General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHello, DU! The Friday Afternoon Challenge returns with: Feminine Beauty in Portraits!
Perhaps you know these works and their creators?*
1.
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2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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6.
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*with credit and deep appreciation for the late Kenneth Clarks inspiring Feminine Beauty.
Sarah Ibarruri
(21,043 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)What led you to LeBrun?
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)That wasn't too hard to find with some general searches.
I'm glad you didn't balk at posting this Challenge. This is a good one!
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)which is a lovely analysis of feminine beauty in art going back to ancient times and I branched out from there....not one of the examples he showed (and there were many) actually wound up in this Challenge...I did my own thing...but the inspiration was originally from him. And I thought perhaps folks here would find, in researching to get the answers to the Challenge, that they just loved what they say and would start their own art journey...it is my hope, at least...
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)I started on the Challenges as a complete art dunce. Thanks to you and your Challenges, I've learned a few things along the way. And I learn more every week.
Your Challenges are an invaluable addition to GD.
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)Warpy
(111,443 posts)I recognized it immediately. Unlike many of the portraits done by men, you expect this one to pop free of the canvas and speak to you. It's an incredibly striking painting.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)Pretzel_Warrior
(8,361 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)about the same era...different country, however...
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)...so there's no way it could be Klimt Eastwood. Duh!
BainsBane
(53,127 posts)and I love 6. It's Impressionist but doesn't look familiar.
I'm guessing 1 is a German painter. Definitely some Italians in their, per always.
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)the artist of #6 was greatly influenced by Impressionism. The title is an object in the painting...
BainsBane
(53,127 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)good for her!
Speaking of 1, I included it only because it was cropped. I dislike white artists conceptualization of black women as sex objects and the cropping makes it more acceptable. However, having said that, it is not the truth of the painting, which sexualizes a black woman. As an art lover, I must accept the painting on its own terms and that means politically as well as everything else about it. This is what is called "the bloody crossroads of politics and art." At the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th, centuries there was "orientalism," sexualization of women as captives of harems. Matisse is one of those artists and many others as well. It was evergreen as a topic of artists and had a good run for quite a while.
BainsBane
(53,127 posts)exoticizing slavery more generally. There are two European travelers who created images of slaves in Brazil and that widely used by historians: Jean Baptiste Debret and Johan Mortiz Rugendas.
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)Number23
(24,544 posts)I love all of these pics but that one is special to me. (Obviously!) Number 3 is a close second
However, having said that, it is not the truth of the painting, which sexualizes a black woman.
Is it a nude in its original form?
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)You can also google the artist and title for more info on this work.
Number23
(24,544 posts)Thanks!!
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)someone pulled it down deliberately to reveal her as a sexual object that no amount of correct clothing could possibly remedy. The Smalls paper that was quoted here in toto discusses the issue in a more scholarly fashion than I could muster! It quotes feminist theory about the sexualization of black female subjects done by white artists of the day...
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/romney-emma-hart-as-circe-n05591/text-summary
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)Emma certainly entranced poor Romney...he was obsessed with her...
secondvariety
(1,245 posts)but I can understand the obsession. She's stunning.
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)So I had to find it the hard way.
longship
(40,416 posts)#2 looks like something from revolutionary France. I may be crazy, though. It just has that look.
My ignorance triumphs here.
Always welcome to see the Friday Afternoon Challenge. I am a fan.
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)BainsBane
(53,127 posts)Hangs in the Louvre.
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/Slavery-is-a-Woman.html
Divernan
(15,480 posts)Although we do not know whether or to what extent Benoist partook in the volatile debates on slavery and gender current during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in France, her painting may be seen as a voice of protest, however small, in the discourse over human bondage. With the portrait, the artist responded to early nineteenth-century French racialism and the less-than-desirable treatment of women by playing upon the popular analogy of women and slaves. The portrait is interesting not just in its aesthetic presentation and historical context, but in its potential for new critical readings. In the following pages, I want to consider Benoist's portrait as a work far more nuanced and layered in signification around race, gender, and class issues than previous assessments of the work have led us to believe.3 I would like to present a reading of the painting based upon a consideration of its racialized and gendered subject matter and style, as well as the gender and social class status of the artist, the historical circumstance surrounding the work's creation, and the multi-directional dynamics of "race" and visuality communicated through the portrait. To this end, my approach will deviate at times from standard modes of art-historical inquiry and venture into a critical evaluation of the painting as a constructed image of "race" and gender. Before doing so, however, certain biographical and historical bits of information must be revealed that inform my unconventional interpretation of the painting.
