The Nude artworks on Tate museum or belong to renowned and famous artists. We are talking about Degas, Modigliani, Nicholson, William Etty, Uglow, Currin, Ervin, Pasmore, Fray, Bonnard, Dobsson, Picasso, Carter, Sargent, Coldstream, Matisse, Scott, Steer and others
Candaules, King of Lydia - William Etty - 1830
Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed
The Lydian king, Candaules, had arranged for his general, Gyges, to view his wife, Nyssia, as she undressed. The furious queen offered Gyges the choice of being executed or murdering her husband. Gyges chose the latter, and went on to marry her.Etty here subverts the language of neo-classical history painting. Instead of improving themes, Etty uses it for an erotic subject of voyeurism and vengeance. He emphasises colour and texture rather than outline, and treats physical beauty as the object of lust and deception. His picture typified the Romantic challenge to moral and pictorial conventions. Tate Museum
Nicholson painted very few nudes, perhaps three others only. He had been to art schools which were not especially committed to life studies, unlike the Slade School, and his pictures do not often include large scale figures. In addition his subjects were very personal, in that his creativity was not in inventing new subjects but in choosing them from real things around him. This study of the nude was not exhibited in his lifetime. Link
Nude on a Couch - Auguste Renoir - 1915
The model for this painting was Gabrielle Renard (1878-1959), a cousin of Renoir's wife who helped in the running of the household. She also was Renoir's favourite model, her rounded body exemplifying the artist's ideal of female beauty. The treatment of her breasts and stomach has precedents in classical statuary, while the feathery brushwork recalls the style of such old masters as Rubens, Boucher and Fragonard. Link
This pastel is one of the most delicately executed and finely resolved of all Degas' studies of the nude. It belongs to a celebrated series of pastels of women at their toilette produced in the mid-1880s, a group of which was included in an exhibition of Impressionist painters in Paris in 1886. Critics varied in their reactions to these works. Some praised the way Degas showed plausible, modern women rather than idealized goddesses. Others complained of the models' ugliness and suggested they were prostitutes. In this pastel, however, there are no indications of the woman's social class or line of work. Link
