Day 296 - Depictions of women

May 5, 2022

Gallery 768 is home to paintings and sculptures that exemplify a popular subject for American artists at the turn of the 20th century: upper-class women, sometimes accompanied by their children, in well-appointed settings and at leisure (of which, given the plethora of domestic servants, they must have had a great deal). 

Many of the works are straightforward, but a couple strike  me as curious. One of these is a large oil painting (perhaps five feet wide and four feet high) by JohnWhite Alexander completed in 1895 and entitled "Repose." A single figure occupies most of the canvas: a woman in a white dress stretched out  on  a divan, her upper body resting on a rose-colored pillow.The placard  notes that Alexander lived in Paris during the 1890s and "achieved international success with his studies of female figures gracefully posed in elegant interiors."  It goes on to say that the work reflects the contemporary French taste for sensual images of women; certainly, the woman's face, with her hooded eyelids and open ruby lips, has a seductive expression. The white dress she wears is  hardly virginal; its sinuous curves are emphasized by the black V of the tie. which to me suggests legs spread apart and a more anatomical  V beneath.  The image seems at once refined and slightly prurient.

There's an obligatory Mary Cassatt painting of a mother and child, this one entitled "Young Mother Sewing."  Completed in 1900 and measuring perhaps 42 inches high and 36 inches wide, it appeals to the viewer's imagination in a different way,  suggesting an easy psychological connection between the seated "mother," who attentively stitches a filmy length of fabric, and the little girl, who leans against her lap and looks out at the viewer. Calming tones of aqua and green predominate; the blueish undertones of the girl's white dress unite her visually to the aqua cloth her mother is holding. The palette is enlivened by the woman's black and white striped dress, the rosy complexions of the figures, and the reddish commode in the background with its vase of melon-colored flowers; the overall impression, though, is one of serenity and maternal affection.  But we see what we want to see. According to the placard, both the woman and the child were models hired to play the roles of mother and child.