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| William John Connon Model on a Bed 1956 oil on canvas Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| Sylvia Wishart Standing Model ca. 1956 oil on board Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| Enid Mitchell Seated Model 1958 oil on board Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| Anonymous British Artist Standing Model ca. 1960 oil on canvas Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| Gabrielle Stubbs Model in Studio 1961 oil on canvas Edinburgh College of Art |
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| A.J. Valen Seated Model ca. 1963-64 oil on board Edinburgh College of Art |
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| Kenneth Frewin Seated Model 1963 oil on board Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| John Houston Turning Figure 1964 oil on canvas City Art Centre, Edinburgh |
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| Catherine Miller Untitled 1970 oil on board Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| David Pettigrew Recumbent Model 1971 oil on board Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| Ken Donaldson Standing Model 1972 oil on board Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| Philip Scoular Standing Model 1975 oil on board Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| Hugh Farren Standing Model 1977 oil on canvas Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| Nichollas Hamper The Artist in his Studio 1981 acrylic on canvas Royal College of Art, London |
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| Gina Gables Reclining Model in the Studio ca. 1984 oil on canvas Franklin College, Grimsby, Lincolnshire |
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| Victor Newsome The Artist's Studio 1997-2003 tempera on board National Museum of Wales, Cardiff |
"The distinction between the naked figure and the nude might seem to be a specious one, for both are equivalent terms for a body bereft of clothing. Yet over the past century and a half it has been one much insisted upon in Britain. As Sickert complained in his essay on the subject, The Naked and the Nude, in 1910, "An inconsistent and prurient puritanism has succeeded in evolving an ideal which it seeks to dignify by calling it the Nude, with a capital N, and placing it in opposition to the naked."
"The distinction became the cornerstone of that classic study of the representation of the naked human figure in art, The Nude by Sir Kenneth Clark, published in 1956. Like connoisseurs and aesthetes before him, Clark argued that the naked was a body deprived of clothing, "huddled and defenseless," while the nude was "clothed" in art, "re-formed rather than deformed – balanced, prosperous and confident." For Clark the nude was the perfect subject for the work of art, "the most complete example of the transformation of matter into form."
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"By the 1940s the Euston Road view of the model generally prevailed, certainly at progressive art schools such as Camberwell, where "in the life rooms a recurring selection of professional models stood, sat or lay in undramatic poses, the Euston Road ethos being that the nude human body was just another object whose structure must be analytically observed and transcribed unemotionally to canvas or paper." It was this same ethos which cramped the style of the model Quentin Crisp, who, having twisted himself into impossible contortions for the benefit of the students, was told: "All you have to do is to stand as though you were waiting for a bus." Today [that is, in 1999] Crisp is a celebrity. But in the 1940s he was just another anonymous art-school model plying his trade at Camberwell, St Martin's and numerous suburban art schools in exchange for low pay, unsociable hours and poor working conditions. Whatever the social, economic and artistic changes of the previous one hundred years, the basic premise was unchanged: "To artists I was called 'Model,' and addressed the teachers as 'Sir.'"
– from The Artist's Model from Etty to Spencer by Martin Postle and William Vaughan (London: Merrell Holberton, 1999)
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| Russell Westwood Sir Henry Rushbury and Students, Life Room, Royal Academy Schools 1953 photograph Royal Academy of Arts, London |