Notes
Women Artists: A Historical Survey
J. J. Wilson and Karen Petersen
SLIDE DESCRIPTIONS
The number on each slide corresponds to its numbered
slide description. Slides marked with an asterisk are vertical and must be
adjusted accordingly in the viewing projector. Dates, media, and dimensions of
works are given whenever available.
1. Guda, self-portrait
from Homeliary, 12th c.
Frankfort am Main, Staatsbibliothek
Guda, a
twelfth-century nun. made very sure that her work on this manuscript did not
remain anonymous: she pictured herself in the initial letter, as you see here,
with the inscription, "Guda, a sinner, wrote and painted this book."
The writing and the painting, both highly valued skills in the medieval period,
together make up the work of art.
2. Claricia, self-portrait from a South German
Psalter, c. 1200. Ink and tempera on vellum, 8% x 5% in.
Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery
Artists in
convents, as in monasteries, were trained to do this delicate work by going
through the alphabet letter by letter. One of the nuns, as you see in this
slide, was cramped by the time she got to letter Q and decided (figuratively)
to exercise herself on her exercise letter! Here you see her swinging, making
the tail to the Q. Her name (she does not wish to be anonymous either) is
inscribed almost as a halo above her head: "Claricia."
3. Ende
The Great
Whore, from the Beatus Apocalypse of Gerona, 975 Gerona, Cathedral Treasury
There was a
revival of painting and illumination in southern Spain during the tenth century,
and one of the most remarkable of all the works produced at that time was illustrated
by a nun or a laywoman, Ende. The Beatus Apocalypse of Gerona, an illumination
of that most fantastical of all the biblical books, includes images of trees,
flowers, monsters, a Noah's ark, and, of course, dragons.
4. Ende
The Battle of
the Dragon with the Child of the Woman, from the Beatus Apocalypse of Gerona,
975 Gerona, Cathedral Treasury
The last page
of the manuscript is signed "Ende woman painter and servant of God,"
with the date. A.D. 975.
5. Abbess Hitda
The Abbess Hitda Offering her Evangeliary to St. Walburga,
from the Gospel Book of the Abbess
Hitda, c. 1025. 6% x4% in.
Darmstadt, Staatsbibliothek
Abbesses were quite important to
the cultural development of the Middle Ages. They were creators themselves as
well as patrons of the creative works of others. They saw to it that the nuns
were trained in the arts of needlework and manuscript illumination and then
presented the results, as we see pictured here, to St. Walburga, the patron
saint of the convent
6. Abbess
Hitda
Christ on the
Sea, from the Gospel Book of the Abbess Hitda, c. 1025
Darmstadt, Staatsbibliothek
This beautiful image is of Christ
falling asleep during a storm at sea. leaving his disciples at a bit of a loss.
7. Hildegard von BIngen (1098-1179)
The Seeress, from her book, Scivias,
1165
(Original manuscript lost in
World War II)
One of the most remarkable of all
the abbesses of the twelfth century is Hildegard von Bingen. The Seeress of the
Rhine. She was astonishingly creative, and not afraid to venture into many
different fields. She wrote a "natural history," ran a very good
hospital, and had a reputation as a healer. She was also politically astute and
corresponded with all of the important figures of the time. At the age of forty-three,
as she tells us, she began to have visions. This work, the first of a set of
illuminations from her book the Scivias, shows her receiving divine
illumination. The eavesdropping representative from
Rome is endeavoring to authenticate Hildegard's visions and to certify them as
coming from God, not the devil. This process took such a long time that finally
St. Bernard of Clairvaux himself said that the Church could not suffer such a
light to be covered, and Hildegard's unique visions were taken seriously,
written down, and illuminated by the nuns of her convent. She was even
eventually designated a saint.
* 8. Hildegard von Bingen
The Chained Beast, from her book, Scivias, 1165
In
this page from Scivias. the great beast Leviathan has been chained, and the
small group of the saved are huddled together looking at him.
9.
Hlldegard von Bingen
The
Choirs of Angels, from her book, Scivias, 1165
Hildegard's
work is dominated by circular forms. This one shows the nine choirs of angels,
ranged around in a mandala.
10.
Herrade von Landaberg
The
Nuns of Hohenburg, line drawing from her book, Hortus Deliciarum, 12c.
(Work destroyed in Franco-German War of 1870)
Yet
another abbess who did a great deal to educate the nuns of her convent was
Herrade von Landsberg. She composed and illuminated an enormous encyclopedia
called Hortus Deliciarum (The Garden of Delights). In it were included the
lives of the saints, classical literature, sermons, gardening hints, and the
like. It could have told us a lot about life in the twelfth century;
unfortunately, the manuscript was destroyed in the Franco-German War at the end
of the nineteenth century. All that is left are line drawings that had been
made by scholars. This drawing of the last page of the manuscript shows all the
nuns and novices of Herrade's convent, each of them with her name inscribed in
a kind
of class portrait again giving the lie to the myth that the artists of the
Middle Ages preferred anonymity.
11. Herrade von Landsberg
Superbia.
line drawing from her book, Hortus Deliciarum, 12th c.
Herrade's ideas sound surprisingly contemporary. In one of her sermons to the
nuns she enjoined them to "despise the world, despise nothing, despise
thyself; despise despising thyself." The abbess's awareness of the
paradoxes of human psychology is perhaps reflected in this drawing of Superbia
(Pride). In the original manuscript, she leads an army of female vices into
battle against an army of female virtues. However, it is hard to see this
Amazon-like figure as a vice; indeed, the work fascinated and disturbed
medieval commentators. Notice the tiger skin upon which she is sitting.
12. William the Conqueror, from the Bayeux
Tapestry, 11th c.
Bayeux, Musee de la Reine Mathilde
Because
it is so often reproduced we show just one panel from the famous secular
embroidery, the so-called Bayeux Tapestry. Created to commemorate William the
Conqueror's successful invasion of England, it pictures William here with his
sword symbolically erect. The full piece is over 200 feet long and, though no
one knows who planned the design, the needlework of English women makes it a lively
portrayal of contemporary secular life.
*13. The Adoration of the Magi, c.1325, Red velvet
chasuble, embroidered in gold thread and pearls
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1927
While most secular embroideries are lost, there are extant many ecclesiastical
examples of Opus Anglicanum, that fine needlework done for the Church primarily
by nuns and then by laywomen in workshops. These exquisite and expensive copes
and other church furnishings were usually embroidered on velvet or silk,
frequently with gold thread, as in this work here. In this nativity scene from
the Chichester chasuble, we can see the connection with manuscript
illumination, the emphasis on decorative motifs, flowers, animals, birds,
beasts, and angels.
14.
The Syon Cope, c. 1300
London,
Victoria and Albert Museum
The
convents were very proud and possessive of these treasures that were frequently
named for the cloister in which they were made. They were jealously guarded and
when the Nuns of Syon were forced to flee England due to Henry Vll's policies, they
took their famous cope with them into exile.
15.
Suzanne de Court
The
Annunciation, c. 1600, Enamel, 7%6 x 5% in.
