For centuries, a painter rarely showed a man without clothes unless a story gave him a reason, usually taken from myth or the Bible. The twelve works below each found a different reason, and the most recent ones hardly look for one. One of these pictures cost its painter his job.
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Two centuries ago, the naked male body was the final exam of a painter's training. In the academies, a model held one pose for hours while students drew him, because clothes hide what makes a pose hard and a bare body shows every joint.
Saints, martyrs and the heroes of myth all depended on that skill. Outside the studio, though, a naked man still needed a reason to be in a picture.
Each work here had to give that reason clearly and make the man its subject, not a figure in the background. Several were made by young prize winners sent to Rome, several by men who learned anatomy on the dead. The order runs from the least known to the most famous.
The excuse. Most come with an alibi, a myth, a Bible story or an anatomy study. A few near the top simply wash or swim.
The price. A nude man could cost a career. One painter lost his teaching job over a loincloth.
12. Edvard Munch, Bathing Men (1907)
Two naked men walk up a beach toward the viewer, while other bathers wade in the sea behind them. Edvard Munch painted them in the summer of 1907 at Warnemünde, a small resort on Germany's Baltic coast.
The trip explains the mood of the picture. Munch had left Berlin that spring, worn down by drink and quarrels, and came to the coast for the sea air and a quieter life. For a while the plan worked, and Bathing Men records that stretch of health in loose, diagonal strokes, warm skin set against cool greens and blues.
What Munch changed was the scale. A canvas more than two meters wide was the size of history painting, the place for gods and generals. He gave it to men from a seaside town instead, and the one on the left looks straight out of the picture without making any move to cover himself.
At a Glance
Artist: Edvard Munch
Painted: 1907 to 1908, Warnemünde, Germany
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 206 × 227 cm (81 × 89 in)
Where to see it: Ateneum Art Museum (Finnish National Gallery), Helsinki
11. Thomas Eakins, The Swimming Hole (1885)
On a stone ledge above a lake, five young men take the sun, one diving in headfirst, another climbing out. A sixth swims toward them at the lower right with his dog Harry. That swimmer is the painter, Thomas Eakins, and the young men on the rock are his students. Within months of finishing the picture, the way he taught them would cost him his job.