Women were never supposed to work in the art field, because that was a man’s job. However, artists like Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun and Paula Modersohn-Becker did not let this predetermination stop them from achieving their dreams. Each of them painted a self portrait of themselves, and even though they were painted in different ways, the paintings have similar meanings.
Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun was a French neoclassic painter in the 1700’s. In her work, “Self Portrait in a Straw Hat”, the painter used oil on canvas. This painting was completed in 1782. Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun wanted to illustrate in her painting that she was a confident, successful woman in this time period. She made herself seem impressively self-assured through
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The artist painted with a French modernistic style mixed with abstraction. Her work, “Self Portrait with an Amber Necklace”, was painted in 1907. She was heavily influenced by Paul Gauguin as seen in this painting. Just like Vigee-Lebrun, Modersohn-Becker also knew she wanted to be an artist from a young age. However, she also went to school to be a teacher. For Self Portrait with an Amber Necklace, she also used oil on canvas for this work. She uses color for expression, not representation. Modersohn-Becker has a unique style of painting, as she scratches texture into the paint after it is dry. This work does not feature much movement or symmetry. She looks very serene and one with nature. The amber in the necklace reflects happiness and gives clarity to the mind. Perhaps she made the necklace amber to bring clarity to those who only see the female body as sexual symbol and for them to see it as just purely human nature. There is a lot of emotion in the subject’s eyes but whatever she is feeling remains mysterious. Paula Modersohn-Becker painted herself amongst vines and flowers, almost as if she was portraying herself like Mother Nature. She asserted her confidence and femininity through this painting, as it was very rare for a nude self portrait. This is because women were still considered the weaker sex and had limited rights, including the inability to vote, during this time.
Both of these pieces and the artists are influential
Contextual Theory: This painting depicts a portrait of life during the late 1800’s. The women’s clothing and hair style represent that era. Gorgeous landscape and a leisurely moment are captured by the artist in this work of
Through the analysis of Thérésia Cabarus’s portrait, Amy Freund attempts to examine Cabarus’s failure to “create a feminine version of political agency through portraiture” in order to provide insight into the unfulfilled promises of female citizenship during the French Revolution. She asserts that, through the use of a combination of imagery associated with revolutionary femininity, including the emphasis on the sitter’s physical passivity and sentimental attachments, and conventions usually associated with male portraiture, Cabarrus and Laneuville, the painter, attempted to present her portrait as an argument for women to be granted an active role in revolutionary politics. Freund suggests that the portrait failed to achieve its goals because it recalled the Terror and the disunity of France in addition to invoking the “anxiety surrounding the increased visibility of women in post-Thermidorean social life and visual representation.” Because of its relative failure, Freund considers Cabarrus’s portrait a symbol of the “possibilities and limitations of female agency in Revolutionary portraiture and politics” as well as a shift in portraiture; as she remarks, “portraiture after 1789 shouldered the burdens formerly borne by history
The painting depicts two figures, the one of a woman and of a man. The dominating central figure is the one of the woman. We see her profile as she looks to the left. Her hands are crossed in a graceful manner. She has blonde hair and her figure is lit by what seems to be natur...
The face of the portrait is detailed, and more naturally painted than the rest of the composition. However, the left iris exceeds her eye and extends past the normal outline. The viewer can see every single brush stroke resulting in a unique approach to the capturing human emotion. The streaky texture combines with the smoothness flow of the artist’s hand creating contrast between the hair and the face. The woman’s hair is painted with thick and chunky globs of paint. The viewer can physically see the paint rising from the canvas and flowing into the movement of the waves of hair. Throughout the hair as well as the rest of the portrait Neel abandons basic painting studies and doesn’t clean her brush before applying the next color. Because of the deliberate choice to entangle the colors on the brush it creates a new muddy palate skewed throughout the canvas. Moving from the thick waves of hair, Neel abandons the thick painting style of the physical portrait and moves to a looser more abstract technique to paint the background. Despite the lack of linear perspective, Neel uses a dry brush technique for the colorful streaks in the background creating a messy illusion of a wall and a sense of space. The painting is not clean, precise, or complete; there are intentional empty spaces, allowing the canvas to pear through wide places in the portrait. Again, Neel abandons
There was no serious effort to train women for professional careers in art, because of the enormous social pressure for women to become homemakers. The very fact that women in general were not given enough opportunities is demonstrated by what Marie Bracquemond, a student of the famous artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, said in 1860, “The severity of Monsieur Ingres frightened me… because he doubted the courage and perseverance of a woman in the field of painting… He would assign to them only the painting of flowers, of fruits, of still life’s, portraits and genre scenes.”
In the University Of Arizona Museum Of Art, the Pfeiffer Gallery is displaying many art pieces of oil on canvas paintings. These paintings are mostly portraits of people, both famous and not. They are painted by a variety of artists of European decent and American decent between the mid 1700’s and the early 1900’s. The painting by Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun caught my eye and drew me in to look closely at its composition.