Baltimore,
The Walters Art Gallery
Women's
artistic endeavor was not limited to manuscript illumination and embroidery as
we can see in the glowing enamels of Suzanne de Court. She learned the
difficult craft from her father and then went on to establish her own
successful and productive late Renaissance workshop.
16. Sabina von Stelnbach
The
Synagogue, from the South Portal of Strasbourg Cathedral, c, 1225
Guild records show that there were also many women stonecutters and we should
not be surprised to find such large and accomplished examples of their work as
these from Strasbourg Cathedral, traditionally ascribed to Sabina von Steinbach.
She took over the contract on this job after the maslei builder died and
brought it quite gloriously to completion,
17. Sabina von Steinbach
Ecclesia,
from the South Portal of Strasbourg Cathedral
On the left side of the South Portal, Sabina sculpted the broken lance and bent
body of the Synagogue, representing the Old Testament (slide 16); on the right,
the young Church Triumphant, in a marvelously androgynous figure. In the Middle
Ages women worked in all media and they worked large and small.
18. Attributed to Caterina Vigri
St
Ursula. 1456
Venice, Galleria Accademia; ALINARI-SCALA
While
the Reformation put an end to most of the creative work of nuns in northern
Europe, convents continued to flourish in Italy and Spain and there are a
number of important works by women trained in the convents in the fourteenth,
fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. This piece by St. Caterina Vigri, the patron
saint of art institutions, shows St. Ursula sheltering her maidens with the
artist dwarfed, offering
up her work.
19. Slater Barbara Ragnoni
The
Nativity, c. 1500
Siena, Pinacotheca
This
charming nativity scene was again painted by a nun, Sister Barbara Ragnoni,
about whom practically nothing is known. It should serve as a reminder that
works listed as "workshop of" or "school of" may well be by
women artists.
20. Plautilla Nelli (1523-1588)
Last
Supper
Florence,
Sta. Maria Novella; ALINARI-SCALA
Plautilla
Nelli did this ambitious fresco of the Last Supper. Though our reproduction is
not an especially good one, it is instructive to see that this kind of work in
architectural settings was done by women in the sixteenth century.
21. Oreola Maddatena Caccia (1619-1676)
A
Saint Reading, c. 1625
Museo
Civico Allessandria
After
her father's death in 1625, Orsola Maddalena Caccia completed the work he was
doing in a church in Moncalvo. She helped to organize in her own convent a
painting studio run for the mutual profit of the community.
22.
Sofonisba Anguissola (1535/40-1625)
Three
of the Artist's Sisters Playing Chess, 1555. OH on canvas, 27^8 x 35% in.
Poznan,
National Museum
The
secular women painters of the Renaissance are perhaps best represented by
Sofonisba Anguissola. She is pictured here with two of her sisters and their
nurse playing chess in the garden. There were six girls in the family of the
Italian humanist, Amilcare Anguissola. Unlike many humanists, he did fulfill
his part of the bargain as far as educating his daughters. They had the best
teachers and became skilled playwrights, musicians, and artists. Michelangelo
even corresponded with them about their art.
23.
Sofonisba Anguissola
Three
children with Dog. Oil on panel, 29% x 34 In.
Corsham
Court, Methuen Collection
Sofonisba,
the eldest, went in her early twenties to the court of Philip II of Spain.
Unfortunately, few of the paintings she did from that time survived. This
characteristic group portrait was for many years mistakenly attributed to
Leonardo da Vinci.
*24.
Sofonisba Anguissola
Portrait
of an Old Woman
Nivaagaard, Hage Collection
After
Sofonisba had worked for the court of Spain for some twenty years, she married
and was given a handsome dowry by Philip and Isabella. She moved to Sicily but
her husband soon died, and Sofonisba, returning to her native Cremona, fell in
love with the ship's captain, got off the ship in Genoa, and married him.
Although she live'1 to be some ninety-six years old, she lost her sight halfway
through her long life and was no longer able to paint. This portrait of an old
woman may have been one of her last works; it is curiously like the drawing of
Sofonisba done by the painter van Dyck when he visited her in her old age to
talk with her about painting. Artists with Sofonisba's breadth of achieve-
ment make us regret the survey format of these slide sets. Many marvelous works
are now being reattributed to her, and she would well merit in-depth study.
*25.
Anton van Dyck
Portrait
of Sofonisba Anguissola, from his Italian Sketch Book, 1624
*26.
Marietta Robusti (1560-1590)
Portrait of an Old Man and a Boy
Vienna, Kunsthistoriscnes Museum
Marietta
Robusti, the favorite child of Tintoretto, was an apprentice in his studio and
did portraits of her own. This painting of her uncle, long attributed to her
rather, is now recognized as Marietta's work.
And when you look at the background of Tintoretto's huge paintings,
remember that some of the work must have been done by her hand. Unfortunately,
Marietta died in her early thirties. It would have been fascinating to see how
such talent and training would have developed.
*27.
Lavlnia Fontana (1552-1614)
Portrait
of a Noblewoman, c. 1600. Oil on canvas, 45Y4 x 37% in.
Baltimore, The Walters Art Gallery
Lavinia
Fontana lived a long and productive life productive in many ways (she had
eleven children). The daughter of an artist, she soon excelled him in reputation,
becoming one of the official painters to the Papal Court. She is perhaps best
known now for her portraits, and this portrait of a noblewoman shows Lavinia at
her most skillful note especially the attention to the details of costume.
Fontana's appreciation of the woman's status is reflected in this painting.
28.
Lavinia Fontana
The
Visit of the Queen of Sheba. Oil on canvas, 102% x 130 in.
While we may
now think of her primarily as a portrait artist, Lavinia was known best by her
contemporaries for her elaborate pageants, the most remarkable of them probably
being this visit of Queen of Sheba to the court of Solomon. The crowd of
characters are all luxuriantly costumed; the dwarf and the dog are especially
interesting features.
29. Lavinia Fontona
The Woman of
Samaria at the Well
Naples, Museo
di Capodimonte
One
of her most beautiful works that falls somewhere in between portraiture and
pageantry is of Christ and the Woman of Samaria. Lavinia is able to work comfortably
with both secular and religious subjects.
30.
Properzia Rossi (1491-1530)
Joseph and
Potiphar's Wife, c. 1520, Marble bas relief (545 mm x 590 mm)
Bologna, Museo
di San Petronio
Works of
sculpture are often identified more with the buildings where they are found
than with the original artists. But fortunately Properzia Rossi's work and name
have not been lost to us. She began by carving elaborate crucifixions on
peachstones, but soon saw "the folly of thus belittling her talents"
and began competing with other sculptors for Church jobs. This scene of
Potiphar's wife ardently pursuing Joseph as he rapidly disappears from her
bedroom has often been read as biographical. The device of using biblical
scenes to justify sexual content was especially necessary for women artists.
who were often subject to strict rules of artistic and social propriety.
31. Artemlsia Gentlleschi (1593-1652)
Joseph and
Potiphar's Wife. Oil on canvas, 91% x 76% in.
Cambridge,
Mass., Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Gift of Samuel H. Kress Foundation
It is
significant that a woman artist working in another medium also chose the
scenario of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. There are few such stories to choose
among in a literature where female sexuality is compressed into the Whore of
Babylon on the one hand and the Virgin Mary on the other.
32. Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665)
Mary Magdalen, 1660. Oil on canvas, 64 % x 78% In.
Bologna,
Pinacotheca
Elisabetta
Sirani, a precocious and prodigious artist, also used biblical subject matter to
justify some nudity in her usually pious works. Her Magdalena is so humbled in
her penitence that both breasts are bared. She looks perhaps more like a harem
girl than a potential and penitential saint. The putti (cherubs) in the upper
regions seem an inappropriate motif here, but Sirani was only eighteen or nineteen
years old when she painted this work so her taste was a little uncertain. She.
too, was taught painting by her father, and soon outstripped him. In fact, he
was known to sign his works with her signature, in order to obtain more money
for them. Unfortunately the talented Elisabetta Sirani died an early and
violent Renaissance death at the age of twenty-six. (She is said to have been
poisoned by her maid.) She managed to complete 150 paintings, which are carefully
documented in her own notebooks.
33. Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665)
Salome.
Of
all biblical subjects, Salome has been the richest in sexual symbolismeros,
dance, death, and the Oedipal kil the king impulses are all manifest; Sirani
was not immune to the temptations of this scene.
34.
Elisabetta Sirani
Judith
with the Head of Holofernes
She
also took up the popular late Renaissance and Baroque topoi of Judith beheading
Holofernes. This story from the book of
Judith described the liberation of a town from the siege of Holofernes and his
army by the widow Judith who went out with her maid through enemy lines and
allowed herself to be captured. Taken by her beauty, the commanding general
Holofernes invited her to dinner where Judith drank him under the table, took
his sword off the tent wall, and decapitated him, Sirani depicts the moment
when Judith is handing the horrible trophy to her maid, who will put the head
into the picnic basket which the women have foresightedly brought along. They
returned through enemy lines and the next day the head was hung over the walls,
and the army fled in horror to see their general thus undone. No one ever dared
to attack that town again while Judith was living, and she lived to be 105. She
also, the Bible tells us, set her maid free.
35. Fede GalizIa
(1578-1630)
Judith
with Head of Holofernes, 1596. Oil on canvas. 47% x 37 in.
Sarasota,
Ringling Museum
It's interesting to see in Fede
Galizia's portrayal of this scene that the artist felt able to include much more
character in the maid's face than in Judith's, who looks as impassive and
unmarked as a Harper's Bazaar model. Galizia too chooses the cleaning-up scene
rather than the violent act itself, and her heroine seems, like a typical
aristocrat, to disassociate herself from the mess.
36. Artemisia
Gentileschi
Judith. Oil on canvas, 78% x 65'/<
in,
Florence, Uffizi
Interestingly enough, in the next
enactments of this story by Artemisia Gentileschi, there is much less feeling
of separation between the two women. Both are strong-armed and deeply involved
in the act.
The other ladies look formal and
static; these are both vital and active.
37. Artemisia
Gentileschi
Judith,
1615/20. Oil on canvas, 46% x 37'/4 in. Florence,
Pitti Palace
Artemisia Gentileschi,
again the daughter of a painter, underwent at fifteen the frightful experience
of a rape and trial, no easier in those days than in ours. Some scholars have
speculated that stored-up anger over this experience influenced the violence of
her imagery and her preoccupation with the
Judith theme. Certainly she had dramatic flair and all her work represents the
best of the Baroque. (A later artist, Giulia Lama, would be interesting to
compare to Gentileschi and we include in the bibliography a recent catalogue by
Ruggieri of her paintings and drawings.)
38. Artemisia
Gentileschi
David and Bathsheba. c. 1640-45. Oil on
canvas, 98% x 76% in.
The Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts,
Frederick W. Schumacher Trust Fund
*39. Artemisia Gentileschi
La
Pittura. Oil on canvas, 38% x 29% in.
London,
Hampton Court, Copyright reserved
This
magnificent self-portrait of Artemisia as La Pittura, painting personified,
includes all the emblems of her craft as well as the power and energy of her
own strong arm. Women artists seem to take tremendous pride in picturing
themselves in the act of painting. This was especially important to Artemisia,
as she strove for and achieved status as a professional painter which equaled
that of any male painter of her time. It is a mystery how such an influential
painter came to be omitted from art history texts.
40.
Giovanna Garzoni (1600-1670)
A Dish of Beans
Florence, Pitti Palace. Tempera on parchment, 9% x 13% In.
We turn now to the relatively soothing
subject matter of fruits, flowers, and even vegetables, as in these beautiful
Italian beans.
41. Louyse Mollion (1615-1675)
Still
Life with Cherries, Strawberries and Gooseberries, 1630. Oil on panel, 12% x
19% in.
Los
Angeles, Norton Simon Foundation, California Palace of the Legion of Honor
In
France and, as we'll see later on. in northern Europe, still life painting was
frequently a family business. Louyse Moillon was a productive member of such a
family of painters and fortunately quite a few of her works have survived and
can be seen in museums today. For the most part they are very delicately,
perfectly painted works like this one of gooseberries and cherries and
strawberries. She occasionally introduces human figures, as in a painting now
in the Louvre. For introduces human figures, as in a painting now in the
Louvre. For the Protestant north, the respite from the wars of the Reformation
brought new delight in the objects of everyday life, and attention was lavished
on vegetables and fruits.
42. Clara Peeters (b. 1589)
Still
Life
Oxford,
Ashmolean Museum
Clara
Peelers, one of the finest painters in this genre, is an enigmatic figure. No
studies have been made of her works, only a few of which are in public
collections. She was fascinated, as were all Mannerists, by reflecting light
and this is shown in piece after piece.
43. Clara Peeters
Flowers
and Gold Goblets, 1612. Oil on panel, 237/l6X ly/w in.
Karlsruhe,
Staatliche Kunsthalle
She
loved to paint brass and pewter vessels, flowers with dew on them, glass vases,
coins, scales of fish anything that would give off a reflection.
44. Clara Peeters
Self-Portrait
with Still Life.0il on panel, 14% x 19% in.
London,
Hallsborough Gallery
Frequently
what is reflected is her own face, as we see in this elaborate work which is probably
of the artist herself in blue bodice and pink skirt, surrounded by all the
traditional symbols of a vanitas painting depicting the transiency of material
things the magnifying glass, the bubble, the dice, the jewels, and the coins.
45. Catharlna van Hemessen (1528-c. 1587)
Self-Portrait, 1548. Oil on panel, Basel,
Offentliche Kunstsammlung
While
we are showing here only a handful of the still life and flower painters of the
Netherlands, it is important to remember that many women artists were working
with great success there, though often their works were subsumed in the family
name. Catharina van Hemessen was the daughter and student of the well-known Jan
van Hemessen, and she collaborated with him on some book illuminations. In her
own right, she was successful as a portrait painter and all her works are
clearly signed and dated with her own hand as we see in this interesting
self-portrait perhaps to avoid confusion with her father's work.
46. Judith Leyster (1609-1660)
The Jolly Toper, 1629.0H on canvas, 35% x 34 In Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
This
famous work, for so long attributed to Franz Hals, was actually painted by a
contemporary of his, Judith Leyster. Like Hals she reveled in revels, but she
also did interior genre scenes and still lifes, one of which contains a wine
decanter reflecting the artist at her easel.
