Red and naked

Painting a full figure has it's problems, the picture area gets split in 3,

 and the two sides tend to jump in front of the figure. 

How does one avoid this and make this two sides just as interesting as the figure itself ?

Well the secret lies in how the body is turned and how the two sides next to it interact with the lines in the body. It is not enough to make a strong perspective in the background.

So each artist solves this problem in another way.

One needs an excuse to paint a nude or a subject which is accepted .

 Like Eve's temptation, Andromeda, Venus or the Spring 

Some painters remove the pubes hair so the body look more statue like and less naked.

All the painters on this post tried to solve the above mentioned  aspects, 

and at the same time paint their ideal female figure

And of cause all the here pictured beautiful naked women have red hair too!

Dora Carrington

A wonderful picture!!!

She is the only female painter on this post and somehow her female is

more realistic and less imagined or beautified.

Amaury Duval
"The birth of Venus"

It looks like the woman was painted on top on the seascape,

 which can be seen trough her legs.

Edward Poynter
"Andromeda"

Heyerdahl
"The Nymph"

John Roddam Spencer Stanhope
"Flora"

Jules Le Febvre

All  painters fight with the same problem.To make the picture interesting, many use 

bending of the hip and shoulders to opposite sides. But it is difficult to get the bend leg 

right in size compared to the straight leg. If you scrawl trough this post again do look at the different 

impression from the way the body is bend with the weight on one leg,  when it's totally straight and symmetrical, and the weight is equally shared on both legs

John William Godward
"A Pompeian Bath"

Here sex is hidden in the background and show what the snake actually do!

Klimt 

Frederick Childe Hassam
"Nymph"

Anders Zorn

John Roddam Spencer Standhope
"Eve tempted"

The apple symbolizes the hunger ,sweetness and stimulation in Sex

No painter has yet placed the snake where it actually sits on  man.

The woman's entrance is prudently covered ,but the artist could not hold himself from 

putting it on the tree trunk instead!

John William  Godward

It is not easy to paint the inner side when the body is seen from the side

often the arm and leg and two tits are wrong in sizes and distance form each other 

in the perspective like in this picture. To the trained eye this is not good!

Frank Weston Benson

Boris Kostodiev

This wonderful sensual Russian painter.Who never is afraid of 

showing the mature female body and not just the ideal of teenager bodies.

John Collier

The story of Eve and the temptation has more sides to it than being just a story from the Bible.

 I guess the old Jewish story about the beginning of the world

 is told to fit children's ears.

It is a secret about , temptation and continuation 

of the human race trough the help of a "bad snake"

A secret  that only grown ups understand the real nature of.

The snake is well chosen because it disgusts us or scare us

and at the same time it spellbind us just like some other smaller cousin. 

Childe Hassam

Huge woman or small tree. 

Something is wrong in the distance between the two!

Was she really in the picture from the beginning?

I doubt it ,he just imagined her.

Henri  Matisse

Well the slippers and the perspective could have been
better!
The mistakes in them, catch my eyes first before anything else.
Besides that, it's a very nice picture with the body's rhythm,
the surrounding patterns and  sizes of the  picture .

Sir Francis Dicksee
"Dawn"