly made use
of to cover a feeble argument, a disgraced cause, a degraded
position, or a discomfited foe.
13
convictions which I have held tenaciously for
more than thirty years :-
"A wretched woman on the London streets,
hearing that money was to be obtained by
going to a 'life-academy,' but without the
slightest notion of what would be required of
her, presented herself at the school and was
told to sit down until she could be seen by the
Master. On his requiring her to take off her
clothes, she at first absolutely refused, but was
bribed into consent with money. She was then
told to draw a curtain at the end of the room,
and step on to the model's stage. On doing so,
and finding herself suddenly under the glare of
gaslight, naked before forty or fifty students,
the poor frightened creature threw up
her arms,
and with a wild shriek fell fainting on the floor.
On recovering, she, uttering fearful language,
dashed the money on the ground, huddled on
her garments, and rushed from the place in a
storm of passion-the outcome of the few re-
mains of modesty she still possessed."
"Ah!" continues Mr. Horsley, "if those who
talk and write so glibly as to the desirability of
artists devoting themselves to the representation
14
of the naked human form only knew a tithe of
the degradation enacted before the model is suffi-
ciently hardened to her shameful calling, they
would for ever hold their tongues and pens
from supporting the practice."
Of other parallel degradations actively sought
for in the case of rowdy masculine females, and
actually wallowed in, I am unwilling and un-
able to write. For they cannot be decently and
properly dealt with at all. They belong to a
moral plane to which I distinctly decline to
descend. I prefer, therefore, to leave them in
the dark and unclean regions where alone they
are to be found.
Here let me remark that when Hogarth
depicted frightful scenes which, in their actu-
ality, few persons with the fear of God before
their eyes would care to look upon, he painted
them in order to warn the licentious, the
gambler and the squanderer of his patrimony,
against beginning to take a road which distinctly
leads to misery, want and ruin.
And to others, who may be disposed to avoid
the true point at issue, prating rather about the
influence of Art on Civilization, let me likewise
15
remark that on one occasion, when the late Mr.
Carlyle was being pestered for money by some
Scotch women to aid in inducing certain negroes
to give up their own Religion and, as a means
of civilizing them, to adopt Presbyterianism
instead, he replied:-" The first step towards
Civilization is to clap a pair of breeches on the
negro. When that has been done, we will then
talk about 'bawbees' and Religion.”
I do not in any sense pretend to be an art-
critic. In truth much of the artistic lingo, over
which, like other people, I once used to puzzle
myself-mere empty phrases, involved jargon-
without-meaning, and vapid rubbish-in-words,
which may be read from the pens of such
painful scribes as assume to be our Art guides,
and most of whom favour "the Nude" as
nakedness is now termed-is utterly unintelli-
gible. In nine cases out of ten it simply
conveys no idea at all. Such superfine persons,
when called upon, must write something critical
to fill a certain number of columns, and do so.
For a self-created art-prophet who does not
teach nor prophesy loses his prophetical office,
reputation and pay. The result, however, is
16
oft-times a sham-profundity, so shallow in truth
that it only dupes the ignorant; with an igno-
rance so closely hemmed-in with piled-on ver-
biage without shape or sense, that nobody takes
the trouble to dig out (if it owns any) its sup-
posed hidden meaning.
Quite apart from the critics, however, many
can understand the interest of a well-informed
Englishman in contemplating portraits of long-
dead rulers and noblemen, who have done their
race and country credit, honour to their fellow-
men and glory to their Maker. Statesmen and
warriors, divines and lawyers, poets and prose-
writers, having helped to make our country
what it once was, and left names held in remem-
brance, had their forms and features so well re-
presented in their lifetimes that such portraits
greatly interest their descendants and aid in per-
petuating such honoured memories, as well as
in representing past events. There Art is the
handmaid of History.
Historical pictures, however, recording deeds
of nobility, patience and progress; of daring in
war and of self-denial in peace; of crucial wants
in the past, when the tide of prolonged national
17
suffering turned, or some hero saved his coun-
try's honour,-are to many persons full of the
deepest interest and value. Such serve to kindle
anew in men's breasts the fire of patriotism, the
pride of nationality, the resolutions of valour,
and the light of Religion; bringing back the
past with vividness, and affording brilliant and
beautiful examples to those still living, for their
emulation and adoption. Yet, as Lord Beacons-
field pointed out, the Historical School of
Painters in England is practically extinct.
their place we have "the Nude."
In
Such labours in the studio and picture-gallery
as are here deprecated are strictly parallel with
those of the new-fangled revolutionary politician
who claims to make laws without the sanction
of Religion; with those of the Knowledge-
purveyor,-whose impressive conclusion from
his own tedious and sometimes worthless in-
vestigations, is, that man owns no soul and is
like the beasts that perish; with those of the
ignorant and upstart Education-monger, in
whose teaching the Almighty Creator is inten-
tionally and altogether forgotten; and of the
State, which, denying that all power comes
18
from above,-regarding rather the melancholy
mouthings of the multitude,-fails to secure due
and willing obedience from its subjects, because
it madly repudiates the true and sole Source of
all lawful authority, Almighty God.