47. Judith Leyster
Self-Portrait.
c. 1635-Oil on canvas, 29% x 25% in.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods
Bliss
The open and attractive mien of the artist in this more explicit self-portrait
draws us to her, an experience Judy Chicago has described in her autobiography.
(See bibliography for Chicago's work.)
48.
Judith Leyster
Boy
and Girl with Cat and Eel
London,
National Gallery
We can identify also with this painting that she did of her
own children, where the sense of actual motherhood is felt much more strongly
than in most paintings of children. Their mischievousness and energy is
rampant, and the wonder is that she ever got any work done at all.
49. Judith Leyster
Laughing
Youth with Wine G/ass.Oil on canvas, 32 x 24 in.
Karlsruhe,
Staatliche Kunsthalle
*50. Sybilla Merian (1647-1717)
Rainbow Boa, plate from her book Metamorphosis Insectorum
Surinamensium
Sybilla Merian was fascinated by plants and flowers, and by
the life cycle of insects. She was unhappily married for some twenty years and
consoled herself with the study of nature, eventually publishing a book on
butterflies and moths of central Europe. She then somewhat prematurely
proclaimed herself a widow and, taking one of her daughters with her. went off
to Surinam in search of yet more beautiful butterflies and moths. She spent two
years there, making meticulous drawings and watercolors. She returned and
published three enormous volumes, the third one remaining unfinished at her
death, on the wonderful metamorphoses of the insects of Surinam. Each of the
plates includes all the different stages of the insect's development from larva
to pupa, from cocoon to butterfly, placing it with the appropriate plant. Her
elegant work shows the quality of her mind. Like Leonardo, her art was not a
matter of outward splendor, of iconographic symbolism, but signs of "the
sheer wish to know."
*51. Maria van Oosterwyck (1630-1693)
Flowers
and Shells. Oil on canvas, 28% x 22% in.
Dresden,
Staatliche Kunstsammlung
Flower painting was one of the most lucrative areas of Dutch
genre painting, and therefore was a male-dominated field. However, Maria van
Oosterwyck won international renown for works like this one, which were bought
for large sums by Louis XIV and other wealthy patrons. She refused to marry in
order to devote herself entirely to her art. She was a nonconformist in other
ways also; for example, she gave all her servants painting lessons.
52. Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750)
Fruits and Insects
Florence, Pitti Palace; SCALA
Even more extraordinary are the flower paintings of Rachel
Ruyach, where the art is taken to the ultimate possible perfection. She was
known to spend several years on a single work, and gave her works as generous
dowries to her daughters. In her long life she gave birth to ten children, and
managed to complete over 100 paintings. All are exquisite, and some of these
renderings of Eden include curious snakes, lizards, and insects.
*53. Rachel Ruysch
Flowers and Fruit
Florence, Galleria Palatina; SCALA
54.
Rachel Ruysch
Fruits Florence, Uffizi
55.
Josefa de Ayala
The Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine, 1647
Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga
Josefa's father was an artist and trained his daughter to
paint devotional scenes and still lifes. She is always described as "a
pious spinster" which perhaps explains her choice of this topic and her pleasure
in planning its every detail.
56. Luisa Roldan (1656-1704)
Jesus Nazareno, late 17th c., Polychrome wood
Courtesy of Audrey Flack
Though
in this survey we have concentrated on Italian and Flemish painting, there
were, of course, women working elsewhere in Europe, and we have singled out
Luisa Roldan as a particularly interesting example. She was an official court
sculptor to Charles II. When Palimino (a
lover of art and perhaps a contemporary art critic) saw this sculpture, he went
into ecstacies, exclaiming:
So great was the awe that it inspired when I saw it, that it
was irreverent not to fall on my knees to look at it. Because it really seemed
to me as if it were the subject itself. And after having spent some time
examining it and admiring it we went to sit down, and looking at it again I
said to Don Luis that if he did not cover Christ his majesty again I would not
sit down, such was the respect and reverence it inspired. For I assure you that
words fail me to describe it, for not only the expression of the head which I
have mentioned but the hands and feet, with some drops of blood trickling down
them, were so divinely executed that everything seemed like the actual person.
This Baroque carving marks the end of our representation of
the late seventeenth century.
57. Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807)
Self-Portrait,
c. 1770-75. Oil on canvas, 29 x 24 in.
London, National Portrait Gallery
No better introduction to women
artists of the eighteenth century could be found than Angelica Kauffmann, one
of the founders of the Royal Academy in England and an excellent example of the
emerging class of women professional painters. Again the daughter of an artist
of minor importance, she made her own way in the highly competitive painting
world of the period. Indeed, Angelica was almost too well known, and became a
kind of model for the woman artist. Her funeral in Rome was a great event,
larger than any since Rafael's. Kauffmann's last will and testament
demonstrates her strong sense of personal satisfaction in her successful
career: "As all I possess has been attained by my work and industry,
having from earliest childhood devoted myself to the study of painting, so now
I can dispose of the fruits of my industry, as I will." A proud claim! The
scope of her work is revealed in the examples we show here.
58. Angelica Kauffmann
Portrait of Countess Meerveldt
Vienna, Osterreichische Galerie
59. Angelica Kauffmann
The Family of Ferdinand IV
Naples, Museo Capodimonte;SCALA
60. Angelica Kauffmann
Pliny the
Younger and his Mother at MIsenum
Princeton University Art Museum
While all of these works are perhaps not to our taste,
Goethe has truly said of her that "she was of the time, and the time was
made for her." Particularly in the decorative arts, her own taste and her
century are reriecreated in perfect context. Her designs were used for
Wedgewood and Meissen china, and she received many decorating commissions for
the handsome houses so characteristic of this century.
*61. Rosalba
Carriera (1675-1757)
Self-Portrait
Venice, Accademia; SCALA
The
outstanding pastel portraitist of the eighteenth century was Rosalba Camera who
developed and established the genre of the pastel portrait. Up until this time,
pastels had been used primarily for sketches, not for finished works. Rosalba
enjoyed almost immediate success, and there was a strange kind of opposition
between her extremely retiring nature and the extent to which she was sought
after by wealthy, royal patrons throughout Europe. The contrast can be felt in
the effects of these two works, one the almost haunted self-portrait which in
no way tries to cover the marks of old age and melancholy.
*62. Rosalba Carriera
Amalia Guiseppa
Florence, Uffizi; SCALA
In the second work, the noble lady, who also is not young,
is presented in a highly idealized, prettified guise. Needless to say, people
appreciated the flattery of pastel and Camera significantly influenced the
aesthetic of the eighteenth century.
*63. Rosalba Carriera
Allegory of
Painting. Pastel, 17% x 13% in.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection
Allegory was a perfect mode for Camera's exquisite blandness, but remember
Gentileschi's treatment of this same topic.