Slavery is a Woman: "Race," Gender, and Visuality in Marie Benoist's Portrait d'une négresse (1800)
by James Smalls
phantom
click to see larger image
Fig. 1 Marie-Guilhelmine Benoist, Portrait d'une négresse, 1800, oil on canvas, Paris, Musée du Louvre
Hanging on one wall of the Musée du Louvre, in the company of the gargantuan machines by Jacques-Louis David, Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, and others, is an exquisitely crafted and modestly sized painting of a black woman. She is shown seated, half-draped, with her right breast bared to the viewer. She sports an intricately wrapped and crisply laundered headdress that appears similar in fabric to the garment she gathers closely against her body just below her breasts. She stares out at the viewer with an enigmatic expression. Although there are no background details that indicate precisely where the sitter is placed, certain details of her physical surroundingsnamely, the ancien régime chair and luxurious cloth that drapes both it and hersuggest that she is in a well-to-do domestic space.
Portrait d'une négresse (fig. 1) was painted in 1800 by Marie-Guilhelmine Benoist (born Marie-Guillemine Leroulx-Delaville) (1768-1826), a woman of aristocratic lineage who belonged to a small elite circle of professional women painters that included, among others, Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818), Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1755-1842), Marguerite Gérard (1771-1837), Angélique Mongez (1775-1855), and Adélaide Labille-Guiard (1749-1803).1 As had been the case with most women artists working at the time, Benoist fit the middle and upper class ideal of "womanhood" in her conforming to the social expectations of women to marry, raise children, and forego a career."2
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)I can't wait to read James Smalls piece on it!
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)and congrats! You got it! Hooray!
BainsBane
(53,127 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)Aerows
(39,961 posts)I only know it because a DUer has it as their avatar, and I looked it up a while back.
Number23
(24,544 posts)That it couldn't just be a painting of a woman who happens to be black. That it has to be a racial statement of some sort.
Edit: But reading about that painting led me to this one
Which is beautiful but heartbreaking. I like the Portrait much much better.
Response to CTyankee (Original post)
LostOne4Ever This message was self-deleted by its author.
glowing
(12,233 posts)Thanks for posting these art threads.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)Dirty Socialist
(3,252 posts)Lord Nelson's mistress.
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)Dirty Socialist
(3,252 posts)niyad
(113,913 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)In #6 the title of the answer is in an object in the painting...
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)countryjake
(8,554 posts)In Tanagra (The Builders, New York), Childe Hassam painted an ambivalent image of modern life. At the turn of the twentieth century, the skyscraper symbolized all that was dynamic and powerful in America. Architects praised the new towers as symbols of mankind's reach for the heavens. But as the United States grew in power and prestige, the workers who provided the nation's muscle also seemed to threaten Hassam's orderly and prosperous world. The artist had won fame and fortune picturing New York for the delight of its moneyed class; the art, music, and fine manners surrounding this "blond Aryan girl" provided a buffer against the unruliness of America's immigrant society. If the skyscraper represents worldly ambition, the other vertical elements in the paintingthe lilies, the Hellenistic figurine, the panels of a beautiful oriental screensuggest a different kind of aspiration. But in 1918, the refined life this woman pursued in her elegant environment was already under attack by the reality of war and the clamor of a new century.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
I had another fine google experience in trying to discover this painting. When you hinted with "object" earlier, I tried woman holding statue, window with blooming garlic, screen with birds, bowl of flowers, yellow dress, window with city view, woman with view of city, and eventually ended up looking thru the works of Frederick Carl Frieseke. After giving up on him, just on a fluke, I clicked on a link of "people also search for" at Frieseke's page...Childe Hassam...and found this Tanagra immediately.
