Eve Christian

The Nude in Art

• Conclusion

Whilst writing this article, I have been able to show you one or two examples of my own Nudes that were influenced by various Masters I was writing about. However, some of my favourite studies that I have achieved thus far, on a path that I hope will produce perhaps a few more on the more monumental scale of my Bathsheba, I have painted some which I think fit in with the principles and concepts of this article to the point where I should like to show them here. For example, I have talked about and shown several examples of Adam and Eve. Whilst I do intend eventually to create a composition of this subject I have thus far only got as far as Eve. Whilst she is so unconventionally posed and shown - and therefore didn’t fit anywhere in the article - still this image remains one of our most popular and evidently well liked on our website, and so here she is.

I am lucky enough to have found the most wonderful model. We are living on a 2,000 acre estate in the middle of Yorkshire, a ten minute drive at least to the nearest small village, and so meeting anyone without an appointment is unlikely and rare. However, Vicky came to us through a series of marvellous “laceworks” of Fate and has modeled for us for some years.

Vicky is a horse girl; she looks after them, is a brilliant vet, rider, and show-jumper. Perhaps for this reason her body was perfect for both Fanny’s purposes and my own. She is small and slim and very fit, as of course riders have to be. After we met her, and I had proposed that she should model for me, she came over to discuss it with us, (and make sure I wasn’t dangerous!) and after a while when we had concluded the essentials of our discussion, my wife Fanny said to her, “Come on then, get your kit off.” Vicky obliged and we were both surprised, impressed and delighted by the body that suddenly appeared. Everything about her was lovely, from her proportions, (which we have just learnt in the article have been important to artists for ever!) to the gracefulness which came naturally to her. Also, we discovered even during the first sitting, that Vicky had a natural aptitude for getting into and holding virtually any pose, no matter how difficult; an artist’s dream.

During the following month, Vicky got into the rhythm of modeling for me for two days a week. Occasionally, whilst we were working, Fanny would come into the studio, either to give me a message or offer Vicky a tea - like Fanny, Vicky loves her tea! - and Fanny became fascinated by how Vicky looked whilst modeling. She asked her if she would mind her taking some photographs of us while we worked, sort of “model and artist” kind of pictures. Vicky didn’t mind in the slightest. The success of these first pictures led Fanny to being so excited by them and their potential that she then asked Vicky if she would come one extra day a week to model for her.

Again, Vicky didn’t mind, as we had all become such good friends by then anyway, and she happened to have a lull in her very full and active life at that moment in time - luckily for us. And so Fanny started taking the most marvellous pictures of Vicky. And during her various experiments, out came this feather, an object we have countless samples of lying around, as indeed we have pheasants running into our garden all the time to get away from the hunters who shoot them . They know they are safe with us (vegetarians.)

Anyway, Fanny involved this feather in her photos and the result we all found quite sensational. They led to the “Fanergies,” and to me, at a later sitting, starting to incorporate the same idea in my work. In one or two of the resulting images I find it particularly successful, adding a quality that I could not possibly have arrived at with any alternative that I could imagine, that doesn’t veer towards an eroticism greater than I wish for in these particular works. And so...

Another favourite of mine I always considered a preparatory sketch for Rubens' Judgment of Paris - only Aphrodite and Athena , not to mention Paris himself, haven’t arrived yet. Also, just as I was painting her, that famous feather was floating around and happened to arrive at the position it is shown in just as my brush was able to get to it.

Fair Feather Friend Christian

Fair Feather Friend, Detail Christian

Sophie Rolled Over Christian

Sometimes I am interested to see just to what degree one can arrive at an image of beauty by virtue of a pose. I find “Sophie Rolled Over” to be one of the most successful of my attempts to achieve this. I was amazed by the incredible variety of poses Vicky got into once she was in a basic pose of kneeling with her back to me. This is the first of a planned series of nine, in which I will show the beauty of the pose in each case merely by the slightest movement here, the slightest movement there. Getting away from the feather altogether for a moment, something of interest I thought you might like to see, is a painting I did quite a few years ago, of my then Chinese wife as Diana the Huntress. It appears in fact in the “A. Christian” book on my work, published in Hong Kong and Tokyo in 1991. About three years after having painted this work, although not for sale, I was exhibiting it in Bombay (now Mumbai.) Occasionally, when I was visiting the gallery during the duration of that show I would sit and look at some of my work, trying to imagine what it was like to do so for an average visitor. As I gazed at this nude, I found myself wishing that it wasn’t so closed in, and I determined to take it home after the show and open it up. Although one or two people who saw it later said that they preferred the starkness of how it had been originally, most other people, and certainly myself, prefer it as it is now. Another friend I had who modeled for me during a brief visit to this country from Russia where she was from was Anya, whom we called Annie. Loving ballerinas as much as I do, I built this composition around the little ballerina in the background and the apples I had already painted on the top right, with the original intention of copying (more or less) the Cranach “Eve” some years before. I had abandoned that idea simply because I became too busy with too many other projects to make any copies, which I do from time to time just to own certain images which I love that much. I love the way this particular painting came out, Annie’s body is exactly as she was.

Backview Nude with Feather Christian Diana the Huntress, Revisited Christian

Annie Christian

Salome Christian

Rosehips Christian

And for the last ones I want to show we must return to that feather. The first one is the only nude I have done of Vicky that is more or less life sized, as well as full-length. Some rosehips were just lying around and they gave the work its title, “Rosehips.” I was very pleased with the skin tones and the pose, but still felt I could get more out of that backview idea. That led to what is probably my favourite single nude that I have painted thus far. I have intended to paint a series of Salome dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils, which will of course be a series of seven paintings, each one showing her shedding a further veil until, in the seventh, I will find the most beautiful pose for her to arrive at the end of her most famous dance - the beginnings of striptease, I have always thought. But seeing Vicky in this pose one day, I found it so beautiful a posture and so expressive that I painted it anyway. Her reflective-ness I suddenly realized could be Salome trying to mentally work out the steps, or postures of the dance she was planning. Thus I titled it “Salome, the First Choreographer.” I am showing it in its frame, as I think the combination is so extraordinary. For any details as to where and how I acquired that frame, and many of my other beautiful and unique frames, see the website and “The Artist At Work” section.

Anthony Christian

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