`Women in Art` Teachers` Resource

Transcription

Teachers’ Resource
REPRESENTING
WOMEN
Goya teachers pack v2.indd 1
04/03/2015 10:44:08
CONTENTS
1: REPRESENTING WOMEN:
AN INTRODUCTION
Katherine Faulkner
2: GOYA: THE WITCHES
AND OLD WOMEN ALBUM
CURATOR’S QUESTIONS
Stephanie Buck
3: SAINTS AND SINNERS,
WIVES AND WITCHES:
REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER
Meghan Goodeve
4: REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN:
AN ART HISTORY
Rachel Hapoienu
5: ALWAYS THE MODEL,
NEVER THE ARTIST
Katherine Faulkner
6: MASTER AS MUSE
Nadine Mahoney
7: SPANISH LANGUAGE RESOURCE
LAS MUJERES RESPETABLES DE COURTAULD
RESPECTABLE COURTAULD WOMEN
Leticia Blanco & Alice Odin
8: GLOSSARY
9: IMAGE CD
REPRESENTING WOMEN
Compiled and produced by
Katherine Faulkner and Sarah Green
Terms referred to in the
glossary are marked in BLUE
To book a visit to the gallery or to
discuss any of the education projects at
The Courtauld Gallery please contact:
e: [email protected]
t: 0207 848 1058
Typeset by JWD
Unless otherwise stated, all images
© The Samuel Courtauld Trust,
The Courtauld Gallery, London
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WELCOME
The Courtauld Institute of Art runs an
exceptional programme of activities
suitable for young people, school
teachers and members of the public,
whatever their age or background.
We offer resources which contribute
to the understanding, knowledge and
enjoyment of art history based upon the
world-renowned art collection and the
expertise of our students and scholars.
I hope the material will prove to be both
useful and inspiring.
Henrietta Hine
HEAD OF PUBLIC PROGRAMMES
This resource offers teachers and their
students an opportunity to explore
the wealth of The Courtauld Gallery’s
permanent collection by expanding on
a key idea drawn from our exhibition
programme. Taking inspiration from the
exhibition Goya: The Witches and
Old Women Album, the theme of this
teachers’resource, is ‘Representing
Women’.
We hope teachers and educators of
all subjects will use this pack to plan
lessons, organise visits to The Courtauld
Gallery and for their own professional
development.
Sarah Green
PROGRAMME MANAGER
GALLERY LEARNING
COVER IMAGE:
Francisco de
Goya y Lucientes
Singing and dancing
(Cantar y Bailar),
1819-20
Brush and black ink on
paper, with scraping
23.5 x 14.5 cm
THIS PAGE: (detail)
Pierre Auguste Renoir
La Loge
1874
Oil on canvas
80 x 63.5 cmna.
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1: REPRESENTING WOMEN
AN INTRODUCTION
Katherine Faulkner
WOMEN’S BODIES, PARTICULARLY THE FEMALE NUDE,
HAVE BEEN USED BY MALE ARTISTS, AND MORE RECENTLY
FEMALE ARTISTS TOO, TO MAKE STATEMENTS ABOUT ART,
BEAUTY AND WAYS OF SEEING THE WORLD...
”
1
Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) was
perhaps the most important Spanish
artist of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century. Stylistically his artwork
spans the period from the late Rococo to
Romanticism and even, in his last works,
shares qualities with Impressionism. He
produced over 900 drawings during the
course of his career lasting six decades,
which reflect the rapidly changing political
and intellectual climate of Spain and
Europe. Goya lived through regime change
in Spain, from absolute monarchy, French
occupation and briefly, a constitutional
government. This period also coincided
with an intellectual movement in Europe
and America in the late eighteenth century
known as the Enlightenment, where
scientists and philosophers strove towards
rational and scientific thought, free from
superstition and religious intolerance.
Although much of Goya’s work, particularly
his private albums such as The Witches and
Old Women Album seem to counteract the
pure rationality of the Enlightenment, it is
important to consider the wider political
and intellectual atmosphere in Europe
at this time. The ideas formulated in the
Enlightenment would go on to become
fundamental in the later nineteenth
century, especially in France, and informed
key political debates and conflicts, with
which artists and writers such as Gustave
Courbet and Emile Zola (a close friend of
Edouard Manet) became directly involved.
The democratic rights of the individual
citizen were central to Enlightenment
political discourse, manifested most clearly
in the French Revolution. The French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the
Citizen, of 1789, which began, ‘All men are
born and remain free and equal in rights,’
immediately prompted the question of
whether women had comparable rights.
Pioneering campaigners, such as
Olympe de Gouges in France and Mary
Wollstonecraft in Britain were quick to
demand legal and political rights for
women, founding feminism as a modern
political movement. But the question of
women’s rights was complex. Women’s
lives and experiences were rarely referred
to when discussing the rights of man.
Whereas the Declaration of the Rights
of Man demanded that all men shared
the rights previously held only by a
privileged few, writers like de Gouges and
Wollenstonecraft were demanding rights
that had never been extended to any
woman. Although the Rights of Man went
on to form the basis of our understanding
of universal human rights, in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries the term ‘human’
was synonymous with the word ‘man’,
with women left out of the equation all
together. Women could argue for their
own rationality and for their entitlement
to citizenship, but their lives were lived in
relation to and in dependency on men.
Within patriarchal society women were
daughters of fathers, wives of husbands
and mothers of sons, rather than individuals
in their own right.
The status of men and women throughout
history is clearly communicated to us
through visual culture. Art has played
an important role in perpetuating
stereotypical images of women and
femininity, both negative and positive. As
Meghan Goodeve explores in her essay
on female stereotypes, in visual art women
can be characterised as good or bad,
beautiful or ugly, sacred or profane. As
Goodeve explains, these categories are
rarely as simple as they first appear and
female archetypes such as the virgin, the
mother and the witch are complex and
problematic.
Museums of modern art, such as the
Museum of Modern Art in New York or
Tate Modern in London, as well as smaller
galleries like The Courtauld Gallery have
INTRODUCTION
Image 1
Edouard Manet
Déjeuner sur l’herbe
c. 1863-68
Oil on canvas
89.5 x 116.5 cm
Image 3
Amedeo Modigliani
Female Nude
c. 1916
Oil on canvas
92.4 x 59.8 cm
Image 2
Paul Gauguin
Te Rerioa, 1897
Oil on canvas
95. 1 x 130.2 cm
04/03/2015 10:44:11
also contributed to our understanding of
the role of women in western art history.
Although feminism and gender studies
have played an important role in the
shaping of art history in universities since
the late 1960s, the impact in art galleries
has been less visible. Museums and
galleries perform a mediating role between
‘experts’ like university researchers and
curators and the museum-going public.
Museum and gallery displays are caught
in the middle, curators may agree with the
new theories and critical ideas explored
by their colleagues in universities, but
the museum is also under pressure to
present art and knowledge in ways that
can be understood by the widest possible
audience. Traditionally, displays of modern
art in museums tend to remind us of what
we already know about art and art history,
rather than challenging us.
Alfred H.Barr, the first director of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York in
1929, is still a highly influential figure in
museums and galleries and the story
of modern art he told at MoMA went
on to become the authoritative story
of modernism for both art experts and
for the general public. He arranged the
museum’s collection of modern art to tell
a story of successive, but formally distinct
styles of art – Neo-Impressionism, Cubism,
Constructivism – all moving towards
abstraction. Artists like Cezanne, Picasso
and Duchamp played heroic roles in this
narrative, each with their unique and new
artistic achievement, their ‘genius’ growing
out of or negating something that came
before. This version of the development
of modern art is still on display in many
museums and galleries around the world,
and as we will see in the essay on women
artists in this collection, women found it
almost impossible to fit into this masculine
artistic ideal.
3
Roger Fry was a central influence on Barr’s
understanding of the Modern. Barr met Fry
in London in 1927 and became a follower
of Fry’s theories and writings about modern
art. In the early twentieth century Fry more
or less defined what made art modern
and he was also a close advisor to the art
2
collector Samuel Courtauld, founder of The
Courtauld Institute of Art and Gallery. Fry
advised Courtauld to buy the Impressionist
and Post-Impressionist works that form the
heart of The Courtauld Gallery collection
today. The Courtauld collection contains
some of the most significant examples of
French nineteenth-century art by some of
the most celebrated male artists: Monet,
Degas, Van Gogh. The collection also
enables us to understand how women were
seen and represented in the nineteenth
century and how also how art museums
perhaps reinforce assumptions about the
role of women in art history.
female nude. The female body becomes an
object of the male artist’s imagination, to
be looked at, and not granted the right to
act. Although women make up the majority
of museum visitors and spend more money
on exhibition tickets and in the gift-shops,
the display of works of art is still scripted
for or framed by the male gaze. The large
number of female bodies on display – bar
maids, dancers, wives, mothers, daughters
– and the lack of work by female artists on
the walls, specifies the modern art museum
as a predominantly male space and
reinforces the idea that making art is a
male endeavour.
In a classic essay, ‘Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema’ (1975) the film historian
Laura Mulvey claims that up until very
recently, the role of women in film has
been to be ‘looked at and displayed,’ for
the male gaze. Mulvey’s analysis is based
on her viewing of Hollywood films and the
way the camera frames actresses like Greta
Garbo or Marilyn Monroe - out of context,
isolated, in soft-focus – as fetishized
objects rather than active subjects. We
can make comparisons between women
in films and the ways that women have
been represented in the works of modern
art discussed in the essays that follow
by Rachel Hapoienu and Alice Odin.
Women’s bodies, particularly the female
nude, have been used by male artists,
and more recently female artists too,
to make statements about art, beauty
and ways of seeing the world. Take the
disruptive female nude figures in Manet’s
Dejeuner sur l’herbe (image 1), pointing
the artist’s critical view of the hypocrisy of
bourgeois society, Gauguin’s exoticised
and languid nudes, reflecting his desire for
a simpler and more colourful life away from
Paris in his idealised Tahiti (image 2), or
Modigliani’s nude who’s body has become
a simplified set of shapes, lines and colour
as the artist worked out new ways of
representing the visible world (image 3).
