Had Sigmund Freud psychoanalyzed whole eras, not mere individuals, the late 19th century would have been a prime candidate for his therapist's couch. Take the example of empire-building Britain. Victorians may have been prudish to the extent of covering shapely table legs, but they were sexually voracious. The number of prostitutes working in London -- estimated at 50,000 in Johann von Archenholtz's 1789 publication "A Picture of England" -- rose to an all-time high during Queen Victoria's 1837-1901 reign.

As part of his case study, Freud could have considered the wedding night of John Ruskin. On that night in 1855, the pioneering art critic was expected to consummate his marriage to bourgeois beauty Euphemia "Effie" Gray. Instead he ran traumatized from his bride's bed, apparently appalled by her pubic hair. Though hairless genitalia is more associated today with porn stars, it was the only way artists of earlier generations could depict the entirely unclothed female form with propriety. Ruskin had, so the tale goes, only ever seen such "artistic" nudes.

Now, amateur psychoanalysts have the opportunity to draw a few conclusions of their own, thanks to a fine exhibition of British and French 19th-century art from the Winthrop Collection of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, currently showing at the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno.