The basis for my statement about nude female art as being produced for the gratification of men...came from reading and excerpt from the art critic, John Berger's WAYS OF SEEING. I can't find the article online, but here is a short comment relating to it in another critique of the female nude which mentions his interpretation.

"Indeed, the only purpose of the woman in Study of a Nude is to be aesthetically pleasing and showcase her beauty without any threatening undertones of intellectual presence or thoughtfulness. This is not a conscious choice made by the women represented in Renoir's nudes, but rather a byproduct of the male gaze. In his book Ways of Seeing art critic and theorist John Berger examines the gaze and its affect on women. He postulates that the portrayal of a woman, particularly a naked woman, by a male artist plays into the age-old notion that "men act and women appear" (47). To paint a woman is to turn her into an object, specifically an object to be viewed—a sight. Berger attempts to analyze the male drive to paint female nudes; he addressed the male artist directly saying "you painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure" (51). This is a model for the interpretation of Renoir's nudes: Renoir enjoyed the naked female form so he perpetuated a myth that painting the nude is an artist's attempt to capture a metaphoric, natural beauty. According to Garb, focus on this feminine ideal as "high art" conflates the ideas of the appreciation of beauty (an intrinsic part of art history) with the admiration of the female form (and the objectification and essentialism of women that accompanies it). "