These female bodies are symbolic objects,
representing political, erotic or aesthetic
ideals, rather than representing real female
subjects with lives or ideals of their own.
Modern artists often made big
philosophical or artistic statements via the
Today female artists have the same
access to training and education as their
male counterparts, although they are still
underrepresented in major museum and
gallery collections. As Nadine Mahoney’s
essay shows, exploring the representation
of women in art throughout history can be
a source of inspiration for artists of both
genders. As Mahoney says, the works of
the male old masters have now become
her muses, enabling her to explore identity
in new and exciting ways. The essays in this
collection are intended to encourage you
to do the same, to look again at the images
of women in The Courtauld collection and
to question what they tell us about identity
and gender then and now.
FURTHER READING:
Carol Duncan. Civilizing Rituals: Inside
Public Art Museums (London: Routledge,
1995).
Tamar Garb. The Body in Time: Figures
of Femininity in Late Nineteenth-Century
France (Seattle: University of Washington,
2008).
Laura Mulvey. Visual and other pleasures
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
04/03/2015 10:44:13
2: GOYA: THE WITCHES AND
OLD WOMEN ALBUM
CURATOR’S QUESTIONS
Stephanie Buck
Could you tell us a little bit about your
role as Curator of Drawings and about
significance of The Courtauld Gallery’s
collection of drawings?
The Courtauld Gallery’s collection of
around 7,000 drawings is one of the
finest in Britain and includes works
from all major national schools, ranging
in date from the fifteenth century to
today. As Curator of Drawings I have the
stewardship of this part of the collection
and enjoy researching it and making
it accessible to the public, students
and scholars alike. Exhibitions play an
important role in this but it is equally
important to encourage visits to our
Prints and Drawings Study Room where
works can be enjoyed and discussed,
in seminars and during individual
visits. Collaboration with the paper
conservator and the close examination
of the drawings are two aspects of my
role that I particularly enjoy.
Why was the ‘Witches and old women’
album originally intended to be seen only
by Goya and a few of his close friends?
The ‘Witches and old women’ album is
one of eight known albums that Goya
created over the course of around
thirty years. He kept all of them until
his death when his son Javier inherited
them. None was meant for publication
or sale, nor were the album drawings
preparatory for other works that were to
be seen by a broad public. They were
private works and as such only meant to
be seen by those close to the artist.
How did you and your fellow curator go
about researching and reassembling the
album?
I had the great privilege to work
on this project with one of the
world’s leading Goya scholars,
Juliet Wilson-Bareau, who directed
our research with enormous knowledge
and experience. Together with
Kate Edmondson, paper conservator
at The Courtauld, we first looked very
carefully at virtually every drawing from
the album, examining the paper and
media carefully in the conservation
studios, studying the drawing technique,
the watermarks and finding small hints
about the original making of the album
and the sequence of its drawings. The
original order has been lost since it was
taken apart after Goya’s death and the
page numbers which Goya had added
were sometimes erased or cropped.
This forensic research involved a great
deal of international travel and many
conversations with colleagues and
experts to interpret our findings. The
result was a suggested reconstruction of
the album, published in the exhibition
catalogue, and we now look forward to
testing it during the exhibition.
What can we learn from looking at artists’
preparatory drawings and private albums
as opposed from their ‘finished’ works?
Preparatory drawings give fascinating
insight into an artist’s working practice
and allow us to participate in the
creative process as we see ideas take
shape, are followed up or disregarded
until a final solution is found.
A preparatory drawing is always meant
to be a step towards a final result,
it remains work in process, and as
such is not produced independently.
On the other hand drawings from a
private album as Goya produced them
are immediate expressions of ideas,
experiences and observations. They are
not made to prepare other works but
may in fact be considered finished even
if they are closely linked to other works
like paintings and prints. As drawings,
both types of works have however a
particularly unmediated quality that
engages with the viewer with great
directness.
Do you have a favourite drawing from the
album?
It is difficult to choose a single drawing.
I particularly like the sequence of
floating couples as the white paper
turns into wide and open space in
which the figures fly and tumble.
At the same time the powerful image
of Madness (Locura) (image 1) is
extremely gripping and the drawings
of visions and nightmares capture
incredibly well the haunting nature of
bad dreams. But those individual figures
are fantastic too, in which Goya’s acute
observation of movements and facial
expressions capture the person’s state
of mind.
THE ‘WITCHES AND
OLD WOMEN’ ALBUM IS
ONE OF EIGHT KNOWN
ALBUMS THAT GOYA
CREATED OVER THE
COURSE OF AROUND
THIRTY YEARS...
”
CURATORS QUESTIONS:
Image
Francisco de Goya Lucientes
Madness (Locura)
1819–23
Brush and black and grey ink
225 x 140 mm
© New York, The Morgan
Library & Museum,
Thaw Collection, evt 294
04/03/2015 10:44:14
THE POWERFUL IMAGE OF MADNESS (LOCURA) IS
EXTREMELY GRIPPING AND THE DRAWINGS OF VISIONS
AND NIGHTMARES CAPTURE INCREDIBLY WELL THE
HAUNTING NATURE OF BAD DREAMS...
”
1
04/03/2015 10:44:18
3: SAINTS AND SINNERS,
WIVES AND WITCHES:
REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER IN
THE COURTAULD GALLERY
Meghan Goodeve
‘THE MESSAGE HAS
BEEN CLEAR THROUGH
THE CENTURIES. ON THE
TYMPANA OF MEDIEVAL
CHURCHES AND IN
HOLLYWOOD FILMS,
WOMEN ARE PORTRAYED
AS EITHER GOOD OR BAD,
SAINTLY OR SINFUL.’
”
(Jane L Carroll and Alison G Stewart, Saints,
Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art
in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2003)
Since the introduction of feminist art
history in the late 1960s, art historians and
artists have been asking the question ‘what
role do women have in art’? This study of
gender is still important today. ‘Gender’
however is a wide-reaching term, covering
both men and women, male and female.
It is impossible to cover the many diverse
aspects of ‘gender’ in this one essay.
Instead, I will investigate specifically how
women have been represented in The
Courtauld Gallery collection. This essay
will explore representations of women as
subjects within three female stereotypes:
saints, mothers, and witches. These themes
will be illustrated by three focus paintings
reaching from the sixteenth century to the
nineteenth century: Quentin Massys, The
Virgin and Child with Angels, c. 1500-09
(image 1), Peter Paul Rubens, Family of Jan
Brueghel the Elder, 1613-15 (image 2), and
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Singing and
dancing (Cantar y Bailar), 1819-20 (image
3). Traditionally, history has positioned
these ‘female’ subjects into oppositional
categories, such as ‘saints’ or ‘sinners’,
‘good’ or ‘bad’. This essay will argue that
these stereotypes cannot be divided so
easily.
SAINTS
Let us begin this investigation with Massys’
painting of the Virgin Mary and the theme
of the saint (image 1). This is not the
earliest example of a female saint in The
Courtauld Gallery, yet it is a good place
to start this essay. Massys was a leading
painter in early sixteenth-century Antwerp,
1
following famous artists of the Northern
Renaissance such as Jan Van Eyck. Like his
predecessors much of his artwork has a
religious subject and function.
In this painting there are a number of visual
elements that indicate that Mary, a saint,
falls into the ‘good’ category. The colour of
Mary’s clothing is one of the most striking
clues as to her high status. Blue was usually
only worn by the ruling classes of the time.
The blue pigment Massys would have
used was amongst the most expensive,
the purest and richest of blues made from
04/03/2015 10:44:19
indicate the function of this image. It is
thought that this painting was created for
a wealthy patron and originally would have
been hung in their home. The Madonna
was a popular subject of the time and
this impression would have been used
as a devotional image, there to aid the
owner’s prayer. At a time when the most
people could not read or write, images of
saints like this played an significant part in
reaching out to the masses and leaving the
monastic context it first began in. As such
images began to reach a mass audience
through public display, it became more
important for representations of the saints
to teach lessons of piety and ‘goodness’.
To do this Mary must represent an ideal of
womanhood and importantly of maternity.
MOTHERS
Considering the Virgin Mary’s role as
mother brings us to our next painting. This
time, however, the subject of woman as
‘mother’ moves from a religious and saintly
context to that of an artist’s family. Rubens’
portrait Family of Jan Brueghel the Elder,
1613-15 (image 2), shows Ruben’s friend
and fellow artist Jan Brueghel the Elder,
with his second wife Catharina, and their
two children, Pieter and Elisabeth.
2
CATHARINA’S HANDS
PROTECTIVELY WRAP
AROUND HER SON’S
SHOULDERS AND CLASP
HER DAUGHTER’S HAND...
”
SAINTS AND SINNERS...
Image 1 Quentin Massys
Virgin and Child with Angels,
1500-09
Oil on panel
61.7 x 46.9 x 5.3 cm
Image 2
Peter Paul Rubens
Family of Jan Brueghel
the Elder,
1613-15
Oil on panel
125.1 x 95.2 cm
the lapis lazuli mineral mined in remote
Badakshan in Afghanistan. In this painting,
Mary wears blue from head to toe, with fur
lined sleeves and an intricate gold pattern
spilling around the edge of her robe and
presented in its full glory against the
patterned church floor. Here, removed from
the religious context, one could argue that
Mary looks like any noble woman from the
upper ranks of sixteenth-century Northern
Europe. To further this, in this image, like a
noble women, Mary’s goodness and virtue
is emphasised through her fine clothes and
jewels. This focus on the material, from
today’s perspective, could be argued as
vain, over-indulgent or greedy. Therefore,
lines between the simple dichotomy of
women as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ begin to
become blurred.
Besides the Virgin Mary’s clothing, she
is shown by Massys holding Jesus as a
child. In most images of saints, they are
shown with an attribute, which tells the
viewer the story behind their sainthood.
In this instance, by carrying the holy
child, the figure of Mary is connected
to the Immaculate Conception. Massys
has further emphasised Mary’s role as
‘Mother ‘ by surrounding her with three
child-like angels positioned behind her
and putti, or sculptures of putti, holding
a floral garland above her head. These
attributes and accompanying figures also
‘Motherhood’, like ‘sainthood’, is often
classed as a ‘good’ role for women in
art and in this case the two stereotypes
share many similar characteristics. In
Rubens’ painting Catharina is shown
as ‘mother’ in a similar way to Massys’
Virgin Mary. Just as Mary held Jesus,
Catharina’s hands protectively wrap
around her son’s shoulders and clasp her
daughter’s hand. By positioning Catharina
to hold or touch her children, Rubens’
emphasises the bodily comfort offered by
and associated with ‘good’ mothers. This
concept of closeness within motherhood
has continued into visual culture in the
twentieth century with sculptors such as
Barbara Hepworth raising post-war spirits
and family unity through sculptures of
mother and children touching and twisting
together. It is often argued that this bodily
ideal of motherhood is biological or
‘natural’ and in many ways underscores the
concept of ‘mother’ as ‘good’ in art.
In addition to this ‘natural’ connection,
this painting also places Catherina
as ‘Mother-wife’. The husband leans
awkwardly into the painting, his left-hand
arm twists away from his family rather than
towards them. This is remarkably different
to the interlocking arms and hands of the
mother-child relationship and brings to
the fore the question: is this a happy
family as they would like us to believe?
Further marking her as ‘mother-wife’ is the
bracelet, which her son Pieter reaches and
feels. This piece of jewellery is believed to
be a betrothal present and is a symbol of
her unity with her husband. Moreover, this
painting would have been on display in the
public spaces of the family’s house, putting
forward an idealised image of the family
to visitors. Consequently the stereotype
of motherhood in seventeenth-century
Holland is tied to the domestic space. The
simple equation of ‘mother’ equals ‘good’
in the ‘natural’ sense of a bodily protector
seen earlier becomes more complicated.
04/03/2015 10:44:20
Rubens’ depiction of Brueghel’s family
is tied up with more complex notions of
‘mother-wife’. For example, Catharina’s
status as a ‘good’ mother would have
indicated Brueghel’s own position as a
good provider, through his success as
an artist. Therefore ‘good’ is not always
‘natural’, but part of a larger picture of
society, politics, and domesticity, which
falls somewhere between the opposition of
women as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
WITCHES
‘Her representation swings between
the hideous and the sublime, between
the engaging and the troubling,
between the charmingly seductive
and the alarmingly menacing.’
(Lorenzo Lorenzi, 2005)
However, this stereotypical depiction of
an old, wrinkled witch does raise some
questions in terms of the drawing’s
function. This particular sketch connects
to the writings of Goya’s friend and
playwright Leandro Fernandez de Moratin,
who published a report of an Inquisition
witchcraft trail in 1811 and 1820. He recalls
the tale of someone being awoken one
night by
…a sudden strong noise of voices and
musical instruments that sounded in
the air. Rubbing his eyes, he sat up
as fast he could, and looking up, he
discerned a multitude of shadows in
the form of human bodies… he heard
the voices of men and the cackles and
shrieks of women, and the sound of
small guitars and tambourines.
Although this essay sought thus far to
question the polar nature of ‘good’ and
‘bad’ women, the last two examples have
presented two stereotypes ‘saints’ and
‘mothers’, which conventionally fall into
the ‘good’ category. Contemporary visual
culture already tells us that ‘witches’ will
unquestionably be categorised as ‘bad’.
But why?
Moratin was writing a comedy, drawing out
the humour in the association of witches as
‘evil’ or ‘devil-worshipping’. It also tellingly
associates the merriment of music-making
with the goings-on of ‘witchcraft’ in the
night. The comic nature of this writing
pairs with the amusing tone of Goya’s
drawing, which shows a woman who holds
a guitar and wears flamboyant dress, much
like an actor in a comedy. Thus, in this
case, witch does not equal ‘bad’ in such
a straightforward way. Instead, witch falls
somewhere between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in
the category of wit.
Goya’s Singing and dancing (Cantar y
Bailar), 1819-20 (image 3), is an example
3
of a drawing from the group that is now
known as the Witches and Old Women
Album. An old woman holding a guitar
opens her mouth to sing and seems to be
floating mid-air. Below her, holding her
nose and gazing up her companion’s skirt,
is another woman who could be perceived
as a witch. This classification is due to the
bowl and spoon set to one side of her,
perhaps just used to mix up some potions.
When studying this scene more closely,
stereotypes of what sets aside ‘bad’ women
from ‘good’ women becomes apparent.
In visual culture currently, we mostly expect
for a witch to be a ‘white-haired aged crone
clad in black and flying on a broomstick’.
Although Goya’s portrayal of a witch
omits attributes such as a black cat or a
broomstick, both women in this drawing fit
the stereotypical idea of witches in other
ways. For example, age is an important
factor. In Massys’ and Rubens’ paintings
both the ‘good’ women, the saints or
mothers are shown as youthful. Hence it
seems in art old equals ‘bad’, which in this
case equals witch.
CONCLUSION
This essay has presented three different
stereotypical representations of women
in The Courtauld Gallery. Each theme or
category; saint, mother, and witch, has
been conventionally classed as either
‘good’ or ‘bad’. This process of creating
oppositional categories leads to a
divided and far too simplistic reading of
women’s roles in both society and art. The
problematic divisions between ‘good’
and ‘bad’ should be explored further,
particularly in contemporary society: how
have contemporary artists experimented
with these stereotypes of saint, mother,
and witch? Are perceptions of women
today simply divided between those
who are ‘good’ and ‘bad’? Are women
still categorised into stereotypes in art?
Ultimately, we must question how and why
women have been represented as subjects
in the past, in order to further complicate
these categories in the future. Women
both inside and outside art are far more
multifaceted than ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘saints’
or ‘sinners’.
ALTHOUGH GOYA’S
PORTRAYAL OF A WITCH
OMITS ATTRIBUTES SUCH
AS A BLACK CAT OR A
BROOMSTICK, BOTH
WOMEN IN THIS DRAWING
FIT THE STEREOTYPICAL
IDEA OF WITCHES IN OTHER
WAYS...
”
FURTHER READING
K L Belkin, Rubens (London: Phaidon, 1998)
J M Bennett, The Oxford Handbook of
Women and Gender in Medieval Europe
(Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press,
2013)
C M Brown; A M Legare, Women, Art, and
Culture in Medieval and Early Renaissance
Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013)
J L Carroll and Alison G Stewart, Saints,
Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern
Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
(Aldershot; Ashgate, 2003)
R Hughes, Goya (London: Harvill, 2003)
L Lorenzi, Witches: Exploring the
Iconography of the Sorceress and
Enchantress (Florence: Centro Di, 2005)
D Petherbridge, Witches & Wicked Bodies
(Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland,
2013)
M Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the
Virgin Mary (London: Allen Lane, 2009)
P C Sutton, et al, The Age of Rubens
(Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1993)
Image 3 (detail)
Francisco de
Goya y Lucientes
Singing and dancing
(Cantar y Bailar),
1819-20
Brush and black ink on
paper, with scraping
23.5 x 14.5 cm
see cover for full image
J A Tomlinson, ed., Goya: Images of
Women (Washington DC: National Gallery
of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press,
2002)
N Toshiharu, Images of Familial Intimacy in
Eastern and Western Art (Leiden; Boston:
Brill, 2013)
04/03/2015 10:44:20
4. REPRESENTATIONS
OF WOMEN:
AN ART HISTORY
Rachel Hapoienu
EVE’S BODY, IMPROBABLY
PROPORTIONED AND
FREE FROM HAIR AND
IMPERFECTIONS, SUGGESTS
THAT CRANACH BASED THE
FIGURE ON A SCULPTURE
RATHER THAN A LIVE
WOMAN...
”
Until the nineteenth century, women
were predominantly portrayed in art in a
religious context, and the most frequently
depicted female image was that of the
Virgin Mary. Depictions of the nude female
body were restricted to scenes from
classical mythology, as the paganism of
the Greeks and Romans excused their lack
of modesty, or in images of Eve, as seen in
Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Adam and Eve
(1526) [image 1]. In this work Eve’s pose
deliberately recalls depictions of the Virgin
Mary. Eve’s body, improbably proportioned
and free from hair and imperfections,
suggests that Cranach based the figure
on a marble sculpture rather than a live
woman, seeking harmony and beauty
rather than anatomical correctness.
This was the standard practice in artistic
training. Drawing from live female models
was not inappropriate for young, male art
students. Classical sculptures from antiquity
were thought to represent the best and
most beautiful aspects of the female
form, as determined by ancient artists
and philosophers, and were preferable
prototypes.
By the late sixteenth century, Peter Paul
Rubens, the leading painter in the Baroque
style, became justly famous across Europe
for his religious altarpieces and grandiose
historical and mythological scenes.
Today, however, he is better known for
his preference for depicting fleshy,
curvaceous women, so much so that
we now refer to such body types as
‘Rubenesque’. The Courtauld owns a
particularly unique work by Rubens, a
portrait of the Family of Jan Brueghel
the Elder (1613-15) [see previous page].