*64. Anna Dorothea Therbusch
(1721-1782)
Self-Portrait,
1776. Oil on canvas, 601/2 x 46 in.
Berlin, Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museum
A considerable
contrast to the candy-box images in Camera's work is provided with this strong
and idiosyncratic self-portrait. A member of a painting family. Anna Dorothea
Therbusch achieved special
renown even in the male-dominated environment of the Prussian court, though she
had to give up painting during the years when she raised a family. She later
visited Paris and was finally accepted into the French Academy despite what
Diderot called her lack of "coquetterie." Therbusch provides an
important alternate image for the almost excessively public manner of so many
of the successful women artists of the eighteenth century.
*65. Francoise Duparc (1705-1778)
The Milk Maid. Oil on canvas, 28% x 22% in.
Marseilles, Musee des Beaux Arts
The next
artist, Francoise Duparc, like Chardin, worked in isolation, choosing as her
subjects these classic peasant faces. She lived in Marseilles far from the
court. Though her works are comparable to the very best French painting of the
time, they are almost entirely unknown because they are rarely included in
textbooks. Thus we show as many of her works as possible here.
66. Francoise Duparc
The Old Woman. Oil on canvas, 28% x 23% in.
Marseilles, Musee des Beaux Arts
67.
Francoise Duparc
The
Man with a Sack. Oil on canvas, 31% x 25% in.
Marseilles.
Musee des Beaux Arts
68.
Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun (1755-1842)
Self-Portrait, 1782.
Giraudon
Vigee-Lebrun, on the other hand, is beloved of art historians because she
painted royalty and, as you can see by this self-portrait, because she was
flamboyant and created an aura of personal interest around herself. She began
studying art under her father, who was a pastelist. He died early in her life, and
she determined to become a professional painter in his stead; she also took as
her responsibility bringing in needed revenue to her family. She succeeded in
all of her ambitions better than anyone could have imagined and was sponsored
by Marie Antoinette. Many of her best-known paintings are of the young queen.
69. Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun
Marie
Antoinette and her Children, 1787
Paris, Musee du Louvre; Cliches des musees nationaux
This impressive grouping of the queen as a young matron with her children has
double pathos as the empty cradle signifies the death of her youngest child,
and the dauphin who here points to the cradle also dies soon after. When the
painting was carried into Versailles, the people were heard to mutter "Voila,
la deficite," meaning "there is the source of the budget deficit
such ostentatious and excessive spending." Marie Antoinette was afraid to
hang the painting because of the public sentiment against it and her, and so
stored it in a warehouse which is the only reason it survived the Revolution.
70. Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun
Lady Folding a Letter
Toledo. Ohio,Museum of Art
This
lady, caught in some private drama, shows Vigee-Lebrun's wish for spontaneity
and her skill in giving a sense of beautiful textures. She loved costume and
hats, of course, and created a mood of gaiety in her sitters which pleased them
and pleases us.
71. Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun
Hubert Robert, 1788
Paris, Musee du Louvre; Cliches des musees nationaux; SASKIA
This
energetic and striking portrait of the landscape painter Hubert Robert proves
her skill at male portraiture also. Robert was a good friend and assisted her
when she was forced into exile as a result of her connection with the queen.
72, Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun
Bacchante, 1785. Oil on canvas, 44 x 35 in.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Mildred Anna
Williams Collection, California Palace of the Legion of Honor
Her love of texture and sensual delights is quite apparent
in this nude, allegorically entitled La Bacchante in order to preserve the
anonymity of the sitter, who was undoubtedly one of the luscious court ladies
of the time.
73. Adelaide Labille-Guiard (1749-1803)
Salf-Portrait, 1782. Pastel, 28% x 23'A in. Private
Collection
Vigee-Lebrun was accepted in the French Royal Academy of
Painting on the same day as her colleague and competitor. Adelaide
Labille-Guiard. whose reputation has since suffered an eclipse in comparison
with that of Vigee-Lebrun's. For this reason we are going to show rather more
of her works than we have of any artist thus far, beginning with her pastel
self-portrait which shows her distinction of person; her works will show her
distinction of mind.
*74. Adelaide Labille-Guiard
Andre Vincent. 1795. Oil on canvas, 29'/« x 23% in.
Paris, Musee
du Louvre; Cliches des musees nationaux
She married twice and thus her last name has confused encyclopedists and
perhaps contributed to her extinction from art history texts. Her second
husband is the subject of this marvelous portrait. As you can see, he was a
painter, the son of one of Adelaide's painting teachers.
*75. Adelaide Labille-Guiard
Louise Elisabeth de France, 1788. Oil on canvas, 108% x 64
in.
Paris,
Musee du Louvre; Cliches des Paris, Musee du Louvre; Cliches des musees
nationaux
The next work is a more public and idealized portrait of the
much-loved Duchess of Parma who died at thirty-two, twenty-four years before
Labille-Guiard was asked to do this portrait of her. The shadow cast by the
figure of the young woman was intended as a discreet poetic symbol of the
shadow of death.
*76. Adelaide Labille-Guiard
Portrait of Madame Adelaide, c.
1787. OH on canvas, 84 % x 61'/i in.
Phoenix Art Museum
This portrait was commissioned by Madame Adelaide of the
royal family, whose elaborate portrait here is one of several copies done by
the artist. In the version now at the Louvre the face is painted very honestly,
without flattery. The more idealized face in the Phoenix portrait was perhaps
repainted after the Revolution, when
Labille-Guiard was asked to deface any works she perhaps repainted after the
Revolution, when Labille-Guiard was asked to deface any works she had in her
studio of noble personages. Her politics were more advanced than
Vigee-Lebrun's, and she painted Robespierre and other leaders of the
Revolution.
*77. Adelaide Labille-Guiard
Portrait of the Artist with Two
Pupils, Mile. Marie Gabrielle Capet and Mile. Carreaux de Rosemond,
1785. Oil on canvas, 82% x 60 in.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Julia A.
Berwin, 1953
Another aspect of her political life is expressed in this handsome self-portrait.
She took her teaching seriously and made many speeches at the meetings of the
Academy as an advocate for the women art students of the time. She has painted
herself here, gloriously turned out, showing the women art students of the
time. She has painted herself here, gloriously turned out, showing her love of
fashion and of her own person. In the background is the bust of her father,
which she always kept with her, and behind her are two of her students.
"One of the most agreeable works of the eighteenth century," as Charles
Sterling has said, it is important to us as a reminder of the example and model
that Labille-Guiard must have been for the students of that time.
*78. Adelaide Labille-Guiard
Pajou, Sculpting the Bust of M. Lemoine, 1782. Pastel, 28% x
23% in.
Paris, Musee du Louvre; Cliches des musees nationaux
This work was her reception painting to the Academy, and was
much admired. Pajou, in gratitude to her for having executed such a vital and
virile portrait, did the bust of her father that we saw in the studio.
*79. Marie
Gabrielle Capet (1761-1818)
Houdon Sculpting the Bust of Voltaire
New York, Frick Art Reference Library
In this work we see the influence of Labille-Guiard on one
of the students pictured with her. Capet imitated the subject matter of her
teacher's reception portrait and did a painting of the sculptor Houdon working
on nis ramous oust or Voltaire. This painting, sadly, has been stolen from the
museum at Caen and has disappeared, so we are fortunate to have this reproduction
from the Prick photographic archives.
