The place for Charles Wheeler’s nudes in Australian art history has not been adequately gauged by art historians. He was one of Australia’s most notable painters of the nude, not perhaps because his vision was particularly inventive or original, but rather because he was an important, conservative conduit of that European tradition. Wheeler was very popular with the buying public over many decades, but success with his nudes was fundamentally a critical one. The positive response to Wheeler’s nudes, paintings which combined elements of the academic tradition and more fashionable conventions, presents an intriguing reflection on the nature of art criticism in Australia. The style of Wheeler’s discourse is indebted not only to late nineteenth century British models, as it was represented in the writings of critics such as R.A.M. Stevenson, who was primarily concerned with technique, but also to current debates about art and morality. One of the determining characteristics of this discourse was an interest in defining the limits between naked and nude. Critics were particularly concerned to protect the nude as a genre against moral attack by refusing to engage in a discussion of its sensual aspects. While the public was keen to debate the moral problems associated with the nude, the critics were anxious to avoid these issues. They felt that questions of morality were not central to artistic merit, and sensed that by engaging in discussion of this kind, the nude was on danger of being brought into disrepute.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245104 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Pennings, Mark W. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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