7 - Censorship, audiences, and the Victorian nude

Summary

On November 11, 1887, Anthony Comstock, leader and agent for the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), entered the Knoedler Gallery on New York's Fifth Avenue and arrested the proprietor, Roland Knoedler, for selling obscenity, specifically, photographic reproductions of female nudes painted by French artists like Bouguereau, Cabanal, Henner, and Lefèbvre (Clapp 1972). This event is notable for several reasons. First, Knoedler's gallery was, and still is, one of New York's leading art galleries. During the nineteenth century, Knoedler's, which was a branch of Goupil's art gallery in Paris, was influential in developing a taste for European Salon art among America's upper class. Several of the prints confiscated by Comstock had been displayed in the Paris Salon, the showcase of the greatest French art. Second, while virtually every New York city newspaper expressed outrage at this act of censorship, Knoedler's arrest was not unprecedented – Comstock had prosecuted numerous dealers of photographic reproductions. The most important precedent was the 1883 conviction of August Muller, a store clerk, for selling photographic reproductions of paintings of nudes, some of which had been displayed in the Paris Salon. On appeal, the New York State Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals upheld the conviction.

The Muller case provoked little commentary, even though the photographs that led to the Muller conviction were the same as those used to indict Knoedler. While Comstock saw the Muller case as a “great victory,” the Knoedler case ended quite differently – although two of the thirty-seven pictures that Comstock based his charges on were found obscene by the court, the case was a public relations failure.