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Title: Loelia, Duchess of Westminster Artist: William Acton (English, 1906-1945) Genre: portraiture Movement: Surrealism Dimensions: 153 cm (60.2 in) high x 127 cm (50 in) wide Medium: oil on canvas Location: private collection

#art #art history #William Acton #portrait #portrait painting #portraiture #Surrealism #Surrealist art #modern art #20th century #20th century art #British art #English art #oil on canvas #private collection

“A gentleman came to ask my opinion on the cause of want of sexual feeling in his wife. […] “I am led to think that my wife's want of sexual feeling may arise, if you can affirm to me that such a thing is possible, from self-abuse. She has confessed to me that at a boarding-school, in perfect ignorance of any injurious effects, she early acquired the habit. This practice still gives her gratification; not so connection, which she views with positive aversion, although it gives her no pain.”

It appears that, at last, nothing but the morbid excitement produced by the baneful practice can give any sexual gratification, and that the natural stimulus fails to cause any pleasure whatever. […] I feared, therefore, that his surmises were correct, and that the lady practised self-abuse more frequently than she was willing to admit. So ruinous is the practice of solitary vice, both in the one and other sex, so difficult is it to give it up, that I fear it may be carried on even in married life.

If the unnatural excesses of masturbation take place early in life, before the subjects who commit them have arrived at maturity, it is not surprising that we meet with women whose sexual feelings, if they ever existed, become prematurely worn out. […] This tendency may be checked in girls, as in boys, by careful moral education in early life. But no doubt can exist that hereditary predisposition has much to do with this, independently of education and early associations. […] in general, women do not feel any great sexual tendencies.”

— William Acton; “The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs in Childhood, Youth, Adult Age, and Advanced Life: Considered in Their Physiological, Social, and Moral Relations” (1862)