Tate Britain looks to nudes

Tate Britain, suffering from a dramatic loss of visitors to its exciting new sister gallery downriver, is looking to the Victorian nude to restore its popularity.

The gallery, which saw a drop in attendances from 1.8 million to 1.2 million last year, began its fightback today with the launch of "the first exhibition to survey the full range of the Victorian nude, both male and female".

The show, which will open the new suite of Linbury Galleries in November, will demonstrate that Victorian representations of the nude were "as erotically charged, as sensuous and as controversial as any today". Indeed, curator Dr Alison Smith maintains that, far from being coy about nudity, the Victorians were more open and honest than people today.

"The nude was one of the most conspicuous categories of visual image at every level, from mass-produced photographs to Royal Academy paintings," she said. She has drawn on the Tate's "enormous holdings of Victorian nudes and those of other British galleries to show some 180 paintings, photos and even early film. Presented in thematic sections, Exposed: The Victorian Nude will take visitors from early, old-masterly work through the Pre-Raphaelites to the High Classicists.

One section called Sensation! The Nude in High Art will focus on scenes of lust, martyrdom, bondage and flagellation, often taken from the Bible, which tested the limits of what was acceptable.

Controversy over nudity, previously confined to the art gallery, grew throughout the Victorian age and raised issues still debated today. It prompted Pear's Soap, who had bought Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's In the Tepidarium with a view to using it for advertising, to change its mind for fear of causing offence.