Life modelling: and now for the nudes

In an upstairs room overlooking a park, 51-year-old Judith Castle is preparing to take off her clothes. "I should really have taken these off earlier," she says, bending down to unzip her boots. "They hate sock marks." She swaps her jeans and top for a black dressing gown. Then she drops the gown and drapes herself, naked, across a pile of cushions.

It is Friday morning, and Castle – graphic designer, artist's model since the age of eight, and life model since she was 18 – is posing for a life-drawing class at a north London arts centre. Moving easily from the cushions to stand in front of a student's easel, her body turned towards the light, she seems relaxed, despite the fact that everyone else in the room is fully clothed. She has never felt any embarrassment, she says. "I've always been fairly body-confident. To me it feels completely natural. It's about being part of the creation of art – about the beauty of the human form."

Artists trying to depict that form have always needed models willing to remove their clothes. Some drawings and paintings have brought the models notoriety in their own right – such as "la Fornarina", the woman shown semi-clothed and proffering her breast in Raphael's Portrait of a Young Woman, painted in around 1520; or the Italian noblewoman Simonetta Vespucci, believed to have been the model for Botticelli's The Birth of Venus in around 1485; or, rather more recently, Sue Tilley, the civil servant whose nude portrait by Lucian Freud sold last year for £17.2m. And, last month, prurient interest rippled around the media when nude pictures of Cherie Blair, painted by the artist Euan Uglow in the 1970s, went on display at a London gallery.

But most life models – both men and women, regularly shedding their clothes for artists and students at art schools and adult education centres – remain anonymous. So what drives someone to pose naked for a living? And are they all as sanguine and unembarrassed as Castle?

Model Rachel McCarthy thinks so. Now 51, she started modelling in her late 30s when her then-boyfriend, an art tutor, needed a sitter at the last minute. "I thought 'Oh God,'" she says, "but I'd been playing around with the idea, so I said 'All right, then'. I wasn't nervous. I enjoyed it."

Posing for long periods of time (models can be asked to hold standing poses for up to an hour, and seated positions for much longer) can be painful. But for McCarthy, draughty studios are a bigger problem. One artist she posed for last year expected her to stand for three hours in a cold room with just one small blow heater. McCarthy has low blood pressure, and kept fainting. "The artist got rather pissed off," she says. "He seemed to think that all models should be able to do everything."

Zoe Simon, 31, works as a life model to subsidise her main career as an actor and playwright. She does yoga to keep her body supple enough to hold the more difficult poses that display a model's musculature. "It can be tough," she says, "but you learn to deal with it, and get a strong back and a strong tummy. It's a bit like endurance work."

Simon was working in a bookshop when sculptor William Fawke approached her and asked her to pose naked for him. She wasn't at all shocked – "I'd been thinking about doing it anyway" – and doing so helped pay her way through drama school. Now she works for most of London's major art schools, as well as for stone carver Simon Smith and Czech performance artist Tereza Buskova (one of whose recent works involved half-dressing Simon in traditional Czech costume, complete with a strategically placed Czech biscuit).

Like Castle, Simon believes that a model has an active role to play in the making of the art. "I've always really admired people like the pre-Raphaelites," she says. "Models were very integral to their work. They had strong personalities. And coming from a performance background, I thought I could contribute something."

Model Kevin Feighery, 52, is also an actor and a dancer. He thinks the work appeals to performers not only because it's flexible enough to fit around rehearsals and shows, but because "we have an extra exhibitionist side". He maintains his focus during long poses by meditating and learning scripts in his head. As an actor he is also, he says, used to dealing with rejection – and this helps him remain unperturbed by comments about his body from tutors or students which, outside the classroom, could be grounds for a slap round the face ("make sure you shade in that cellulite", perhaps; or "isn't his stomach a bit fatter than that?"). "My confidence is high enough that they could say anything to me," he says. "You always have to remember that this is about art."

McCarthy is similarly stoical. "You are like a slab of meat," she says, "but you have to accept that's why you're there. People might point out a fat droopy bit, but you have to have a hide like an elephant and not take anything personally."

As well as modelling, McCarthy runs the Register of Artists' Models, a UK database used by both sitters and artists. There are about 300 models on the register, of whom, perhaps surprisingly, the majority are older men. "Men are basically more exhibitionist than women, especially the older ones," McCarthy explains. "They're like, 'look at me, look at me, look at my parts.'"

The register exists both to standardise models' pay – RAM recommends £12.50 an hour, though fees vary from £7.80 in Wales to a London average of just over £11 – and to regulate an activity which, by its very nature, leaves life models open to abuse. All the artists on the register are vetted, and barred if models report being made to feel uncomfortable in any way. This rarely happens : Simon and Castle have never experienced any such problems, while Feighery says he was once asked to model for an "erotic" class, but quickly declined. McCarthy mentions one artist who insisted on stripping along with his models and then "became aroused", and another who sent explicit text messages to a model after she had posed for him. But, she says, some male models can also be guilty of inappropriate behaviour. Getting an erection during class, for instance, is strictly taboo – but, McCarthy says, "one guy I auditioned just came and sat in the class, beaming at me, with this massive erection."

Earning disapproval can be a more pressing issue for life models – especially for women. Historically, many models were, if not artists' wives or lovers, prostitutes, the only women who could pose naked without fear of social censure. The unnamed model for Velazquez's Rokeby Venus, for example, is believed to have been the artist's mistress, and borne his illegitimate child. And public perceptions about models have changed less than you might think. When, for instance, Freud's latest nude sitter was unveiled last month as 25-year-old artist Perienne Christian, she had to field questions about whether her relationship with the 86-year-old painter was purely professional (the painter does have an at least partly deserved reputation for seducing his sitters). "I live with my boyfriend," Christian replied tersely. "There is never anything like that."

"Some people," McCarthy says, "view us as only slightly above prostitutes. I don't think society understands. If you say you're a life model, a lot of people go red and laugh. Or they go on to the next question, as if you haven't said anything." Simon tells a similar story. "Some people in the wider world just don't accept it at all," she says. "I once told someone at a party what I do and she said, 'Oh, do you do porn as well?' I had to say: 'no, it's very different.'"

Unlike fashion modelling, there are no stipulations as to age, height or body shape. Confidence is important, but tutors are just as likely to want an old or overweight model as a young, thin one. Castle finds it inspiring. "In this day and age," she says, "it's a real tonic."

The pleasure Simon takes in posing goes even further. "There are so many jobs that are really pointless," she says. "Just working in an office and making money to keep a big corporation alive. But the thing I really like about working with artists is that they get so inspired by simple things – a person, or a piece of fruit. For me, it's like they take back the things we've lost. Joy in nature. Joy in life."

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