80. Marie Gabrielle Capet
Marie
Joseph Chenier
Stanford
University Museum of Art, Gift of Mortimer C. Leventritt
We want to show one more work by Capet, of Marie Joseph Chenier, brother of the
famous revolutionary figure, Andre Chenier. Marie Joseph himself wrote hymns
and was a poet, a dramatist, and a politician.
81. Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818)
Flowers
and Fruits, 1787. Oil on panel, 64 x 54 in.
Geneva,
Musee d'art et d'histoire
Anne
Vallayer-Coster was a respected and hard-working contemporary of
Labille-Guiard's who, as her biographer tells us, stayed "discreetly in
her corner painting indefatigably away" after she was received as a member of the Academy.
Charles Sterling has called Vallayer-Coster "after Chardin and Oudry, the
best French still life painter of the eighteenth century."
82. Anne Vallayer-Coster
Still
Life with Game, 1782. Oil on canvas, 70 x 88 in.
Toledo,
Ohio, Museum of Art
It is interesting that this gentle lady did not step back
from the curious art of painting dead game.
83. Marie Anne Collot (1748-1821)
Lady
Cathcart
Nancy,
Musee des Beaux Arts
There were few women sculptors during this
period, and the quite accomplished artist, Marie Anne Collot, is too-little
remembered, perhaps because she worked so closely with the sculptor Falconet. For example, she did the head for his famous
equestrian statue of Peter the Great in Leningrad. This bust of Lady Cathcart
was also done during her sixteen-year stay in Russia.
84. Marguerite Gerard (1761-1836)
The First Step, c. 1780. Oil on canvas, 17% x 21% in.
Cambridge, Fogg Art Museum, Gift of Charles E. Dunlap
Marguerite Gerard was the
sister-in-law of the famous French painter Fragonard and they probably collaborated
on this charming piece. (Fragonard's wife also painted, so skillfully that her
works cannot be distinguished from those of her husband.) Gerard's domestic genre
pieces were very popular in her time and the perfectly feminine atmosphere of
this piece is still refreshing. The marvelously minuscule penis shows the
effect of her early training as a miniaturist!
85. Marie-Gulhelmine Benoist (1768-1826)
Portrait of a Negress, 1800. Oil on canvas, 31% x 25% in.
Paris,
Musee du Louvre; Cliches des musees nationaux
One
of the few representations of a black woman in European art, this highly
achieved work makes an aesthetic statement out of the dignity and beauty
projected by the unknown model.
86. Marie-Guilhelmine Benoist
Marie Pauline Bonaparte
Versailles; ALINARI-SCALA
The Negress is
interesting to compare with this more public portrait, where the clothes and
jewels have to bolster the impact and status of the figure. Both works are first-rate
and unlikely to have emerged fortuitously from a dilettante's brush, and yet,
lamentably little is known of the artist or of her other works. She is
remembered mainly because she figured in Dumoustiers' Lettres, but her paintings
are usually ascribed to the ubiquitous "School of David," though she
had actually been a pupil of Vigee-Lebrun's.
.
87.
Constance Marie Charpentier
Mademoiselle Charlotte du Val d'Ognes. Oil on canvas. 63% x
50% in.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Bequest of Isaac D. Fletcher, 1917
This work was long attributed to David, but is now thought to be by Constance
Marie Charpentier. Tremendously appealing, it is really an eighteenth-century
Mona Lisa, a "mysterious masterpiece," as Poulenc called it. Its
special quality and the scandal of its attribution make it an appropriate piece
to end the eighteenth-century Academy section of our survey.
*88. Ellen Sharples (1769-1849)
A North American Indian
Bristol, City Art Gallery
Ellen Sharpies kept a journal of
her family's trip to post-revolutionary America, where they had come to paint
such subjects as George Washington and this Indian gentleman. It makes
fascinating reading.
*89. Belinda
Sharples (1794-1838)
Winds Sharpies and her Mother
Bristol, City Art Gallery
Ellen describes the development
of her daughter, Rolinda, as an artist, and here we see Rolinda in a charming
self-portrait with her mother's benevolent presence hovering over the easel. It
is pleasant to see the mother as well as the father influencing the development
of an artist. Unfortunately, Rolinda died early; as her mother says, "Just
as she was attaining perfection in her favorite art."
90. Rolinda Sharples
The Trial of Colonel Brereton
Bristol, City Art Gallery
Rolinda experimented in many modes and genres, one of the
most remarkable being intricate scenes from contemporary history, such as this
painting of the trial of Colonel Brereton, a cause celebre of the time. All the
faces were portraits of people she knew in Bristol, where she and her mother
lived and worked after her father's death.
*91. Henrietta Johnston (d. 1728)
Portrait of Thomas Moore as a Child, c. 1725- Pastel, 11 Vie
x 8% in.
Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Henrietta Johnston is often described as the first woman
painter in America. She worked in Charleston, South Carolina, and we know very
little about her. She worked in pastels, doing portraits of children and of the
dignitaries in the newly founded country.
*92. Mary Ann Willson
The Prodigal Son Reclaiming his Father, c. 1820. Ink and
watercolor, 12% x 10 in.
Washington, D-C., National
Gallery of Art, Garbisch Collection
Mary Ann Willson's own life story has been fictionally recreated in a novel
called Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller, but this American primitive loved
the narrative of the Prodigal Son and did scene after scene of his archetypal
journey. Here you see him returning, his hair gone gray with repentance, his dog
cavorting with joy to have him home again.
*93. Jane Stuart (1812-1888)
Portrait of Gilbert Stuart
Providence, R.I., Brown University
Jane Stuart, daughter of Gilbert, learned to paint as best
she could while executing menial tasks for him in his studio. She did
accomplish this really remarkable portrait of her father which sums up his character
rather well, one suspects. It was fortunate that she learned as much of the
craft as she did.because upon his death it fell to her to support the family.
She promptly opened a studio in Boston and proceeded to work on portrait commissions
and to do lucrative copies of her father's works, especially the well-known
Atheneum head of George Washington. Her own work deserves special study many
photographs of her excellent portraits can be found in the Frick archives.
94. Sarah
Miriam Peale (1800-1885)
Self-Portrait, c. 1830. Oil on canvas, 27 x 20 in.
Baltimore,
Peale Museum
Another highly professional portrait
painter in the newly forming nation was Sarah Peale, a member of the famous
painting Peale family. She studied first with her father, James, and later with
her uncle, Charles Willson Peale. Charles wrote of Sarah in her youth that she was
"as usual, breaking all the beaux' hearts, and won't have any of
them." He also observed that "she didn't seem fond of painting. and
only worked hard when she was promised profit."
95. Sarah Miriam Peale
Henry A. Wise,
c. 1842. Oil on canvas
Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
During .her
twenty-two years in Baltimore, she made considerable profit executing portraits
of important dignitaries such as this one of the handsome Senator Wise, later a
governor of Virginia.
96. Rosa
Bonheur (1822-1891)
Buffalo Bill on Horseback, 1889
Cody, Wyoming, Buffalo Bill Historical Center
Rosa Bonheur
transcended all boundaries of sex or nationality to become the most successful
painter of her day. She is best known in this country for an enormous work at
the Metropolitan Museum entitled Horse Fair. As this work has been so often
reproduced, we chose to show her beguiling portrait of her friend, Buffalo
Bill.
