Once-Banned "Brazen" Nude Upsets for New Reasons

NEWPORT, Wales—A once-banned painting of a nude woman currently on view in Newport is showing how times have changed.

The 1924 work by Gerald Kelly, titled D.D. after the model's initials, was bought by a public gallery in 1947 and drew some 20,000 visitors before local council chiefs, who called the work "brazen" and said it was scandalizing their town, had it taken down and locked away.

Now on view in an exhibition in Newport titled "The Art of the Nude," today's audiences apparently find the work less upsetting for its nudity than for the fact that its subject, a confident-looking young woman, is smoking, according to the Times (London). Said Elizabeth Ayres, 38, a local resident: “She’s a bit of a Fag Ash Lil, but I can’t imagine why the painting would be banned.”