In the medium’s early days—particularly in France, where Victorian notions of propriety held less sway than in England and America, and where life drawing was a central part of artistic training—photographs were a cheap and easy substitute for the live model. While serving painters and sculptors, many 19th-century photographic nudes were also intended as works of art in their own right. Still others bore the title “artist’s study” merely to evade government censors and legitimize images that were, in fact, more likely to stir a gentleman’s loins than to enhance his aesthetic endeavors.