An interesting tidbit about this artist, his painting The Avenue in the Rain finished only one year earlier than Tanagra has been hanging in the White House since JFK was president.
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)The tanagra she holds is a symbol of feminine beauty, so it is a theme within a theme to me. She holds "beauty" in her hand and yet she is beauty as the subject. The definition of a tanagra is: The Tanagra figurines were a mass-produced, mold-cast and fired type of Greek terracotta figurines produced from the later fourth century BCE, primarily in Tanagra.
I love the symbolism enshrined in this painting...
countryjake
(8,554 posts)but I am just now enjoying my google of the word "tanagra".
Did you notice my update with the Flags painting? I was surprised to find that I'd already looked thru the works of Hassam, long ago, because of his work at the White House.
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)it was a bookmark I got in a mailing from the Smithsonian. I was stunned by her beauty and put it on my bulletin board so I could look at it often...
I love his flag paintings. and thanks for your update here!
countryjake
(8,554 posts)Easter Morning Portrait at a New York Window, by Frederick Childe Hassam, 1921
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)I looked high and low and six ways from Sunday for that sucker, with no luck.
That was a really tough one, and you got it.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)but an enjoyable time spent!
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)the hint is that they are BOTH from the same era of art...and it didn't last long...
seabeyond
(110,159 posts)Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)By Mary Kay Zuravleff | HUMANITIES, January/February 2013 | Volume 34, Number 1
...
The exhibition itself was prompted by (Walters Art Museum Curator Joaneath) Spicer putting a name to a face in a portrait in the Walterss Renaissance collection. Her sleuthing identified a child who was invisible for nearly a century and reappeared only to be misunderstood. Heres how the mystery unfolded. In 1902, Henry Walters purchased a painting created around 1539 by the Renaissance master Jacopo da Pontormo that was tentatively identified as Vittoria Colonna (14901547), a celebrated poet. As early as 1937, art conservators who X-rayed the subject were surprised to see something beneath the surface; lo and behold, cleaning the work restored a child to the older woman.
This revelation cast doubt on the sitter s identity. Vittoria Colonna, a close friend of Michelangelo, was known as a pious, childless, poet. In the marketplace, her portrait would have netted more than one of a woman and child, which was how this painting was listed in an 1814 inventory of art belonging to descendants of the Salviati family. By 1881, the same work, cataloged as Vittoria Colonna, appears in the collection of Don Marcello Massarenti, which suggests that an enterprising mid-nineteenth-century dealer masked the child to enhance his profit.
Some years ago, Walters curator Edward King recognized that Maria Salviati was Pontormos real subject, but the fact that Maria had a son led him and others to see the child as a boy, namely Cosimo de Medici. As Cosimo later became duke of Florence, such a portrait would seem to hold its value; however, when Spicer looked at the painting, she didnt recognize Cosimo. Instead, she clearly saw a young girl, whose flowing dress and braided hairstyle could be seen in another Italian portrait of that era, namely Veroneses 1552 Portrait of Countess Livia da Porto Thiene and Her Daughter Deidamia, also in the Walters collection. In fact, scholarship soon determined that the so-called boy in the Pontormo portrait was Giulia de Medici, Maria Salviatis niece and ward.
Now, Spicer was hooked. Giulia was the daughter of Alessandro de Medici, himself widely believed to be the son of Pope Clement VII and an African slave. Alessandro was also the tyrannical duke of Florence until his assas- sination in 1537, whereupon Cosimo took over as duke, and Maria became Giulias guardian. Spicer sought out a painting of Alessandro believed to be a likeness rather than an idealized portrait, and she found one by Bronzino (Pontormos pupil), painted after 1553. Considered together, Pontormos and Bronzinos paintings show a child who shares Alessandros features, though not his skin color. Thus, the visual evidence supported the curators hunch, which was informed by scholarship, history, and closely looking at her subject. Giulia was no doubt painted over not because of her parentage, but to transform Maria into the more profitable Vittoria. Nonetheless, bringing the child back into the frame helped connect the dots back to her father, probably the most prominent Renaissance man of mixed race, and his mother, a freed slave who is known to us only as Simonetta, wife of a mule driver. With this discovery came the promise of others, and Spicer wanted to bring the research she was uncovering to the public for a conversation on racial identity.
