Abstract

Sculpture occupied a primary position in Lee’s aesthetic imagination based on the position that this medium traditionally occupied for evolutionary approaches in art historiography during the nineteenth century. Thanks to her collaboration with her lover Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, Lee was able to develop a theory of embodiment based on German psychological empathy theories which was reliant on gallery rather than laboratory experiments. Although many scholars have interpreted the intellectual collaboration between the two women as a transposition of their lesbian desire, this essay turns away from biographical readings in order to focus on the reception of their work within the psychological circles of the time. Lee’s dialogue with Karl Groos around the concept of “inner mimicry” is essential to examine how sculpture allowed her to explore sexuality plastically. Originating in late-Victorian discourses around formalism, Lee’s aesthetic programme about sculpture proposed an ethics of embodiment that resonated with modern theories of sexuality.