The painting is special not only because of
the intimate nature of the work, presented
as a gift to his close friend and collaborator,
1
Jan Brueghel the Elder, but also because
it is an unprecedented version of a
family portrait. Such group images were
commonplace at the time, but would never
feature the wife and mother at the centre of
the composition, as Jan’s wife Catherine is
here. She seems to edge her husband out
REPRESENTATIONS
OF WOMEN
Image 1
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Adam and Eve
1526
Oil on panel
117.1 x 80.8 cm
04/03/2015 10:44:21
THE IMPRESSIONIST STYLE,
OF BRIGHT SCENES AND
THE ACCENTUATION OF
LIGHT PLAYING OVER
SENSUOUS SURFACES, HAS
BEEN DESCRIBED
AS ‘FEMININE’
THE MAN IS LITERALLY
RELEGATED TO THE
BACKGROUND, OBSCURED
IN SHADOWS. THE FOCUS IS
CLEARLY ON THE WOMAN...
”
3
La Loge (1874) [image 2], demonstrates this
clearly: a man and a woman sit in a theatre
box, but the man is literally relegated to
the background, obscured in shadows.
The focus is clearly on the woman, and the
theatre box quickly became a favourite
setting for fellow Impressionists, who
realised that it provided the perfect context
for painting beautiful women on display.
2
of the frame, and she is the one embracing
the children in a protective, dominant
gesture. There is a practical reason behind
this unprecedented dynamic, however,
Jan was actually a later addition to the
scene. We will never know why he was not
originally included, but this does explain
why his wife takes on a central role in the
painting. Catherine’s position is an anomaly
in the otherwise patriarchal family portraits
commissioned in the Netherlands in the
seventeenth century.
A stark contrast is evident between
these earlier works and those by the
Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.
These revolutionary artists burst onto
the art scene in the second half of
the nineteenth century, and almost
universally chose women as their subjects.
The Impressionist style, of bright scenes
and the accentuation of light playing over
sensuous surfaces, has been described
as ‘feminine’. Pierre Auguste Renoir’s,
THIS PAGE:
Image 2
Pierre Auguste Renoir
La Loge (Theatre Box)
1874
Oil on canvas
80 x 63.5 cm
Image 4
Édouard Manet
Bar at the Folies-Bergères
1881-82
Oil on panel
96 x 130 cm
Image 3
Edgar Degas
Two Dancers on a Stage
1874
Oil on canvas
61.5 x 46 cm
Image 5
Paul Gauguin
Nevermore
1897
Oil on canvas
60.5 x 116 cm
[image 4], finished in 1882. Scholars have
speculated widely about the representation
of the barmaid in this scene. Many think
her bare hands imply that she worked as
a prostitute on the side, in contrast to the
properly gloved women in the audience.
Conversely, some historians see the
barmaid as a Virgin Mary type, because
her position with palms turned outwards is
echoed by many contemporary depictions
of the Virgin. Whatever the deeper
meaning behind the work, it is undoubtedly
a commentary on contemporary society,
and the rapidly changing roles for women
in the newly industrialised Paris.
4
The Post-Impressionists continued to focus
predominantly on women in their works.
Paul Gauguin is well-known for his sojourns
in the South Pacific, where he sought
A fellow founding Impressionist, Edgar
Degas, famously loved ballerinas, depicting to find an unspoiled Eden far from the
corruption of European society. Gauguin
them in over 200 works in various media.
often complained about the difficulty of
He explained his fascination, saying, ‘my
finding willing female models, so he relied
chief interest in dancers lies in rendering
on his young mistresses to pose for him.
movement and painting pretty clothes’.
We see this in Nevermore (1897) [image
However, his representations were not
5], in which his teenage paramour appears
always flattering, as he was a believer
naked and vulnerable. The composition
in the misguided pseudo-science of
was likely inspired by a long tradition of
physiognomy, a method of reading a
reclining nudes in European art, from
person’s facial features or expression, for
Titian’s Venuses to Ingres’ Odalisque.
clues to their character or social origin.
Gauguin’s depictions of Tahitian women
Degas’s interest in physiognomy is evident
as naked ‘primitives’, fed into stereotypes
in The Courtauld’s canvas of Two Dancers
on a Stage (1874) [image 3]. These dancers of women of colour in Europe, and he
in the wings would have been in the chorus, confirmed this aim when he explained in a
letter, ‘I wished to suggest by means of a
and therefore probably from workingsimple nude a certain long-lost barbarian
class backgrounds. Degas depicted them
luxury’. His Poèmes barbares, an image of
with snub noses and plain faces, which
a nude woman and an imp-like creature,
he believed reflected their lower social
caused a sensation in England when
status and unsophisticated personalities.
it was used on a poster for the first
He favoured the contrast of such ordinary
Post-Impressionist exhibition in 1910.
features with the finesse and glamorous
costumes imposed on these women for
Gauguin’s contemporary, Georges Seurat,
performances on stage.
offered a very different take on the female
One of the most enigmatic representations image, in his Young Woman Powdering
Herself (c. 1888-90) [image 6], painted in
of a woman at this time is in Edouard
his distinctive style of Pointilism. Modern
Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergères
5
04/03/2015 10:44:25
6
audiences are often surprised to discover
that this is a portrait of Seurat’s mistress,
Madeleine Knobloch, as her image does
not appear very complimentary: she is
comically overlarge for the frame, and
juxtaposed beside the spindly table and
mirror, the composition seems to unkindly
emphasize her size. However, art historians
think it more likely that Seurat was
representing her metaphorical struggle,
as a working-class artist’s model trying
to fit into an aristocratic world in which
she found herself as Seurat’s lover. Her
attempts to squeeze into tiny clothes and
to mask her face with powder and perfume
reveal the difficulties she faced as a woman
in trying to assimilate into a new social
class, to which she was unaccustomed.
Seurat’s Pointilist, or Divisionist technique,
reveals a growing tendency towards
geometry in painting, in which shapes
and forms increasingly took precedence
over subject and colour. Amadeo
Modigliani’s Female Nude (c. 1916) [image
7] exemplifies the growing tendency to
break down the human body into simplified
forms. The artist makes no attempt to
provide background or context, in order
to concentrate solely on the female form.
In contrast to Cranach’s modest image
of Eve, Modigliani focused on depicting
his model’s pubic area in a very realistic
manner. It proved a little too true-to-life for
local police, as Modigliani’s first and only
solo show was shut down after only a few
days for being too explicit. Undoubtedly,
Modigliani relied on female models to
pose for him, but, like Cranach, his women
are idealised and unrealistic; they have
swan-necks and angular mask-like faces,
with blank or closed eyes. His female
nudes are certainly more erotic than their
precedents in Western art, but their lack
of expression and narrative means they
are still inactive objects, submitting to the
whim of the artist.
It is evident that over the centuries, women
increasingly emerged from the shadow of
religion and became a central feature of art
in the public sphere. However, they were
still predominantly painted by men. There
were a few notable female Impressionists,
such as Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot
and Eva Gonzalès. As women, however,
they were restricted to domestic scenes
of ‘private’ life, and were denied the
7
IN CONTRAST TO CRANACH’S MODEST IMAGE OF EVE,
MODIGLIANI FOCUSED ON DEPICTING HIS MODEL’S PUBIC
AREA IN A VERY REALISTIC MANNER. IT PROVED A LITTLE
TOO TRUE-TO-LIFE FOR LOCAL POLICE, AS MODIGLIANI’S
FIRST AND ONLY SOLO SHOW WAS SHUT DOWN AFTER
ONLY A FEW DAYS FOR BEING TOO EXPLICIT...
acclaim and renown received by their male
counterparts. Journalists and scholars
who were willing to express admiration for
female artists often described their style
as ‘virile’ to make it more palatable. It is
therefore clear, that although the depiction
of women changed radically from the
fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, they
still remained objectified by male artists,
who fashioned their images chiefly for the
gratification of the male gaze.
”
THIS PAGE:
Image 6
Georges Seurat
Young Woman
Powdering Herself
c. 1888-90
Oil on canvas
95.5 x 79.5 cm
Image 7
Amadeo Modigliani
Female Nude
c. 1916
Oil on canvas
92.4 x 59.8 cm
04/03/2015 10:44:26
5. ALWAYS THE MODEL
NEVER THE ARTIST
Katherine Faulkner
‘WHY HAVE THERE BEEN NO
GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS?’
”
This question seems simple, as Linda
Nochlin, feminist art historian, points out.
But if we begin to read the assumptions
behind these words we will find the root of
the problem spreads across a wide variety
of academic disciplines: from history of art,
to history, politics, psychology and biology.
Some of the first attempts to determine
why there have been no great women
artists involved the discovery or
rediscovery of underappreciated women
artists throughout history, such as the
eighteenth-century painter Angelica
Kauffmann (1741-1801) – the first woman
to be elected to the Royal Academy of Arts
when it was founded in Somerset House
in 1768 (image 1). Studies of individual
women artists are, of course, worthwhile,
and enable us to build up an art history
of female achievement. Trying to make
a place for women in the art historical
canon, however, does not get us closer to
confronting our original question of why
there have been no great women artists.
Another approach to the question is to
argue that great art by women artists
would look different than art by their
male counterparts. Women’s experience
is different from men’s, therefore, art
historians argued, women and men would
create art in different styles. But assuming
that men and women would produce
different styles of art can make us see
artificial similarities in the work of women
artists. Should we search for the ‘subtle
essence of femininity’ in artworks by Berthe
Morisot and Frida Kahlo, any more than we
should in the literature of Charlotte Bronte
and Sylvia Plath? In each case, the stylistic
characteristics of work by women writers
and women artists arise from the period
and cultures they lived in, rather than their
gender.
Instead of excavating forgotten women
artists or looking for an essentially feminine
style of art, we need to examine the
terms of the question to begin to reach a
satisfactory answer. As Nochlin explains,
1
the problem is not our concept of what
femininity in art is, but with our conception
of what art is. An idealistic notion of
art as, ‘the direct, personal expression
of individual emotional experience – a
translation of personal life into visual
terms’ still persists in art history, particularly
in museums and galleries. Making art,
however, is often carefully worked out
and a self-conscious process, building on
conventions and systems that have been
learned through education or long periods
of experimentation.