This collateral degradation of Art-this
abolition of everything supernatural and divine,
of almost everything relating to true Religion
and morally elevating, this degrading worship
of Humanity and of Nature alone, or of ancient
Paganism, Greek and Roman, by certain Eng-
lish painters, is only one of the several methods
now so successfully in use by the enemies of
God and man to further demoralize and bring
our beloved country to its swifter and surest
decay. The heathen women, warriors and
slaves often depicted on the walls of Picture
Galleries-standing parallel with those who
admire and write up Heathen Civilization as
something so superfine and superior-belong
to a system dead and gone, without life and
without interest. These heathen people, after
a fashion and according to their lights, were
possibly religious. Their greatest poets, and
those of later periods, who in rank and reputa-
19
tion have followed them, have been religious.
Homer and Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare,
Wordsworth and Keble bear me out in this.
Amongst Greeks and early Romans some dim
traditions of Paradise, borrowed from the
Hebrew nation, still lingered; while many of
the striking virtues they cherished, ere dry-rot
supervened, and rapid decay followed immodesty
and moral filth, are not much lower in ethical
rank than the inferior graces of the Christian
Religion. But their system is once for all
exploded. To feed the soul on exploded fic-
tions, therefore, or to fill the sight with question-
able pictures concerning a worn-out and long
dead system of misbelief, is like an endeavour
to sustain human life by eating dry cinders and
sawdust. Unreal Art of that kind neither
instructs, improves nor elevates. Like modern
Ritualism—the great Oxford Movement of 1833
gone to seed—it is mainly a system of postures
and impostures, and nothing more.
All such picture exhibitions, therefore, so
unseemly in themselves, are thoroughly demo-
ralizing to the great majority of those who look
at them.
Placed here and there amongst the
20
increasing herd of common-place persons depic-
ted in uncomfortable attitudes, who come day
after day during the summer months to worship
themselves (one detail I suppose, of the Worship
of Humanity in general,) or hung beside land-
scapes and sea-pieces of some obvious merit, and
pleasant to look upon, such representations of
naked persons can scarcely be avoided, which
ought not to be, by any ordinary visitor to the
rooms of the Royal Academy Exhibition.
With what objects are such unclothed persons
painted and exhibited? What when depicted
are they supposed to teach? Whom do they
edify and delight? What kind of Art do they
promote? Instead of elevating, they can only
degrade: instead of giving pleasure to innocent
minds, they are directly suggestive of loose
morality, moral decadence and dangerous license,
which every Christian should avoid. Instead
of advancing British Art, such pictures, I repeat,
efficiently be-foul and retard it. There is
scarcely a single historical subject in which an
exhibition of complete human nakedness is at
all necessary to render the picture intelligible,
interesting and full of teaching. And where
21
any such exception may be said to exist, the
methods and manners of great artists in the
past, who have already treated it, have, I will
venture to add, sufficed to deal with it with due
propriety and all proper modesty.
If need be, as Report avers, that modern
patronage of British Art demands these kind of
exhibitions to satisfy a nasty and pampered
taste,-exhibitions which have led to a darker
and dirtier type of picture, said to be cherished
and criticised in private by "Humanitarians,”
but not as yet often exhibited in public; and
that the Royal Academy Authorities, in their
wisdom and discretion, still feel bound not to
disregard such valued and profitable patronage,
let the languid roués and highly-fed millionaires,
the unclean song-makers and the literary
scavengers, with the whole tribe of their female
camp-followers in literature and license, have
some special room of your favoured corporation
all to themselves.
Let every such immodest picture, (no advo-
cate of this alters its inherent character by
To the pure all things
quoting such words as "To the pure
are pure,") labelled as to its painter, money-
22
value and purchaser, so that the merits and
method, the admirers and patrons of all such
productions may be accurately known, be placed
in a new "Chamber of Horrors," and let an
extra shilling be charged at its door for "the
blear-eye feast" thus so luxuriously and bounti-
fully provided. Those visitors who hold such
exhibitions to be edifying, refreshing and de-
lightful, can thus enjoy them to satiety; while
those, on the other hand, who do not-no un-
important section of the Public-will be very
glad to miss all representations of human
nakedness from the room in general.
Decent people, which is not possible now,
can then avoid them.
Let me add only one further practical sen-
tence. Your distinguished Official Chaplain,
His Grace the Lord Archbishop of York,-a
moralist, a logician and a divine,—may very
probably be willing to give you advice on the
point of thus restricting the bounds of a public
nuisance, if, under your own Presidential guid-
ance, the Trustees of the Royal Academy
should be wise enough to seek His Grace's
Christian counsel,
23
Asking your consideration of these sugges-
tions, I have the honour to subscribe myself,
Sir,
Your most obedient, humble servant,
FREDERICK GEORGE LEE.
All Saints' Vicarage, York Road, Lambeth.
6 January, 1887.

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