97. Rosa Bonheur
The Duel,
1895.
Location unknown
Rosa Bonheur's
animal paintings had tremendous appeal for her Victorian audience. Through such
works as The Duel, she could approach all kinds of conflict, sexuality, fear,
and violence ~ issues which would not be acceptable in human figures,
especially by a woman painter.
98. Rosa Bonheur
Stag at Dawn
Location unknown
This stag is more idealized, showing
the animal in nature, which Rosa loved to do. She always carefully composed
these scenes in such a way that her audience was reassured about nature's essential
goodness and beauty and order, an especially important reminder in the time of
the Industrial and other revolutions. This particular work was reproduced many
times in engravings and hung over mantelpieces in nearly every middle-class
home in England, America, and Europe.
99. Rosa Bonheur
Plowing
at Nivernais, 1889.
Paris, Musee du Louvre; Cliches des
musees nationaux
Plowing at Nivernais. the last work we can include here from Rosa Bonheur's
immense oeuvre, shows Bonheur's respect for the labor of man and beast and her
love for the fresh-turned earth. Rosa's honors were many and, though she
claimed with her usual independence and wit that honors for art were like
blisters on a wooden leg to her, she did value the Legion of Honor, which was
for the first time presented to a woman, by a woman. The Empress Eugenie, acting
then as Regent of France "had wished that the last act of my Regency be
dedicated to showing that in my eyes genius has no sex."
Towards the end of her unconventional life, Rosa observed that her critics
could forgive her everything but being a woman.
100.
Marie Bashkirtseff (1860 1884)
Self-Portrait
Musees
de la Ville de Nice
Marie Bashkirtseff thought herself a genius, as you can read
in her remarkably self-confident memoirs; painting was only one of the many
fields in which she had already excelled at the time f her death at age
tweniy-four. If you Look closely at the canvas just above the artist's lip, you
can see the mark made by a bullet fired at the portrait by a distracted
admirer, angry that the portrait should continue to give him back the image
which he had lost in life; a romantic incident that Marie would have taken as
her due.
* 101. Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908)
Zenobia in Chains, 1859. Marble, h. 49 in.
Hartford, Conn., Wadsworth Atheneum
Harriet Hosmer is perhaps the most representative of the
group of women sculptors known as the White Marmorean Flock a title dubbed by
Henry James in his group biography of American sculptors working in Rome. This
group of artists has been studied fully and lovingly by William Gerdts, whose
show at Vassar College has spurred new interest in the White Marmorean Flock.
Hosmer was a very independent, idiosyncratic, determined, and humorous individual.
She had the rare gift of perspective, and the fact that she was often laughed
at by others never deterred her from holding powerful feminist convictions. She
lived most of her long and creative life in Rome where, together
with the actress, Charlotte Cushman, she formed one of the first women artists'
support groups in history. Many a woman sculptor came to join them, leaving
America because of the difficulty of gaining admission to art schools, the
difficulty of finding models and marble, and the difficulty of living life free
from social obligations and conventions. Hosmer, like others of her
compatriots, chose heroic female models. Zenobia, the defeated queen of
Palmyra, is treated here with all the respect and honor that the male military
heroes, such as Napoleon, received from male artists.
*102. Edmonia Lewis (1843 ?)
Hagar, 1875, Marble
Washington, D.C., Museum of African Art
Edmonia Lewis is one of the most enigmatic and courageous of
this group. She came from a family of mixed Indian and black parentage. She
managed to find her way to Obertin College, and was one of the first black
women to receive a college education in this country. She was plagued by
scandal and difficulties of all kinds, but instead of being overwhelmed by
them, began to take up sculpture quite independently. At first a self-taught
artist, she made enough by the fruit of her own labors to find her way to Rome
and join Hosmer and Cushman there. Her subject matter, almost without
exception, is based on her own heritage. Here, Hagar, cast out into the
wilderness, speaks for her sense of the exiled position of black people in the
nineteenth century. She also said about this work,"(have a strong sympathy
for all women who have struggled and suffered."
*103.Anne Whitney
(1821-1915)
Roma, 1869. Bronze, h. 27 in.
Wellesley College Art Museum
Anne Whitney consistently chose political subject matter for
her work. She, like Hosmer, had been raised in the progressive abolitionist
atmosphere of New England, and brought her feminist and abolitionist concerns
to her work. This statue of an old beggar woman, entitled Roma, was intended as
a serious criticism of the appalling social conditions in Italy. The work aroused
such indignation in the Papal Court that it had to be moved to Florence.
*104. Lily Martin Spencer. (1822-1902)
We Both Must Fade. 1869. Oil on
canvas, 71% x 53% in.
Washington, D.C., National Collection of Fine Arts
While the American women sculptors were united by the almost
political nature of sculpture at that time, the women painters had very little
sense of themselves as a group. There was also less of an imperative that they
go abroad and the American genre painter, Lilly Martin Spencer not only stayed home
she underwent thirteen pregnancies! Born in Ohio, she and her husband and her
increasingly numerous family gradually moved to the east coast, where Lilly
struggled with only moderate financial success but considerable fame to make a
living for her large family. Her husband was kept busy helping out with the
children and with Lilly's many and large canvases. One of her most remarkable paintings
is this allegorical portrait, We Both Must Fade. The young woman, pictured in a
nineteenth-century version of a vanitas setting and having just put on her new
gown, contemplates the fleetingness of youth and beauty. The fading rose in her
hand symbolizes the moral, of course.
105. Lily Martin Spencer
Peeling Onions, c. 1852.
Oil on canvas, 36 x 29 in.
Boston,
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. William Postar
A more characteristic work, perhaps, is the kitchen scene.
Peeling Onions. Kitchen pieces were one of Lilly Martin Spencer's most
successful items, and another, predictably (though not included here), was Babe
in Arms.
106. Mary Cassatt (1845-1926)
Little Girl In a Blue Armchair. 1878. 0(1 on canvas, 35 x 51 In.
Collection
of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Mary Cassatt is known for her paintings of babies, and
perhaps they benefit from her aesthetic distance since she herself was not a
mother. She saw them as permissible subject matter for her as a woman painter,
but also as exercises in composition and design, and she raised them to an
entirely different level than the sentimental works of many men and women artists
in the nineteenth century. For this, and
for many other contributions to art, we should be truly grateful to Mary
Cassatt, who left America, the Philadelphia environment, and the Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts where she was studying, because, as she herself said,
"I hated conventional art." She came to Paris at an exciting time in
the history of art. and her work was seen by Degas in the window of a gallery
there; he admired it and sought her out. She was soon asked, in fact, to join
the group which we now know as the Impressionists, though they called
themselves "Les Independents." Her work and her life were good examples
of that kind of independence and though her work was not generally appreciated
in America at that time, she was asked to provide a mural for the women's
building in the world's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. This building
is in itself a fascinating study, as it was designed by a woman architect and
filled entirely with arts, crafts, and other achievements of women of the time.