There are no female equivalents of
Rubens, Manet, Cezanne or Picasso who all
happened to be born white, middle class
and male. The status of these ‘Great Artists’
underlies our question about women
artists. The myth of the ‘Great Artist’,
‘unique, godlike – bearing within his person
... a mysterious essence ... called Genius’
– has been part of Western culture for as
ALWAYS THE MODEL
NEVER THE ARTIST
Image 1
Angelica Kauffmann
Venus, Cupid and Psyche
(date unknown 1741-1801)
Watercolour (grey) on paper
16.7 x 17.1 cm
Image 2
Charles Joseph Natoire
Life Class at the
Royal Academy of Painting
and Sculpture
1746
Pen and black ink, grey wash
and watercolour,
45.3 x 32.2 cm
Image 3
William Etty
Three standing Female
Nudes,
1815-45
Oil on millboard
53.6 x 44 cm
04/03/2015 10:44:26
intelligence, opportunity and talent – not
divine genius.
Once we have dismissed the notion of
the mythical genius of the ‘Great Artist’
we can approach our original question
more objectively. Nochlin demonstrates
the conditions and institutional barriers
to women artists using one simple, but
important issue: the availability of the
nude model. Since the Renaissance,
detailed study and knowledge of the nude
model was essential to any artist wanting
to pursue a serious career. The ability to
represent the human figure convincingly
and beautifully was central to the most
prestigious category of art – history
painting. Life drawing from the nude male
(mostly) model was a central part or artistic
training in art schools (image 2).
It was almost impossible for women art
students to study the nude model at all.
Until 1893, women were not allowed to join
life-drawing classes at the Royal Academy
in London and even then the model was
‘partially draped.’ The importance of
studying from the nude can be seen in
the large volume of surviving, detailed
drawings of the nude studio model
existing today, for example William Etty’s
studies of male and female nudes in oil
and chalk (image 3). This was a crucial
stage in the development of an artist from
talented beginner to professional artist.
Women were deprived of this training and
thus prevented from creating the most
esteemed forms of art. Women aspiring to
be painters found themselves restricted to
‘minor’ categories of art: portraiture, genre
painting, landscape or still-life.
2
The availability of the nude model was
just one institutional obstacle in a woman
artist’s path, but it is symptomatic of
long as there have been artists. Influential
philosophers such as Roland Barthes
and Michel Foucault questioned our
assumptions about individual achievement
and authorship in the late 1960s, but the
notion of the ‘Great Artist’ still prevails,
particularly in art historical monographs.
Often, the talent or genius of the individual
is given more importance than the social
and institutional systems around him or her,
which are considered as mere ‘influences’
or ‘background.’ Men overcome these
systems and social conditions thanks to
their genius. By this logic, if any woman
artist had genius within her, it would have
revealed itself. Or, as Nochlin puts it:
‘If ... van Gogh with his fits could make
it, why not a woman?’
To dispassionately address the question
of why there have been no great women
artists, we have to do away with the notion
of genius all together. Aptitude can be
established so early that it may appear to
be ‘natural’ or an innate gift to the casual
observer – like Mozart’s debut as a classical
musician aged six, or Picasso receiving
acclaim for his paintings when he was just
fifteen. As psychologists have proved,
ability and intelligence are built up, step
by step, from when we are babies, coming
to fruition earlier in some people than
others. Exceptional achievers benefit from
3
04/03/2015 10:44:29
IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY, DRAWING AND
WATERCOLOUR PAINTING
WERE ENCOURAGED AS
SUITABLE PAST-TIMES FOR
YOUNG LADIES. ETIQUETTE
MANUALS AND ART CRITICS
WARNED YOUNG LADIES
NOT TO BE TOO AMBITIOUS
OR TO THINK OF ENTERING
ART AS A PROFESSION...
”
much wider discrimination that prevented
women from becoming proficient artists, let
alone great ones. Nochlin points out that
in other artistic fields, such as literature,
women were able to compete with men
on far more equal terms. As we have
seen, making art requires a specific set
of skills, learnt in a particular order, in an
institutional environment rather than the
home. Whereas, learning to read and write
is accessible to almost anyone anywhere
and it is possible to practice and develop
one’s skill as a writer independently within
the home. This is a simplified argument,
but it does gives us a clue as to why
Virginia Woolf was able to achieve the
status of a ‘Great Novelist’, while her sister
Vanessa Bell’s paintings do not receive the
same level of attention (image 4).
The ‘lady painter’ was positioned up
against the ‘Great Artist’. While he was
single-minded and committed, she
was accomplished, but frivolous. In
the nineteenth century, drawing and
watercolour painting were encouraged
as suitable past-times for young ladies, a
pleasant way to spend afternoons at home.
Etiquette manuals and art critics warned
young ladies not to be too ambitious or
to think of entering art as a profession.
Anything that might divert them from
their duties or ‘natural’ desires towards
5
4
marriage and motherhood was generally
discouraged. The Pre-Raphaelite artist and
poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti promised to
teach his model and lover Elizabeth Siddall
to draw and paint, but he soon lost interest
and without a thorough training she was
prevented from making art a professional
career (image 5). Today she looks out at us
from countless Pre-Raphaelite paintings,
but her own jewel-like watercolours are still
seen by many as minor works.
FURTHER READING
Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’
(1967):
www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/
threeEssays.html#barthes
Up until the twentieth century, it was seen
as highly unconventional for a woman to
pursue a career at all, and a career as an
artist even more so. It was only by adopting
the characteristics of concentration,
determination and dedication to ideas
and craftsmanship, usually associated
with masculinity, that women were
able to succeed in the world of art. As
Nochlin stresses, we should examine the
institutional or public preconditions for
success in the art world, rather than those
that come down to the individual. As we
have seen, straightforward factors such
as the unavailability of nude model to
women art students, made it institutionally
impossible to achieve excellence or
success at the same level of their male
counterparts, irrespective or talent or
‘genius’.
Linda Nochlin, Women, Art and Power and
other Essays (Boulder: Westview, 1989).
Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’
Twentieth-Century Literary Theory,
ed. Vassilis Lambropoulos and David Neal
Miller (Albany: State University Press of
New York, 1987), pp. 124-42.
Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker,
Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology
(London: I.B. Tauris, 2013).
Image 4
Vanessa Bell
A Conversation
1913-16
Oil on canvas
81 x 86.6 cm
Image 5
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Elizabeth Siddal seated
at an easel, painting
circa 1854-55
Graphite on paper
17.7 x 11.8 cm
04/03/2015 10:44:30
6. MASTER AS MUSE
Nadine Mahoney
My practise as a painter is focused on
portraiture, but I do not paint people’s
portraits. I’m interested in describing an
emotion or state of mind rather than a
person.
Visits to museums and galleries are a great
source of inspiration; I often use old master
portraits as a muse for my own paintings,
manipulating their sensitivity to the subject
and formal structures. The paintings are
not copies or reproductions of art historical
portraits; they are created from the
impressions the paintings make on me. In
parallel to my studio practise, I work as an
artist educator with The Courtauld Gallery.
This has meant spending a lot of time with
the collection, during which certain works
have stood out and both directly and
indirectly influenced my practice.
1
Portrait of a Woman (1872-75) by Berthe
Morisot (image 1) in The Courtauld
collection has inspired several works.
I’ve always loved this painting, and still
remember my first impression: I saw it as
an understated piece in the collection, it
seemed to be painted in mostly greys and
browns, but the longer I looked I begun
to notice the browns had purple tones
within them, and the beige has pinks.
The pinks that made up the flowers were
reflected throughout the canvas. I loved
how such a small ornamental detail of the
painting could impact on my perception
of the painting as a whole. As with most
works, my exploration of the painting
came from drawing, my sketches explored
2
the composition, distilling the brush
marks and tones into short, continuous,
thick or thin lines. Drawing is a vital tool
both in situ in museums and galleries
and using photocopies in the studio. The
process of drawing is not about mimicry,
for me it’s a tool to observe and distill
an essence of what interests me in the
original. The drawings I made of Morisot’s
painting mostly engaged with the sense of
grounding the triangle structure gives to
the composition, and how the contours of
her dress met with the background. Several
paintings have been made in response to
Morisot’s portrait, and each painting is very
different.
I often work on multiple paintings at once,
and both Pretty in Pink (images 2 and 3)
paintings were made together. Oil paint
can take a long time to dry and I prefer to
keep working whilst waiting for paint to dry.
The aluminium painting was in response
to the gaze of Morisot’s sitter. In the flesh
04/03/2015 10:44:32
the background. The formal concerns
between the foreground and background
interested me, and I worked to create
a subtle yet direct distinction between
them. I make my own oil and waterbased
paints, which allow a playful approach to
manipulating material. This is especially
the case when exploring mat and glossy
tones of a single colour. My memory of the
nuances of pinks in Moritot’s palette was
translated into working with a vibrant pink
pigment, oil was mixed into the pigment
for the figure and an acrylic binder for the
background. The bold monotone palate
was created to juxtapose the sense of
nostalgia the figure evoked.
3
there was something quite confrontational
about her despite her scale. I felt that
the pink on aluminium responded to the
sensation of being looked at. This piece
also explores surface textures, although
depicting her face, the texture of her dress
was in my mind whilst manipulating the
paint over the panel. The marks that make
up her features were inspired by observing
the folds of fabric in Morisot’s painting.
Many of my works are built of multiple
layers, but this piece was made with one
thick coat, I purposely ground the oil paint
into an impasto (thick paste) to provide a
surface to draw and scrape into.
