Frank Duveneck

Frank Duveneck

Date: c. 1890

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1999.50

Text Entries: Frank Duveneck's Siesta, also a depiction of a life-sized nude, hung at Foucar's bar in Cincinnati until stories of its existence reached the larger town population. Public outcry over the work's perceived indecency forced its removal and in turn its owner donated it to The Cincinnati Art Museum proclaiming "That girl was too naked for a saloon, but she was not too naked for high society." Foucar's words underscore the irony that the puritanical society of nineteenth-century America only sanctioned the image of the nude female in the context of an art museum. They also capture the conundrum of the "nude" as opposed to the "naked" still existent today.