Art and the outrageous pose - "Le Nu esthétique - L'Homme, la Femme, L'Enfant," French magazine, 1902-07

 

First issued in October of 1902, and sold by subscription, Le Nu esthétique - L'Homme, la Femme, L'Enfant : album de documents artistiques inédits d’après nature was the first "nude magazine." Published by Émile Bayard, "The Aesthetic Nude" was dedicated to William-Adolphe Bouguereau and contained a preface by Jean-Léon Gérôme, both highly respected academic painters of the period. 

For the next five years, Bayard published twenty-five separate fascicles - A discrete section of a book issued or published separately - containing a large selection of photographed nude studies of men, women, and children in various poses, alone or in groups. And the models were frequently given props to wield and gathered into fully composed decorative tableaux. Occasionally, photographic "special effects" were employed. 

The images strove to align with and exemplify academic principles, and models were photographed in poses that specifically recalled the long line of western art, from the Greeks and Romans all the way forward to the aforementioned contemporary academic artists, Bouguereau and Gérôme. 

Several publications quickly followed suit, though most frequently their poorly disguised raison d'etre was erotic rather than aesthetic. Insulted by comparisons with his far less noble competitors, as well as harried by the legal battles launched against the nude magazines by offended moral crusaders, Bayard chose to close down the publication in 1907.

(By far, the majority of the models pictured in the publication were female; I've focused here on the male. Also, I've removed any images of children that may have been included in the pages that I've chosen. I don't think any of them would actually be considered erotic in any way... but in this day and age...?!)

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There is a very interesting article in French - easily translatable to English on most browsers - about this publication.