With the canvas painting, I wanted to
explore the edges of where the dress met
Sundea (image 4) took inspiration from
the sentiment behind the painting rather
than its formal qualities. Although a
portrait, there was no clear identity to
which woman ‘portrait of a woman’ was
about. I was interested in the fact that
Morisot’s sister posed for this painting but
she was not the subject of the painting. My
practice is often steered towards arenas
where identity is open to discussion, so
the notion that this was a portrait of a
woman without a prescribed personality
or character resonated with me. After
working on various sketches depicting
women, a detailed drawing was traced
onto copper then obscured by textured
paint, to create the effect of a passing of
time or incomplete memory. Copper is
such an exciting material to work with, it
is a beautiful colour to respond to and if
uncoated it oxidizes to create wonderful
patinas. I use these natural qualities of
copper as much as possible, and allow
I WAS INTERESTED IN THE
FACT THAT MORISOT’S
SISTER POSED FOR THIS
PAINTING BUT SHE WAS
NOT THE SUBJECT OF THE
PAINTING...
”
parts of the surface to react whilst working
on them. The oval format also refers to
history of portraiture; the shape, material
and scale of Sundae relates to lockets - in
particular their sentimentality.
References can also be indirect, and this
article offered the opportunity to review
the influence of The Courtauld collection.
Although Once More with Feeling (OMWF)
(image 5) was not based on a portrait in the
gallery, with hindsight I identified several
ways it related to Bonnard paintings in the
gallery.
5
4
I always start with a source image, OMWF
responded to ‘Study of a little Girl, seated’
by Wenceslaus Hollar. I had seen this
drawing at UCL’ s Art Museum, and loved
how delicate yet bold the drawing was. My
initial drawings focused on the simplicity
of the composition, her hands and face
were the main focus. She was posed in a
traditional/ classical form yet something
about her felt so modern. This sense of
modernity from the Hollar drawing was the
catalyst for my own, my drawings explored
a heightened sense of modernity. Most of
the details of Hollar’s drawing were edited
out during the final painting process; the
hands were the only detail that remained.
It took a while to create the right intensity
of her state, and as no other depiction of
her features had the right impact I ended
up working very fast bold gestural marks
across the face. I work in a very intuitive
way making decisions following my instinct
with no direct reference material. Which is
why I was so amazed to see then similarities
of tone and gesture of Bonnard’s works.
It was surprising to see what a powerful
yet implicit influence Young Woman in
an Interior (c. 1906) (image 6) and Pont
de la Concorde (currently on display
in The Courtauld Gallery) had made.
After revisiting the collection, I noticed
unintentional yet clear links between the
blue wall in ‘woman in an interior’ and
04/03/2015 10:44:32
the background of OMWF. The layering
and juxtaposition of blues, greens and
purples from ‘River Seine in Paris’ felt
very reminiscent of the palette in OMWF.
Bonnard is one of my favorite painters in
the gallery, I am always impressed how their
initial naturalistic appearance fades to such
dynamic and rich tonal contrasts.
6
Drawing has previously just been a thinking
tool in the studio, but over the last year I
have placed greater significance on their
output, developing them into coherent
works in their own right. The drawing below
(image 7) is one of my favourites: and is
based on the daughter from Peter Paul
Rubens, Family of Jan Brueghel the Elder
(1613-15) (see chapter 3 for image). Without
being propped up by her mother, her
body contorts unnaturally, giving a lovely
dynamic pose. Taking her out of context
allowed an initial ownership of the image,
which was expanded by a personal style
of drawing. Various fluid sketchy drawings
were made, editing Rubens figure to create
a subtle impression of the girl without
making it feel ghostly. Working fast has its
merits, but it is very easy to overwork an
image. When working with oil paint there
is a greater possibility to undo unwanted
marks but this style of drawing needs to be
right the first time, finding that balance can
be frustrating, but very rewarding when it
works.
8
Unlike exquisite corpse drawings, these
forms felt very natural blurring the lines
between real and imagined figures.
Manet’s barmaid is so iconic, yet she is
rarely identified. The second drawing
is a combination of Goya portraits.
The drawings take a playful approach
to perception and memory, they are
perceived as historical but rather than
being recognisable they evoke a sense
of implacable familiarity. This sense of
‘familiarity ’ is one reason why I continue
to reference old masters; I’m fascinated
how their images are embedded within our
cultural memories.
9
7
Last summer I made a playful series of
drawings for the Art Car Boot Fair (a
summer art fair that allows visitors to
view and buy art in a fun and informal
way). I wanted to create something fun
and accessible for the fair and in keeping
with my practice. Taking my lead from the
Exquisite Corpse style of drawing, I made
a series of simple line drawings of my
favourite old master portraits, divided them
up, and reformed them to create a series
of art historical Frankensteins. The first
example here (image 8) is a fusion of the
barmaid in Manet’s A Bar at Foliès Bergère
(1882) (see chapter 4 for image) and the
figure of Don Franciso de Saavedra as
portrayed by Goya (image 9). Working with
multiple figures scattered indiscriminately
throughout Art History, this series
surprisingly came very naturally as many
figures fused wonderfully together.
MASTER AS MUSE
Image 1
Berthe Morisot
Portrait of a Woman
1872-75
Oil on canvas
56 x 46.1 cm
Image 6
Pierre Bonnard
Young Woman in an Interior
c. 1906
Oil on canvas
48.9 x 44. 5 cm
Image 2 + 3
Nadine Mahoney
Pretty in Pink
Image 7 + 8
Nadine Mahoney
untitled drawing
Image 4
Nadine Mahoney
Sundea
Image 9:
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
Portrait of Don Francisco de Saavedra
1798
Oil on canvas
200.2 x 119.6 cm
Image 5
Nadine Mahoney
Once More With Feeling
(OMWF)
All images © the Artist
04/03/2015 10:44:34
7. REGARDE!
LAS MUJERES RESPETABLES
DE COURTAULD
Spanish Language resource
Spanish translation: Leticia Blanco
1
Al caminar por las habitaciones de
la galería Courtauld dedicadas al
Impresionismo y al Posimpresionismo,
los y las visitantes suelen encontrarse
frente a muchas obras que representan
mujeres. Suzon, la camarera en Bar at
the Folies-Bergere de Manet (véase el
capítulo 4) expuesta normalmente en
el centro de la habitación 6, a menudo
es comparada con Nini, la mujer en La
Loge de Renoir (véase el capítulo 4), con
la joven de las pinturas Nevermore de
Gauguin (véase el capítulo 4) y con Portrait
of a Woman de Berthe Morisot (véase el
capítulo 6). A primera vista, estas obras
parecen representar dos tipos de mujer:
la respetable y la perdida. Por un lado,
las mujeres respetables como la modelo
de Berthe Morisot, la mujer de Monet
pintada por Manet en The Banks of the
River Seine at Argenteuil (ilustración 1), el
busto de mármol que Gauguin esculpió de
su mujer Mette (ilustración 2) e incluso las
labradoras en el paisaje bretón de Gauguin
The Haystacks (ilustración 3) (mujeres de
una clase social muy diferente) comparten
un elemento crucial de respetabilidad: sus
ropas modestas. Todas visten ropas que
cubren sus cuerpos por completo, sólo las
manos y la cara quedan al descubierto.
Incluso el busto de Mette incluye los
volantes de un cuello alto, que le taparía
el cuello y la parte superior del pecho y las
labradoras bretonas llevan mangas y faldas
largas, a pesar de la incomodidad que
supondría para el intenso esfuerzo físico
que realizaban. Cuando no están retratadas
por detrás o de lejos, todas aparecen con
posturas recatadas. La modelo de Morisot
(probablemente su propia hermana) viste
ropas de colores muy suaves, extendidas
en capas que tapan toda la piel y lleva una
joya muy discreta y propia de la perfecta y
respetable mujer burguesa, de gesto suave
y mirada viva pero no desafiante.
como la mujer tahitiana de Gauguin
o Suzon o Nini, cuya piel destaca en
los colores que las rodean, resaltando
así el cuerpo expuesto. La joven de
Gauguin en Nevermore está tumbada
en una cama, desnuda y con una postura
provocadora, mostrando claramente
pechos y vello púbico. Está mirando de
modo amenazador a los dos personajes del
fondo, que parecen estar hablando de ella.
Es su mirada amenazante y la presencia de
esta otra gente lo que hace de este cuadro
una obra incómoda de observar, sugiriendo
posiblemente que ella es una prostituta.
Esta misma dinámica de una mujer
desnuda rodeada de hombres vestidos
había escandalizado a los espectadores
en Paris 30 años antes, en Dejeuner sur
L’herbe de Manet (véase el capítulo 1)
(también expuesto en la colección de
Courtald).
En claro contraste nos encontramos, por
otro lado, con personajes más audaces
Cuando examinamos a Suzon en Bar at
the Folies-Bergere y a Nini en La Loge,
04/03/2015 10:44:36
INCLUSO EL BUSTO
DE METTE INCLUYE
LOS VOLANTES DE UN
CUELLO ALTO, QUE LE
TAPARÍA EL CUELLO Y LA
PARTE SUPERIOR...
”
nos vemos en la necesidad de analizar
sus ropas y sus posturas en las pinturas,
especialmente dadas las expresiones de
aburrimiento, cansancio o desesperanza
de sus caras. Ambas visten de manera
seductora, llevan camisas o vestidos
escotados, lo que iría en contra del código
de vestimenta respetable de la época.
Ambas además llaman la atención sobre
sí mismas: Nini a través de su opulento y
caro vestido y sus joyas brillantes, Suzon
con un brazalete de oro en el brazo
derecho que aparentemente, en el París
de 1880 daba a entender que no estaba
casada. Es más, Suzon está trabajando en
un lugar de decadencia, donde el alcohol
y el entretenimiento están a disposición
de cualquiera, lo que sugiere que al
tiempo que vende bebidas, podría estar
vendiéndose a sí misma. En ninguno de
los dos casos queda claro el estado civil
de estas mujeres. Nini está acompañada
por un hombre que no parece su marido,
ya que está ocupado mirando a otra parte,
posiblemente a otra mujer. La moral de
este momento dictaba que las mujeres
no debían ser vistas a solas con hombres
con los que no tenían parentesco, lo que
parece otro modo de poner en duda la
respetabilidad de Nini y Suzon en las
pinturas.
