Usually, a professional model offers his or her services at a reasonable cost, which a number of artists share. During these sessions, there's no room for anything but the highest and most exacting professional concentration. Any sexual pleasure is attenuated by the onus of responsibility to the form. It's a tough discipline in which artists used to be well schooled from early days, and in some art academies still are. But few artists can find gainful employment for their continuing abilities.
Conventional taste is unsympathetic to the nude.
It's seen as something artists have to outgrow in order to establish themselves as individuals with a signature style and subject matter. A fine exhibition at Heide shows how old this predicament is. It concentrates entirely on the nude studies of Fred Williams. Until this exhibition, few but specialist art historians knew about Williams' huge output in this genre. He's almost uniquely known for his landscapes.