THERE was little difference between the subject in a 122-year-old painting displayed at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery and some of the works by controversial photographer, Bill Henson, the gallery's director said yesterday.
Gordon Morrison said the 1886 painting by William Bartlett featuring a naked pubescent girl dipping a foot into the sea, had not drawn any adverse comment.
The gallery acquired the painting, titled Hesitation, in 1887, and it has been permanently displayed at the gallery along with other paintings from Australia's colonial era.
Some weeks ago Mr Morrison received an invitation to the opening of the Bill Henson exhibition which last week drew the attention of police, who confiscated some of Henson's photographs.
The cover of the invitation featured a picture of a naked teenage girl from a photograph taken by Henson.
"I see the two images as having very strong similarities," Mr Morrison said.
"I could read out the description of Hesitation from the gallery's 1911 catalogue and you could apply that same description to the Henson picture on the invitation to the opening of his show."
He said the response to Henson's work compared to the work by artists such as Bartlett "raises all kinds of issues about what was acceptable then and what is acceptable now".
He said gallery records show that about the time the Bartlett painting was acquired the main considerations preoccupying the gallery association were not whether paintings might be controversial but whether it was wrong to open the gallery to the public
on Sundays.
President of the Australian Family Association Angela Conway said the art community had recognised Henson's art as "edgy, confronting and provocative and some have said erotic".
Ms Conway said it was important there was a debate over the culture of sexualising children.
"We have a problem in our community which is significant, that is the culture that sexualises kids for commercial gain. We have a culture that normalises the sexualisation of children," she said.
"The arts community needs to wake up to itself. It is not a borderless country, it needs to fit in with society."
In mid-September the Ballarat gallery will open an exhibition featuring nudes.
"It will feature four to five different things about what nudes can be made to represent, everything from sexuality to spirituality," Mr Morrison said.
"For example there'll be a naked figure of Christ by no less an artist than William Blake that we will have on loan from the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria)."
Also forming part of the nudes exhibition will be a painting called The Grasshopper, featuring a nude woman painted by Jules Lefebvre who also painted the famous Chloe, which hangs in Melbourne's Young and Jackson Hotel.
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