...
http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/januaryfebruary/feature/faces-the-renaissance
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)In the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmigianino
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 1, 2014, 07:04 PM - Edit history (1)
(Based on solvers'replies, subject to correction by CTyankee.)1. Marie-Guilhelmine Benoist - Portrait d'une Négresse
2. Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun - Portrait of a Young Woman
3. George Romney - Lady Hamilton as Circe
4. Parmigianino - Pallas Athene
5. Jacopo da Pontormo - Portrait of Maria Salviate de Medici and Giulia de Medici
6. Childe Hassam - Tanagra (The Builders, New York)
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)countryjake
(8,554 posts)so that people will go "Huh?" and then get out their magnifying glasses and eventually discover the tiny little construction workers crawling around on that scaffolding out her window (which is what I had to do).
I found another of Hassam's paintings that seems to project the opposite feel that Tanagra gave to us, focusing on the actual building of the city rather than the cocoon of an apartment or everyday life continuing on amongst the reality of the change that was occurring. If there were a window in one of these buildings, I can imagine the beauty from Tanagra standing securely inside.
The Hovel and the Skyscraper, oil on canvas painting by Frederick Childe Hassam, 1904,
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:'The_Hovel_and_the_Skyscraper'_by_Frederick_Childe_Hassam,_1904.JPG
Another of Hassam's from his window series that I also really like:
The Table Garden, by Childe Hassam, 1910
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/childe-hassam/the-table-garden
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)I had seen the second but I welcome it back into my consciousness thanks to you!
Funny, I thought the Hassam would be one of the first ones in the Challenge to be guessed! His style is so unique and I thought lots of people knew about him.
You have added so much to our understanding of art! Thank you for adding these works...I am sincerely grateful...
on edit: I must add that I take a magifying glass with me to museums all the time! Art lovers do this! However, I have had to leave mine at the coat check because they are strictly forbidden in several musuems and you have to be careful with them. Museums don't like them at all because they fear damage due to light concentration on the actual painting. A guard sees you using one and uh, oh...
countryjake
(8,554 posts)back in the days when I was privileged to get guided-tours thru so much of the wondrous art of NYC. She delighted in taking me to see traveling Masters and exhibits when we'd visit, to watch the jaw of this uneducated country jake drop to the museum floor, as I gazed at works that most girls from the fields of Ohio could never hope to see.
Back to Tanagra, I think the thing that I like the most about it is the way that those birds on the screen seem to dissolve right into the woman, reflected on her dress, the table, even the bowl of flowers. I'd like to ask Childe Hassam if he was thinking that loss of habitat, the effects that development have on our wildlife and ourselves, is something that we should ponder.
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)He seemed to be preoccupied with the old world vs. the new. My best guess is that he felt that the old world concerns about beauty, signified by the butterflies, was being replaced by modern times, modern architecture, modern art (Picasso, Leger?) and beauty was left behind...I dunno myself...
Yours is a very decisive analysis of Hassam's work. You have added immeasurably to my understanding of this painting. I thank you for that...so much...
countryjake
(8,554 posts)was coming to the forefront in the minds of some of our nation's people, with Roosevelt setting aside bird refuges, the Audubon Society and National Park system being established...John Muir was busy trying to be heard. I don't know either, but after looking at so many of Hassam's striking landscapes, his wonderful garden and flower pictures, I guess that I'd just like to believe that he meant for those birds flying off the screen in Tanagra to also be a part of the beauty he wished could be protected and preserved.
I must thank YOU for presenting such an enjoyable challenge for us, tho I haven't yet even begun to investigate any of the others, aside from the Tanagra and Childe Hassam. I spent the whole time seeking it out yesterday, while the rest were being named, as I'd latched on to it right away since Impressionism is a form that I fool myself into pretending I know a little bit about, ha!
As I'd mentioned before, I was sidetracked during my search by a contemporary of Hassam, Frederick Carl Frieseke, and while many of that guy's paintings didn't really strike my fancy at all, I was happy to find one entitled "The Bird Cage" done in 1910. I'd never seen it or heard of it, before Friday afternoon, but I simply love it, now.
