A Historical Examination of the Controversy Around Nudes in Canada

This essay delves into the controversy surrounding nude paintings in Canadian art history, examining the societal and artistic factors that shaped the reception of this genre. The paper traces the initial backlash against nude exhibitions, such as the 1927 Canadian National Exhibition, and analyzes the impact of societal values, particularly the influence of moral conservatism and the rise of nationalism. The essay highlights key artists like John Wentworth Russell and Lilias Torrence Newton, whose works sparked significant debate and criticism. It explores how these artists challenged traditional artistic conventions and faced resistance from a public uncomfortable with the representation of the human body, particularly women. Furthermore, the essay examines the role of modernism, the influence of landscape art, and the impact of political and cultural shifts on the evolution of nude art in Canada. The paper concludes by analyzing how these controversies affected the inclusion of nude art in the Canadian art narrative and the lasting impact on artists who sought to represent the human form in a changing society.

Running Head: CONTROVERSY AROUND NUDES IN CANADA
The controversy around Nudes in Canada
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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THE CONTROVERSY AROUND NUDES IN CANADA
The Canadian art front was reeling with the Landscape genre, which was brought into
the front with the concept of photoconceptualism and the Group of Seven, who are debated to
be the best artists of the early twentieth century in Canada. After the Wars, Canadian artists
were exposed to the international culture and advancement in the painting front occurring in
Europe and the US. The nude paintings and its prominence are debated to have lost its rise to
prominence due to the Canadian culture who found an affinity to the sentimentality of the
Landscape. It mainly consisted of hills, lakes, and wilderness in the aesthetic mode
representing the beauty of nature as against the growing city blocks and modernism as a
representation of Americanization. The paper will show how the nude artists were shadowed
and criticized, which ultimately led to their ignorance in the inclusion of their role in the
history of art in Canada. The paper will deal with artists whose nude paintings were the
subject of criticism and growing coherence among the artist to represent their form of Avant-
Garde. Their paintings, including nudes, were not different in their genre, for they included
texts as well showing their adoption of narration and discourse with their work.
Nudes in the form of paintings were not an entirely new addition to paintings but were
seen in the exhibition in the late nineteenth century itself. However, the controversy around
them was new owing to the social actor of nationalism, which was embedded in the culture of
Toronto as being inclined towards morality management and in-keeping the culture away
from Americanization. The first significant controversy which emerged against nudes in the
Canadian art history generated in 1927 after The Canadian National Exhibition, which was
visited by the then Prime Minister and declared as being worthy of “burned instead of
exhibited.” (Russell, 2018). The Art Gallery added to their display works from young artists
named John Wentworth Russell, George C. Drinkwater, and Rosalie Emslie. It sparked a
huge controversy, which led to debates and hundreds of letters being sent to the editor of

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newspapers. The exhibition included the works ‘A Modern Fantasy’, ‘Paolo and Francesca’
and ‘Comfort’ respectively from the artists mentioned.
This controversy is significant to the role of the nudes being shadowed, for it was
supported not only by the prude population of Canada instead by the Women’s Council. The
display of nudes in the exhibition was not a new phenomenon but was a familiar scene in the
Gallery for even before this inclusion, nudes by other artists hung, and there was no
measurable outburst. The women’ Council, which rose against the display, regarded the
artworks as a sensual piece of work that objectified them. However, some underlying social
actors counted in the controversy (Syperek, 2013). The primary reason that was picked up
was the location in which these pictures were put up were Gallery, which is subjected to be
visited by people of all class and age. This was the first conflict in public regarding the genre
of nude that was becoming prevalent among the young artists and was seen as a deviation
from the moral culture, which was inherent in the Canadian culture.
Among the three artists, Russell was the first who was criticized the most for his
representation of the nude was perceived as a representation of the view about the status of
the women. It depicted the social anxiety around the changing social factors of modernism
and the introduction of recognition of sexuality with the inherent feature of capitalism. The
criticism against Russell was so denigrating that he had to retreat to Paris. His work, Fantasy,
had a darkened background that seemed to push the image of the women in front of the
canvas, and the women are shown to be unaffected by the viewer showing the aesthetic for
Landscape reflected by the attitude of the women in the picture (Whitelaw, 2017). The
casualty, which is displayed by the women and the comfort with her sexuality, seems to be
ambiguously suggesting the change in the changing social condition with the onset of modern
culture.

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The primary reason for basing the essay on the controversy around the nude paintings
is to trace how public opinion and pressure changed the course of the narrative of the genre
forever. One exemplary figure was Quebec born Lilias Torrence Newton, who was a well-
known portraitist and was the first Canadian artist to draw a portrait for the Royal subject of
Queen Elizabeth II as well as Prince Philip. She was associated with the Red Cross mission
during the War and even worked for her Alma Mater, The Art Association of Montreal. The
tension which was generated with Russell’s painting in 1927 was revived with Newton’s
‘Nude in the Studio’ displayed in the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in the year 1932
(Smither, 2019). Nude was a refreshing change from the previously present nudes in
Canadian art. The work followed realism in her almost two meters tall portrait of stylish
women representing modern women. Like Russell’s Fantasy, Newton’s Nude also showed
the reflection of the domination of the nude in the canvas, which is demanding of the
viewer’s attention (Smither, 2019). The appearance of the women was different from the
previous nudes in the sense that that represented certain impressionism, which reflected the
artificial nature of the figure. It was embedded in the perception of the viewer in public as the
women in the paintings as non-existing and, ultimately, the reflection of the artist’s creativity
along with mythological features.
The change in the painting was due to the portraitist brilliance of Newton, along with
the use of modern techniques that showed the intensity of realism added to the portrait. The
work shows a modern woman comfortable in her skin who can be assumed from her physical
attribute that she belonged to substance society with her wavy bob cut hair which was one of
the fashion trends in the 1930s among the high-class society with the equally fashionable
green sandals and standing in a very easing position leaning on the easel of the specified
Russian musician Andrey Illyashenko (Smither, 2010). The women could be very quickly be
pictured as part of the society if Newton drew clothes on her, which disturbed the ease of the

