In the mid-19th century, Parisian art museums implemented an unusual program known as the “Morning Visits” exclusively for their women patrons. Every Friday from 10-11am, museums would allow access solely to women, displaying young male athletes strategically posing as living sculptures amongst the classical nude statuary.
These handsome young men, often students or apprentices looking to earn extra income, would wear flesh-colored suits and strike animated poses that showed off their physiques to mimick Greco-Roman figures. Remaining perfectly still during the hour-long sessions, they acted as literal objets d’art for female visitors to admire and sketch.
The idea behind Morning Visits was to provide upper class women a dose of cultured subject matter to draw and dabble with in their own artistic pursuits. However, the eroticism was undeniable, with chiseled and oft-barely clothed male forms on full showcase. Strict bourgeois social codes otherwise prohibited women from accessing environments like athletic clubs or life drawing sessions with nude male models at art schools.
Thus, Morning Visits enabled women to assert themselves as artists while indulging in a bit of risqué entertainment. They could refine their sketching skills and channel their aesthetic sensibilities, all while appraising beautiful male figures typically off limits. This fleeting weekly affair remained under the radar of most Parisian men, allowing ladies to enjoy the unconventional pleasures of mingling fine art with masculine beauty within the acceptable confines of museums’ marble walls.