Both are side portraits of middle aged women which looks as if they are in deep thought or feelings. In Neilly’s, 24x36 palette knife oil painted portrait, the colors and type of paint she chose is easily determined by the marks on the woman’s face. The color choices that were chose are vibrant and bring life to the piece. Cool colors
The composition of the painting takes place with the square of the canvas. The square is approximately 5' x 5'. A black frame surrounding the painting protrudes approximately 4" off the canvas. There is a 1" inlay between the canvas and frame. From this square, Reinhardt breaks the composition into six equal squares in three even rows. Texture is no where to be found in the painting. No visual indication of the artist's brush stroke is present. No varnished glare is given off by the piece. The entire work, including the frame, is completely matte. The squares take up the entire canvas in a checkerboard type arrangement. Each square is a slightly different shade of blue-black. It almost becomes impossible to see the difference between each square. The middle squares in the top and bottom rows shift more towards blue than the rest of the squares. The division of these middle squares become more obvious than the others. When the painting is looked at from a distance, it is almost impossible to see any of the squares at all. When looking from a far, all a viewer can see is a blackish blue canvas. As you stare longer into the painting, a halo begins to form around the corners of the canvas, creating a circle inside the square. Once you look away from the canvas, the circle is gone. With this observation in mind, we could say that the painting most definitely relies on the viewer. A viewer is required to look at the piece for its full affect. We could say that the squares in the painting are self-contained.
Aristotle once claimed that, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Artists, such as Louise-Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun and Mary Cassatt, captured not only the way things physically appeared on the outside, but also the emotions that were transpiring on the inside. A part no always visible to the viewer. While both artists, Le Brun and Cassatt, worked within the perimeters of their artistic cultures --the 18th century in which female artists were excluded and the 19th century, in which women were artistically limited-- they were able to capture the loving relationship between mother and child, but in works such as Marie Antoinette and Her Children and Mother Nursing her Child 1898,
She is set in a very dark space but there is a sense of light being casted from the left side, which illuminates her face. She has a very soft complexion, which is due to Vermeer’s artistic style, and is gazing at the viewer from slightly over her shoulder. She appears very simple and contains such a delicate beauty, leaving the viewer even more intrigued by Vermeer’s mysterious
In a formal theory, it looks like he used acrylic, oilstick, spray enamel, and metal paint on canvas (Embuscado). It looks like the same techniques he used for graffiti and there are two subjects that almost have the same facing in direction. It almost look like it was done without thinking, but it actually connects each other. The two beings seem to have inverted coloring of each other as the one with teeth is yellow with red outline and the other is red with yellow outline. From a contextual theory, it tells nothing much about the time the painting was made.
Furthermore, there are these aged-old male artists, like George Baselitz who ridicule women of painting- believing that “women don’t paint very well.” If we trace back to the history of fine arts and women, we can see that the problem female artists face today with exposure in the art industry, lies within in roots. It has only been a couple of centuries, but I believe that the art world is slowly changing and evolving for the better for women artists. Still, female artists can’t help but come across male artist like George Baselitz, who honestly believe females can’t paint as well as
This fact plays a crucial role in the mood of the play. If the reader understands history, they also understand that women did not really amount to any importance, they were perceived more as property.
Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun's unique painting "Julie Le Brun with a Mirror" forms many topics to discuss. The topics included are basic information of the artist, her art style(s), the events taken in the year the portrait of her daughter was painted, as well as my own opinion. She has created over 600 portraits and landscaping pictures, coming very far with her paintings, becoming rich, and one of the best, well-known female artists of the 18th century. Today, some of her works can be found in famous museums across Europe and the US.
The Necklace also displays distinctive realism in the use of socioeconomic influences which are essential to the plot. The major conflict in the story would be absent and the theme would not be obtainable without Mathilde Loisel’s insecurity about her own socioeconomic reputation. An example of Loisel’s self-deprivation nature is presented when she realizes she does not have a necklace, she says “I shall look absolutely no one. I would almost rather not go to the party” (Maupassant, sec. 3). Another example of the self-conflict caused by social pressure is Loisel’s immediate attempt to replace the necklace and her reluctance to speak to her friend Madame Forestier about the necklace for ten whole years. If she were not conflicted by societal pressures she might have avoided the whole situation altogether. The Necklace establishes a realistic difference in value between the necklaces and proposed clothing. Her husband proposes flowers which were valued 10 franks so in any case if she had chosen the flowers there would have been an insignificant economic loss. Her decision not to tell her friend about the necklace ends up costing her seven times the worth of the original. The roses symbolize the simpler things in life to the theme of the story. Mathilde Loisel’s withered appearance at the end