In the first article of these two considering voyeurism in paintings, I examined classical examples from myth and the popular Biblical stories of King David and Bathsheba, and Susanna and the Elders.
According to legend, King Candaules of Lydia boasted of the beauty of his wife, Nyssia, to the chief of his personal guard, Gyges. To support his boast, the king showed his wife to Gyges by stealth, naked as she was preparing for bed. When she discovered Gyges’ voyeurism, Nyssia gave him the choice of being executed or of murdering the king. Opting for the latter, Gyges stabbed the king to death when he was in bed, then married Nyssia and succeeded Candaules on the throne.
Jean-Léon Gérôme in his early King Candaules from 1859 chose to show the moment that Nyssia removed the last item of her clothing, prior to the moment of peripeteia. The king is in his bed, awaiting his wife, who has just removed the last of her clothing as she spots the dark and hooded figure of Gyges watching her from the open door. Gérôme’s love of detail in the decor saves this from the accusation that this was just another excuse for a full-length nude.
Two years later, Gérôme looked again at this theme.
Phryne was a highly successful and rich courtesan (hetaira) in ancient Greece who, according to legend, was brought to trial for the serious crime of impiety. When it seemed inevitable that she would be found guilty, one of her lovers, the orator Hypereides, took on her defence. A key part of that was to unveil her naked in front of the court, in an attempt to surprise its members, impress them with the beauty of her body, and arouse a sense of pity. The legend claims that this ploy worked perfectly.
Phryne is to the left of centre, in the midst of the semicircular court, completely naked apart from some jewellery on her neck and wrists, and her sandals. She is turned away from the gaze of the judges, her eyes hidden in the crook of her right elbow, as if in shame and modesty. Behind her (to the left), her defence has just removed her blue robes with a flourish, his hands holding them high. At Phryne’s feet is a gold belt of a kind worn to designate courtesans in France from the thirteenth century, with the Greek word ΚΑΛΗ (kale), meaning beautiful.
The judges, all men with bare chests and wearing uniform scarlet robes, are taken aback. Gérôme shows a whole textbook of responses from pure fright, to anguish, grief, or disbelief, with each of those men looking straight at Phryne.
Superficially, it’s easy to suggest that Gérôme was using Phryne’s nakedness to appeal to the lowest desires, which remained one of the popular attractions of the annual Salon. However it’s more likely that this is a statement about attitudes to the nude female form, the judgement of the Salon, voyeurism and looking.
In his Musidora And Her Two Companions, Sacharissa And Amoret from 1795, Benjamin West turns to a now-forgotten cycle of poems by James Thomson, The Seasons, published between 1726-30. In this scene from Summer, Damon, who is peeping from behind a tree at the far left, voyeuristically watches the three young women bathing in a stream. He’s in love with Musidora, and towards dusk on a summer’s day is sat in a hazel copse, lost in thought. She, with her two friends, then comes to bathe in the nearby stream, and he watches them undress, forming a “soul-distracting view”. He finally can’t stand the sight any more, writes Musidora a note revealing that he had been watching her, then rushes away. She discovers his note, recognises his writing, and responds with mixed emotions.
Eugène Delacroix’s painting of Louis d’Orléans Showing his Mistress from 1825-26 tells a sordid story of misogyny from French history. Set in about 1400, it shows Louis I, Duke of Orléans, brother of King Charles VI, at the right, displaying the legs and lower body of his mistress, Mariette d’Enghien, to his chamberlain. Her face is obscured because the mistress also happens to be the chamberlain’s wife.
Marià Fortuny pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in art in his portrait of Carmen Bastián (1871-72). His model here is a young gypsy woman whom he ‘discovered’ in the Barranco de la Zorra, then a desolate area towards Granada’s main cemetery, in Spain. When posing for the painter on his ancient sofa, she provocatively lifted her skirt to taunt him, and make the artist and viewers voyeurs.
Nude on the Beach at Portici (1874) is an excellent example of the balance that Fortuny struck between its vigorously scrubbed-in background, giving a textural feel to the beach, and the virtuoso brushwork he used to render the woman’s body. Its high angle of view and her pose makes this decidedly voyeuristic.
The most prolonged, even exhaustive, period of voyeurism must be in the intimate domestic scenes Pierre Bonnard painted of his longstanding partner Marthe, from 1898 to her death in 1942. Of the thousands of paintings and photographs that he made of her, I have selected just two.
In 1898, Bonnard painted the first of his controversial works revealing his private life with Marthe, in Man and Woman in an Interior (1898), a motif known better from his later version of 1900. He stands naked, looking away, as Marthe is getting dressed on the bed. Its post-coital implications are clear. The image has also been cropped unusually, as if it was a ‘candid’ photo, enhancing its voyeuristic appearance.
Bonnard’s best-known nudes of 1925 are those in which his model is still in the bath, most notably Nude in the Bath. The bath is cropped to show just the lower torso and legs of the woman in its water. A second, clothed, person is striding across from the left, its figure cropped extremely to show just the front of the body and legs.
It is thought that the figure on the left is that of the artist, but I cannot make sense of that. He or she appears to be wearing light patterned clothing consisting of a jacket and long skirt, with soft slippers resembling ballet shoes!
I hope that you’re now feeling thoroughly uncomfortable in looking at all these paintings.