“Desires and Pleasures: Victorian Masterpieces from the Pérez Simón Collection,” presents examples from the most extensive private collection of Victorian paintings in the world, inviting visitors to discover the artists famous in England during the reign of Queen Victoria such as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Frederic Leighton and Albert Moore.
Those paintings reflect the common desire of these nineteenth century English artists, against a backdrop marked by puritanism, to pay homage to the, “cult of beauty,” expressing a sensual aesthetic through sumptuous decorative paintings of nude women that stand in sharp contrast to the strict conservative attitudes and social mores of the day regarding sex and gender.