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public. It was for the first time in the history of nudes that the public could associate the
women in the nude with existing women outside and painting. It was one of the major causes
of the discomfort, for it tugged at the social anxiety prevalent in Canadian society. The
portrait had the background of Newton’s studio, which was another proof of the conformity
of the women’s existence along with the identical trend in the fashion of the time. The
painting was seen as the spark that started a heated debate on the convention of drawing nude
women who were not merely an idealized image but bore the simplistic feature such as the
realistic gaze as well as the pubic hair. It was also associated with pornography, but critiques
in the later times demarcate the difference between nude paintings and pornography (Smither,
2010). Pornography as a medium was introduced to bridge the gap between the viewer and
the image, giving the sense of closeness while the nude art in its height left room for
imagination, as seen in Newton’s Nude. The model seems to be disconnected from the
viewer’s position, and perspective completely removes from the portrait and analytically
situated below the model.
The work was highly controversial due to another significant feature, which was the
confidence with which the model was drawn to be standing with the stark contrast from the
mythological nude who showed shyness, which was relevant to the ethical ground of
morality. The realism painted in the Nude was one of the highly acclaimed genres of nude art
with the depiction of deviation and the contrast of the landscape portrait in the easel on which
the model is leaning with confidence showing the confidence which Newton had in her
deviation from the prevalent genre and its growing affinity among the public. However, the
controversy reached its peak, and Newton faced the same fate as Russell, and her painting
was removed from the exhibition in 1933 (Leppert, 2018). She also returned to Paris, and
‘Nude in the Studio’ remained as the only nude portrait she drew in her lifetime.

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However, at the same time where the like of Russell and Newton went through harsh
criticism, their contemporary such as Prudence Heward’s work ‘Nude in Landscape’ and
John Lyman were praised for their cohesion of the landscape art with the modern technique
of nude painting (Krase, 2016). This could be seen under the microscope of the changing
modern culture, which included dancing, sculpting, burlesque dancing, which was against the
conventional notion of modernism that the prudish Canadian population adhered to and
accepted. After the war, the onset of modernization has already made its hold on the
Canadian culture with industrialization and urbanization as being the prominent feature
among the youth, which alarmed the conformist of the conventions of morality. While the
youth culture was more appealed to the rational and technological approach towards life,
which generated the idea of leisure, resulting in a new form of fashion and pursuit of leisure
through dating, this made the Canadian alarmists concerned about the derision from nude
paintings as a matter of concern (Kodó, 2016). Moreover, the inclusion of the notion of
leisure in terms of sexuality could be seen as the criticism against nudes in general. Although,
it was hard for the conventional Victorian ethics to accept the modern norm of accepting
sexuality with confidence.
The debate around nudes also had a political actor where the Canadian government
accepted the works of the Group of Seven because their work was a representation of the
aesthetic, which was the art culture previous to the war. The immigration process opened the
avenue of the young artists to be exposed to the culture outside the snow-capped exteriors of
Canada. The genre of nude did not rhyme with the Canadian Nationalism of understanding
painting as the high art of depiction of the societal as well as the universal ideology (Kennedy
& Coulter, 2018). The role of the nude art in the depiction of the political conflict was due to
the association of the landscape form with the male strength showing the barrenness of the
landscape with the lakes and the lone tree surviving gained affinity with the Canadian

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nationalist ideology. Nevertheless, Edwin Holgate was praised due to his effort of including
natural surroundings with a nude figure depicting the interconnectedness of the growth of
modernity along with the moral and aesthetic conventions.
The historian and the critique of the time are shown to be responsible for the complete
negligence of nude incorporation in the history of Canadian art. The art genre showed
diversity due to their effort to bring high art into the front. The Canadian population still
reeling with the past of Victorian aesthetic could form relation and affection for the landscape
due to their feature of being able to be viewed collectively, which they could not accept from
the nude. Another reason why the nude genre failed to gain momentum was the repetition of
the figurine posture as being curvy and the idealized and stereotypical shape of the human
body (Burr, 2017). Their form of deviation did not entirely fall in the notion of Avant-Garde
as well, for they adhered to the formation of the painting through light strokes and the
blending of the female body with the dark background, which were repetitively seen in the
mythological nudes in the past.
In conclusion, one can see the rise of prominence of the Group of Seven and their use
of the landscape as their medium of forming coherence with the viewer worked against the
nude artists. They could not pull their art from the notion of the unsolicited concept of
sexualization as a means of leisure rather than being an artist. The essay accounts for the
criticism of both the male and female nude artist and their criticism and their fate. Newton, as
a portraitist, was one of the best in Canadian art and yet had to return to Paris to escape the
harsh criticism. Their paintings were removed from the exhibition, and it was not until the
late twenty-first century that their prominence was revived.

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References
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identity.
Krase, A. (2016). The transformation of landscape as an aesthetic ideal (Doctoral
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