Here is the Frieseke painting which first took me off on a fun wild goose chase, yesterday...she fits right in with your theme of this week's treasure hunt:
The Window, by Frederick Carl Frieseke, oil on canvas, ca. 1915
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)But she usually just relied on her eyeglasses. Trouble was, one lens didn't do much for her. So it was common to see Mom with her glasses cocked on her head, one lens over an eye, the bad lens up at an angle on her forehead.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)But seriously, I can sure relate to that...my left eye is a thousand times worse than my right and I can hardly see to do a crossword anymore, without my handy-dandy antique wooden-handled magnifying glass (and a flashlight, at night or on rainy days).
My daughter's grandma ended up being diagnosed with MS, but before that, back in the '70s when the two of us spent whole days taking in a museum, jaunting around NYC, she started having awful troubles with her eyes. Our day-bag always had to include a humongous old magnifying glass and many a time she'd get the hairy-eyeball from one of the security guards, for getting too up-close and personal with a gazillion dollar work of art.
On the other hand, my own mother, who just died last year at the age of 95, could read the fine print on a friggin' coupon without any glasses, at all. While I was back in Ohio taking care of her, I had to hand her the stuff that was too tiny or too faint for me to see.
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)And my hat is off to you for finding that one--VERY impressive! I searched long and hard for the Hassam with no luck at all.
I should point out that I knew absolutely nothing about art before seeing CTyankee's Challenges. Now the mention of Hassam makes me think of someone looking out a window. And in searching for #4 and #5 the elongated fingers clued me to narrow my search to Mannerists--a term I never even HEARD of before encountering CTyankee's Friday threads.
This is a far cry from a structured, formal, organized study of art, but I find myself picking up things through a sort of osmosis. Suddenly I'm recognizing periods, styles, artists. I think I've fallen prey to CTyankee's devious designs.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)my man is yowling that we have to get into town before the snowstorm hits, so I must log off.
I shall return!
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)Not many problems in my SoCal area, just trying to stay dry--but the rain is welcome. It's mostly the burn areas that are having a hard time of it.
countryjake
(8,554 posts)temp hovering right below freezing...of course, they've predicted four to six inches for us tonight, but the ground isn't frozen so it'll just turn to mush by morning, if it ever sticks at all.
I'm so glad that rain is falling for you folk down in CA! We missed the news tonight, so I haven't yet checked to see what devastation is slipsliding thru the hills and canyons of your state today.
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)waitaminut...what am I planning to do exactly?
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)All this Librul art enrichment is rotting our brains when we should be out playing with gunz and displaying our Truknutz on our moran vehicles! Um...I mean motor vehicles. Darn, you really ARE infectious!
countryjake
(8,554 posts)and the "talons" gripping that baby's hand and thought...hmmm, here is one exceptional example of the art form CTyankee isn't normally too thrilled by. And I just learned about a year ago, right here, why she's lukewarm on most Mannerist work (which pretty much defines it) and that one of my all-time favorite paintings was done by one. I knew nothing whatsoever about Mannerists until I went off googling my dear El Greco, after CTyankee nudged me over that creepy cliff.
On the beauty in the Parmigianino, I right away thought her neck seemed a tad too long, along with weird bony fingers...also wondered if that might be a Mannerist so I googled "classical mannerist painting woman with breastplate" and Pallas Athene popped up immediately, the second hit.
I had just come back to type up my answer last night, right when you pegged it
and was going to include this:
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/microsites/theartofitaly/object.asp?object=405765&row=7&detail=about
and this, a detail you can click on with magnification where you can actually see that the cameo has "Athene" written on it:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_(Parmigianino)
(I don't know why I can't get this "dettaglio" link to post correctly, if I paste the direct link to the "detail" page it shows up with a stupid tongue smiley in it (because of a colon and capital P) and the main untranslated Italian page is showing as an incomplete link, so just copy the whole link into a new window, scroll down to the second pic (dettaglio) and go take a close-up peek at this gal's armor.)
panader0
(25,816 posts)Thanks CT
CTyankee
(63,926 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)Improve on the model, so to speak...
Beringia
(4,316 posts)Isadora