2
3
Ambas fueron retratadas por artistas
hombres y, aunque la mirada masculina
parece sentir simpatía por ambas mujeres,
aparecen marcadas por su soledad.
Las mujeres artistas del siglo XIX rara
vez pintaban a hombres solos, ya que
la moral predominante dictaba que no
debían retratar a ningún hombre que no
perteneciera a su familia o a su círculo
profesional. Habría sido, de hecho,
bastante escandaloso que un hombre
posara para una mujer. Esta es una de las
razones por las que las artistas mujeres
solían representar temas femeninos
tradicionales como la maternidad o la
vida doméstica, y no solo porque se
consideraban temas más apropiados, sino
además porque era más fácil para ellas
conseguir modelos femeninos que posaran
para sus composiciones. Los críticos de
esos años a menudo desestimaban el
arte de estas artistas por ser demasiado
“femenino” y sin interés. A pesar de esto,
artistas famosas como Berthe Morisot
o Mary Cassatt se ganaron el derecho a
ser reconocidas en los libros de Historia
del Arte. Durante el siglo XIX en Francia,
el papel de las mujeres fue ganando
importancia en el mundo del arte. Fueron
admitidas por primera vez en la Real
Academia Francesa a finales del siglo XVIII,
y expusieron cada vez más en la sección
oficial del Salón anual de París. En 1890,
más de un 15% de obras expuestas eran de
mujeres.
Para la segunda mitad de siglo, las mujeres
se estaban creando una reputación en el
mundo del arte. Al formarse en estudios
de artistas (masculinos) famosos, como
la Académie Colarossi o la Académie
Julian, se beneficiaron de una formación
parecida a la de sus colegas masculinos,
que recibían clases en lugares diferentes.
A finales de siglo, algunas de ellas también
empezaron a enseñar en estas academias.
La sociedad aun prescribía que solo
los hombres podían vivir del arte, pero
unas pocas mujeres consiguieron vender
sus obras y que se las comisionaran.
Obtuvieron premios en el Salón y artistas
como Rosa Bonheur, Louise Breslau y
Virginie Demont-Breton recibieron la
Légion d’honneur. Esto allanaría el camino
del reconocimiento a otras artistas mujeres
a principios del siglo XX.
LAS MUJERES RESPETABLES DE COURTAULD
Ilustración 1
Edouard Manet
Ilustración 3
Banks of the Seine
Paul Gauguin
at Argenteuil
The Haystacks
1874
1889
Óleo sobre lienzo
Óleo sobre lienzo
62.3 x 103 cm
92 x 73.3 cm
Ilustración 2
Paul Gauguin
Portrait of Mette Gauguin
1877
Mármol
34 x 26.5 x 18.5 cm
Ilustración 4
Édouard Manet
c. 1863-68
Óleo sobre lienzo
89.5 x 116.5 cm
04/03/2015 10:44:39
7. REGARDE!
Spanish Language resource
Alice Odin
1
When walking through the Impressionist
and Post-Impressionist rooms of the
Courtauld gallery, visitors are often faced
with many works representing women.
Suzon, the waitress in Manet’s Bar at the
Folies-Bergere (1882) (see chapter 4)
usually hung in the middle of room 6, can
often be compared with Nini, the woman
from Renoir’s La Loge (see chapter 4), the
young woman in Gauguin’s Nevermore
painting (see chapter 4) and Berthe
Morisot’s Portrait of a Woman (see chapter
6). At a quick glance, these works seem
to represent two types of women: the
respectable and the fallen woman. On the
one hand, the respectable women such
as Berthe Morisot’s model, Monet’s wife
depicted in Manet’s The Banks of the River
Seine at Argenteuil (image 1), Gauguin’s
marble bust of his wife Mette (image 2) and
even the labouring women in Gauguin’s
Bretton landscape The Haystacks (who are
from a very different social background)
share one crucial element of respectability
(image 3): their modest clothing. All are
wearing clothes that fully cover their
bodies, where only hands and faces are
left bare. Even Mette’s bust includes the
frills of a high collar, which would have
hidden her throat and upper chest and
the Breton labourers are wearing long
sleeves and long dresses, regardless of
how inconvenient it must have been with
their intense physical effort. When not
painted from behind or afar, all are also
depicted in demure poses. Morisot’s model
(possibly her own sister) wearing very soft
coloured clothes, layered up to hide any
area of bare skin, and what looks like very
sensible and discreet jewellery embodies
the perfect respectable bourgeois woman,
with soft facial expressions and a lively yet
not defiant gaze.
This is in sharp contrast, on the other
hand, to more audacious characters, such
as Gauguin’s Tahitian woman or Suzon or
Nini, whose skins are depicted in sharp
contrast to the colours surrounding them,
therefore emphasising their exposed flesh.
Gauguin’s young woman in Nevermore,
is lying entirely and provocatively naked
on a bed with her breasts and pubic hair
clearly on show. She is glancing menacingly
at the two characters in the background,
who seem to be talking about her. It is
her menacing glance, and the presence
of other people that make this painting
uncomfortable to look at, and possibly
suggests she may have been a prostitute.
This same dynamic of a naked woman
surrounded by clothed men, had already
shocked audiences in Paris over 30 years
previously in Manet’s Dejeuner sur L’herbe
(see chapter 1) (also on display in the
Courtauld collection).
Examining Suzon in the Bar at the
Folies-Bergere and Nini in La Loge, we are
drawn to analyse their clothes and their
position in the paintings, especially as
their faces express boredom, tiredness or
04/03/2015 10:44:40
EVEN METTE’S BUST
INCLUDES THE FRILLS OF
A HIGH COLLAR, WHICH
WOULD HAVE HIDDEN
HER THROAT AND UPPER
CHEST...
”
despair. They are both dressed seductively,
wearing low cut tops or dresses, which
would have been against the respectable
code of clothing at the time. They are both
also drawing attention to themselves: Nini
through her opulent dress and expensive,
bright jewellery, Suzon through the gold
bangle on her right arm which apparently,
in 1880s Paris, signalled her unmarried
status. Furthermore, Suzon is working
in a place of decadence, where alcohol
and entertainment are readily available,
hence the suggestion that she might have
been selling herself as well as drinks. In
both cases, their marital statuses aren’t
clear. Nini is accompanied by a man who
doesn’t seem to be her husband, as he is
busy looking elsewhere, possibly at other
women. Morals of the time dictated that
women shouldn’t be seen on their own with
men to whom they were not related, which
is another way in which Nini and Suzon’s
respectability is being questioned in the
paintings.
Both were portrayed by male artists, and
while their masculine gaze seem to feel
sympathy for both women, they are both
singled out by their loneliness.
2
compositions. Critics of the time often
dismissed females artists’ art as too
‘feminine’ and uninteresting, nevertheless,
famous artists such as Berthe Morisot or
Mary Cassatt have since been rightfully
recognised in art history books. In fact,
throughout the nineteenth century in
France, women played a growing role in
the art world. Women were first admitted
at the French Royal Academy at the end
of the eighteenth century, and gradually
exhibited in larger numbers at the annual
official Paris Salon; by 1890, women
accounted for over fifteen percent of the
works displayed there.
Louise Breslau and Virginie Demont-Breton
received the Légion d’honneur. This would
pave the way for female artists to be much
more widely recognised at the beginning
of the twentieth century.
3
Women artists in the nineteenth century
seldom represented men on their own, as
the prevailing moral order dictated they
shouldn’t depict a man, outside of his
family or his professional circle. It would
indeed have been rather scandalous for a
woman artist to have a man pose for them.
This is one of the reasons why women
artists often depicted more traditional
female themes such as motherhood
and domesticity, not only because they
were deemed more suitable themes,
but also because it was easier for them
to get female models to pose for their
By the second half of the century, women
artists were establishing reputable art
practices. Studying mainly in famous
(male) artists’ private studios, such as the
Académie Colarossi or the Académie
Julian, they benefitted from similar
trainings to their male counterparts, who
were taught on separate floors. By the
end of the century, a few of them also
started teaching in academies. Society
still dictated that only male artists could
make a living out of art, but a few women
artists managed to sell and have works
commissioned. A few obtained prizes at the
Salon, while artists such as Rosa Bonheur,
Image 1
Image 3
Edouard Manet
Paul Gauguin
Banks of the Seine
The Haystacks
at Argenteuil
1889
1874
Oil on canvas
Oil on canvas
92 x 73.3 cm
62.3 x 103 cm
Image 2
Paul Gauguin
Portrait of Mette Gauguin
1877
Marble
34 x 26.5 x 18.5 cm
Image 4
Édouard Manet
c. 1863-68
Oil on canvas
89.5 x 116.5 cm
04/03/2015 10:44:42
8: GLOSSARY
ABSOLUTE MONARCHY:
A form of government in which the
monarch has absolute power among his
or her subjects. An absolute monarch has
unrestricted political power over the state
and its people.
ABSTRACTION:
In this context, works of art where the
representation and imitation of objects and
forms from the real world is secondary to
the exploration of colour, shape and line.
ANTIQUITY:
the ancient past, especially the period
of classical and other human civilisations
before the Middle Ages.
ATTRIBUTES:
In this case, an attribute is an object or
animal associated with a particular person.
AUTHORSHIP:
Both Barthes and Foucault agreed that
the “Author” is an unnatural, historical
phenomenon that has obtained similar
heroic status to ‘genius.’ Both writers
sought to criticise and complicate the
notion of the author, but they did this in
different ways.
BAROQUE:
A style of art popular in the seventeenth
century, characterised by heavy, ornate
decoration, and an emphasis on emotional
and dramatic narratives with a strong
contrast between light and dark scenes.
the 7th-8th century BC, and to send with
the rise of Christianity and decline of the
Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.
