But I
am prepared to maintain that it is necessary for the future of English
art and of English morality that the right of the nude to a place in
our galleries should be boldly asserted; it must, however, be the nude
as represented by thoroughly trained artists, and with a pure and
noble ethic purpose. The human form, male and female, is the type and
standard of all beauty of form and proportion, and it is necessary to
be thoroughly familiar with it in order safely to judge of all beauty
which consists of form and proportion. To women it is most necessary
that they should become thoroughly imbued with the knowledge of the
ideal female form, in order that they should recognize the perfection
of it at once, and without effort, and so far as possible avoid
deviations from the ideal. Had this been the case in times past,
we should not have had to deplore the distortions effected by
tight-lacing, which destroy'd the figure and ruin'd the health of so
many of the last generation. Nor should we have had the scandalous
dresses alike of society and the stage. The extreme development of the
low dresses which obtain'd some years ago, when the stays crush'd
up the breasts into suggestive prominence, would surely have been
check'd, had the eye of the public been properly educated by
familiarity with the exquisite beauty of line of a well-shaped bust.
I might show how thorough acquaintance with the ideal nude foot would
probably have much modified the foot-torturing boots and high heels,
which wring the foot out of all beauty of line, and throw the body
forward into an awkward and ungainly attitude.
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