Women in Paintings

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the way women were represented in paintings of the period 1875-1915. It shows that women were revealed in one of three ways; they are either nudes or semi-nudes, working women (urban and rural) in relaxed or revealing clothing, or fashionable women (respectable or otherwise) whose adherence to the strange costume of the bourgeoisie contorts and reveals their bodies in bizarre ways. The writer discusses how the implications of bourgeois dress for women in this period are manifold and painters' various approaches to costumed women bring out the range of meanings in this form of attire.

From the Paper:

"Leaving aside the complex questions of men's direct dominance in fashion choices, the fashionable female figure of the nineteenth century possessed various attributes that intensified by the mid-1870s. In the period when crinolines dominated and into the 1860s the fetishistic emphasis of male voyeurs was "decidedly on the feet [but] by the mid-70s it moved with even greater decisiveness to the corset" and this fashion was to prevail until the advent of World War I (Kunzle 135). As the corset's importance increased so dramatically waists were lengthened, skirts tightened, and the hip-contour was defined and revealed as never before. The French magazine La Vie Parisienne offered guidance to the women who were subjecting themselves to the new fashion (and no little delight for the male voyeur whose tastes could be formed by the journal as much as his wife's or mistress' were). The magazine promoted the new fashion and, in hyperbolic fashion-magazine language, raised the corset-ire to the dignity of a sculptor."

More papers on Women in Paintings:

• Analytical Essay # 127064 : "Monet's "Women in the Garden"
• Essay # 137435 : "An Analysis of Class Representation of 19th Century Women in the Victorian Portrait "
• Comparison Essay # 108445 : "Women in Art"

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