Unfortunately the mural that Cassatt contributed has disappeared.
107. Mary Cassatt
Baby Reaching for an Apple, 1893. Oil on canvas, 39 x 25%
in.
Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
This charming painting, showing
the intimate interrelationship of the mother and the child, was part of the
Chicago exhibit The mother is helping the child reach for. perhaps, the original
fruit in the garden of Eden.
108. Mary Cassatt
The Bath, 1891. Oil on canvas, 39% x 26 in.
Art Institute of Chicago, Robert A. Waller Collection; SCALA
The domestic interior in the famous work called The Bath, is
itself a design and conveys the realism of the wet and slippery foot on the
woman's hand, the damp body's weight on her lap.
109. Mary Cassatt
The Boating Party, 1893/4. Oil on canvas, 35% x 46 in.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Chester Dale
Collection
A work that combines even more
distinctively design and the realism of everyday experience is the famous
Boating Party. Cassatt shows here the influence of some of the Japanese prints
on her sense of composition and perspective. It is also interesting to see in
this Sunday afternoon boating party not a romantic young couple, but father,
mother, and a child, all sweaty and wiggling on his mother's lap. Gauguin said of Cassatt, in comparing her
with Berthe Morisot, her French contemporary: "Cassatt
has as much charm, but she has more power." You will be able to test the
truth of this judgment in looking at the following works by Morisot.
110. Berthe Morisot ( 1841-1895)
The Artist's Sister, Mme. Pontillon, Seated on the Grass,
1873. Oil on canvas, 18% x 28Y4 in.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Hannah Fund
This painting is actually a portrait of one of Berthe
Morisot's sisters, Edma, who studied art with her when they were young girls.
The girls' drawing master, after working with them for awhile, gave their mother
fair warning: "Considering the character of your daughters, my teaching
will not endow them with minor drawing room accomplishments; they win become
painters. Do you realize what this means? In the upper-class milieu to which
you belong, this will be revolutionary I might almost say catastrophic. Are
you sure you will not come to curse the day when art, having gained admission
to your home, now so respectable and peaceful, will become the sole arbiter of
the fate of two of your children?" There were other arbiters in Edma's
fate apparently, as she married an admiral in the navy and stopped painting
almost completely. Morisot was married also, to the brother of the famous painter
Edouard Manet, and he and the group of intellectuals, poets, and artists with
whom they iden-
tified, always encouraged Berthe Morisot in her work. In a letter to her sister,
Berthe claims to almost envy her the freedom from worry and ambition to
"do something at least fairly good, but as for me, I think that no matter
how much affection a woman has for her husband, it is not easy for her to break
with a life of work."
*111. Berthe Morisot
The Cherry Pickers, 1891. Oil on canvas, 61'A x 34 in.
Courtesy of M. Rouart; Giraudon
This magnificent work is much
more than just "fairly good," and Berthe Morisot worked tremendously hard
to bring it off many sketches, studies, pastels led up to this final oil
painting. It proves that she could indeed say in oil "what can only be
said in water-colour," as one of her former teachers charged.
112. Berthe Morisot
Hunting Butterflies, 1874. Oil on
canvas, 18% x 22% in. Paris, Musee du Louvre; Cliches des muses nationaux
It is difficult for us to feel
now how shocking her works and those of her group were to the Victorian consciousness
which wished to think of life as stable and fixed. She understood as well as
any modern person the broken surface of reality, the shifting effects that come
from fragmented reflections, and the miracle of individual perspective. She
said that she wanted her art to convey the fleeting moment and worked to make
that become both the content and the form of her work.
*113. Berthe Morlsot
Self-Portrait, 1885. Pastel, 18 x 14 in.
Art Institute of Chicago
Morisot accepted transitoriness
and shortly before her own early death did this last self-portrait where she
seems to look into the disappearing point.
114. Eva Gonzales (1849-1883)
Reading in the Forest. 1879. Oil on canvas, 41% x 51 in.
Waltham, Mass., Brandeis
University, Rose Art Museum, Gift of M.M. Abraham Sonnabend
Eva Gonzales was a contemporary of Morisot's who died in childbirth before her
own style had been fully developed. This work of hers shows the influence of
her mentor, Manet, as well as her own promise.
*115: Suzanne Valadon (1867-1938)
Self-Portrait, 1916. Oil on
canvas, 18% x 15V4 in.
Collection of Paul Petrides
Suzanne Valadon, though she knew so
many male artists intimately, remained quite independent in her art, as this
striking self-portrait of her in her prime demonstrates.
116. SuzanneValadon
The Circus
Cleveland Museum of Art
A street gamine in Paris, she got
a job in a circus, and we see here that fantastic setting as she remembered it.
A fall from a horse's back caused her to seek a more sedentary occupation, and
she became an artist's model. She began doing drawings of her own, which Degas
saw and very much admired. Toulouse Lautrec also encouraged her to develop her
own art. Renoir was somewhat less supportive. One summer when he and Suzanne
were enjoying an affair, he looked at a number of her drawings very carefully,
and then turned away and never mentioned them again. Suzanne said to her biographer
that it was at this point that she realized that she was probably a pretty good
artist
Despite her original and vivid talent, she is always mentioned in art history
textbooks as the mother of Utrillo, and we are anxious that her own name and
work be better known. After all, she taught Utrillo to paint, and though her
art was never as commercially successful as Utrillo's, she did make a good deal
of money in the course of her picturesque life. She married a friend and
contemporary of her son's, Andre Utter, an artist who ended up managing the art
careers of these two rather disorganized human beings with whom he became
involved.
117. Suzanne Valadon
The
Nets, 1914. Oil on canvas, 80% x 120^ in.
Paris,
Musee National d'Art Moderne; Cliches des musees nationaux
Utter
appears as the model in this handsome painting by Valadon a tribute to her
vision of him as an example of the ideal man.
118. Suzanne Valadon
The
Abandoned Doll, 1921. Oil on canvas, 54 x 34 in.
Collection
of Paul Petrides
The
mother here is telling her daughter about the changes taking place in her body,
white the girl looks in the mirror to see if "it" shows, and of
course it does in her developing breasts. The doll has been dropped (on the
right side of the canvas) for another kind of preparatory ritual. This is a
very common scene in life, but it took Suzanne Valadon to see its natural and
emblematic significance as a subject for a wonderful painting.
119. Suzanne Valadon
Self-Portrait,
1927. Oil on wood, 24% x 20 in.
Private
Collection
Her
marriage with Utter and their view of each other's perfection did not last, and
we see here some of the strain that her extravagant life left upon her visage.
The honesty of this portrayal is rare in the history of self-portraiture.
120. Suzanne Valadon
The
Blue Room, 1923. Oil on canvas, 35716 x 45'yi6 in. .
Paris,
Musee National d'Art Moderne; Cliches des musees nationaux
This
heavyset figure seems almost a parody of the traditional odalisque or harem
girl seen so often in male art. This woman, however, looks quite comfortable
within her body; she is smoking, she even has a few books on her bed. This
painting restores to us some sense of what we really feel like in our own rooms,
and it should restore Suzanne Valadon to her status as an original and powerful
painter in her own right.