FORMAL STRUCTURES:
Artistic term describing the appearance
and or placement of objects in a painting.
CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT:
A form of government defined by the
existence of a constitution – usually a set
of principles generally accepted as the
fundamental law of the people – which
effectively controls the way political power
is exercised.
FRENCH REVOLUTION:
Also called the Revolution of 1789, the
revolutionary movement that took place in
France between 1787 and 1799, reaching
a climax in 1789. The Revolution ended
the rule of the French monarchy and saw
the beginning of the formation of a new
democratic republic.
DEVOTIONAL IMAGE:
An image that shows a figure or narrative
scene from a religious context in order to
promote prayer or spiritual meditation in
the viewer.
EXQUISITE CORPSE:
A collection of words or images assembled
in a specific sequence. Also known as
picture consequences where a group each
take a turn to draw a body part creating a
single figure.
FETISHISATION:
A term from psychology, particularly the
writing of Sigmund Freud, where the
subject forms an erotic attachment to an
inanimate object (i.e. shoe fetish) or to a
part of the human body.
GENRE PAINTING:
Paintings of subjects from everyday life,
usually on a small scale.
HISTORY PAINTING:
Paintings with subject matter drawn from
classical history, mythology and the Bible,
also used in the eighteenth century to refer
to more recent historical subjects.
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION:
This is a dogma of the Catholic Church
which stresses that Mary became pregnant
with Jesus although she remained a virgin.
IMPASTO:
Painting technique, where paint is applied
in a thick paste.
BOURGEOIS SOCIETY:
A social order dominated by the middle
class, first defined by the political and
economic philosopher Karl Marx in
the nineteenth century. ‘Bourgeois’ or
‘bourgeoisie’ is often used in a pejorative
way to denote small-mindedness,
materialism and a concern for social
respectability.
CANON:
A body of works of art that have been
traditionally accepted by scholars and
curators as the most important and most
influential in Western art history.
CLASSICAL:
Relating to or inspired by ancient Greek
or Roman literature, art or culture. The
classical period is often taken to begin
with the earliest poetry of Homer, around
1
04/03/2015 10:44:43
IMPRESSIONIST:
An artist who took part in the nineteenthcentury art movement that originated
with a group of Paris-based artists that
chose to break away from the traditional
style of painting taught at the Fine Art
school (École des Beaux-Arts). The name
came from the title of Monet’s 1873
painting Impression, Sunrise, shown at the
first group show n 1874, and the artists
involved were interested in depicting their
impression of the world around them, from
landscapes to modern social activity, often
in a style that was considered sketchy.
INQUISITION:
The Spanish Inquisition began in the 15th
century to make sure Catholic orthodoxy
was upheld in the Spanish kingdoms.
MODERNISM:
Modern character or quality of thought,
expression, or technique. A style or
movement in the arts that aims to depart
significantly from classical and traditional
forms.
MODERNITY:
A way of thinking or being that is
particularly modern.
MONOGRAPH:
A detailed study, usually a book or
exhibition catalogue, on a single artist.
MUSE:
Source of inspiration for a creative person
such as a writer or artist - typically female.
MYTHOLOGICAL:
relating to, based on or appearing in
myths, usually of ancient Greek or Roman
origin. The term can be used to mean
something that is made up or based on
a story or the imagination as opposed to
documented fact.
NORTHERN RENAISSANCE:
The Northern Renaissance is a period in
art history roughly from 1430 to 1580. In art
terms the ‘north’ could mean anywhere in
Europe but outside of Italy. The Northern
Renaissance was mainly based in the
Netherlands and Germany and dealt
with breakthroughs in oil painting and
printmaking.
OLD MASTERS:
Great artist of former times, usually
European between 1300-1700.
PAGANISM:
a broad term typically pertaining to
indigenous and historical religious
traditions, and primarily those of cultures
known to the classical world, as opposed
to Christian society.
PANEL:
Material support to paint on normally made
of wood or metal.
GLOSSARY
Image 1
Édouard Manet
Bar at the Folies-Bergères
1881-82
Oil on panel
96 x 130 cm
2
Image 2 (detail)
Charles Joseph Natoire
Life Class at the
Royal Academy of Painting
and Sculpture
1746
Pen and black ink, grey wash
and watercolour,
45.3 x 32.2 cm
04/03/2015 10:44:43
3
PARTIALLY DRAPED:
The model would be partly covered with
cloth or drapery to preserve the model’s
modesty.
PATINA:
A thin greenish layer, usually basic copper
sulfate, that forms on copper or copper
alloys, such as bronze, as a result of natural
corrosion or chemical treatment.
PATRIARCHY:
A social system in which the father or
oldest male has control and authority over
the family group, and by extension, one
or more men will exert control over the
community as a whole.
PATRON:
a person who gives financial or other
support to a person, organisation, cause or
activity. In art historical writing the term is
frequently used to describe the person who
commissioned a specific work, or employed
an artist on a regular basis.
PHYSIOGNOMY:
a person’s facial features or expression,
especially when regarded as indicative of
character or social origin.
PIGMENT:
A dry powder that provides the colour for
painting.
POINTILISM:
a style of painting in France in the
nineteenth century which was created out
of small spots of pure colour, which were
intended to coalesce into an unblemished
image when seen from a specified distance.
POST-IMPRESSIONIST:
a term coined by Roger Fry in 1910 to
describe artists such as Cézanne, Van
Gogh and Gauguin. Literally meaning ‘after
Impressionism’, Post-Impressionist painting
uses some of the ideas invented by the
Impressionists but moves on significantly
in terms of style, being more interested in
the qualities of form and colour than in the
accurate representation of subjects.
PRE-RAPHAELITE:
A society of young artists, founded in
London in 1848, who were opposed to
the aesthetic rules and conventions of the
Royal Academy.
PUTTI:
Putti are often found in Renaissance
paintings and are angels or cherubs.
They often are shown as small, naked
boys/ babies with wings.
France. The style is characterised by its
asymmetry and naturalism and often
features shell-like and watery forms.
ROMANTICISM:
A cultural and intellectual tendency that
emerged in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries in art and literature.
Essentially, Romanticism involved placing
intuition and emotion before reason; a
belief that there are important areas of
experience ignored by the rational mind
and a belief in the general importance
of the individual, the personal and the
subjective.
SITTER:
A person who sits for a portrait.
THE GAZE:
Intense look from a person; a term
popularised by psychologist Jacques Lacan
for the anxious state that comes with the
awareness that one can be viewed.
TYPE:
a person or thing exemplifying the ideal or
defining characteristics of something – a
generalised understanding based on group
characteristics rather than a specific person.
ROCOCO:
A decorative style of the early to
mid-eighteenth century, mainly influencing
the ornamental arts in Europe, especially
04/03/2015 10:44:45
9: IMAGE CD
Including a list of the images
This CD is a compilation of key images
from The Courtauld Gallery’s collection
and the exhibition GOYA: THE WITCHES
AND OLD WOMEN ALBUM related to the
theme ‘Representing Women’.
The Power Point presentation included in
the CD aims to contextualise the images
and relate them to one another. All the
images (and an accompanying image
list) are also included individually in the
‘images’ folder.
FURTHER DETAILS:
• All images can then be copied or
downloaded:
• PC users: right-click on the image
and select ‘Save Target As…’
Then choose the location to which
you want to save the image.
• Mac users: control-click on the image
and select ‘Save Image As…’ Then choose
the location at which you want to save the
image.
THE CONTENTS OF THIS CD ARE FOR
EDUCATION PURPOSES ONLY:
Please refer to the copyright statement for
reproduction rights.
IMAGE CD COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
1. The images contained on the Teaching
Resource CD are for educational purposes
only. They should never be used for
commercial or publishing purposes, be
sold or otherwise disposed of, reproduced
or exhibited in any form or manner
(including any exhibition by means of
a television broadcast or on the World
Wide Web [Internet]) without the express
permission of the copyright holder,
The Courtauld Gallery, London.
2. Images should not be manipulated,
cropped or altered.
3. The copyright in all works of art used
in this resource remains vested with The
Courtauld Gallery, London. All rights and
permissions granted by The Courtauld
Gallery and The Courtauld Institute of Art
are non-transferable to third parties unless
contractually agreed beforehand.
Please caption all our images with
‘© The Courtauld Gallery, London’.
4. Staff and students are welcome to
download and print out images, in order
to illustrate research and coursework
(such as essays and presentations).
Digital images may be stored on academic
intranet databases (private/internal
computer system).
5. As a matter of courtesy, please always
contact relevant lenders/artists for images
to be reproduced in the public domain.
For a broader use of our images (internal
short run publications or brochures for
example), you will need to contact
The Courtauld Gallery for permission.
Please contact us at: Courtauld Images,
The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset
House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN.
[email protected],
Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 2879.
Image 3 (detail)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Elizabeth Siddal seated at an easel, painting
c.1854-55
Graphite on paper, 17.7 x 11.8 cm
All digital images
© The Samuel Courtauld Trust,
The Courtauld Gallery, London
unless otherwise stated.
To download a pdf of this teachers
resource please visit www.courtauld.ac.uk/
publicprogrammes/onlinelearning
04/03/2015 10:44:45
TEACHERS’ RESOURCE
REPRESENTING WOMEN
First Edition
Teachers’ resources are free to teachers,
lecturers and other education and learning
professionals. To be used for education
purposes only. Any redistribution or
reproduction of any materials herein is
strictly prohibited.
Sarah Green
Programme Manager - Gallery Learning
Courtauld Institute of Art
Somerset House, Strand
LONDON, WC2R 0RN
0207 848 2705
[email protected]
All details correct at time of going to press
04/03/2015 10:44:45

`Women in Art` Teachers` Resource

Transcription

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