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Biography of Berthe Morisot
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Women have always been seen as great mothers and stupendous wives, capable of taking care of their kids, keeping the house clean and organized, and maintaining their husbands happy. Society has, for a long time, seen men as superior, as the ones with the knowledge and experience to be successful and the ones that go out to bars on Tuesday nights by themselves. Throughout the years, women have fought to be seen as smart and responsible and more than capable to even be CEO’s in a competitive world full of men. A pair of women that challenged this assumption a long time ago in their own ways are Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. Although the public might see them as similar artists because they were both part of the Impressionist movement, Berthe …show more content…
“In spite of their economic status, Morisot and Cassatt had many obstacles to overcome in establishing themselves as artists, and they experienced more discouragement than anyone would be likely to guess from looking at their works. Not surprisingly, they concentrated on familiar, domestic, themes. ” (Francis E. Hyslop) Interestingly enough, at a quick glance their paintings can look the same, but their representation of women and the message they try to convey is remarkably contrasting. Mary Cassatt focused on the “real” definition of woman. She wanted her audience to view women as strong and independent human beings who are completely capable of pursuing anything they set their mind too. Mary Cassatt made her audience think, she wanted to make a quiet scandal, she wanted to speak through her figures. In Mary Cassatt’s The loge (1882), she illustrates two elegantly dressed women enjoying a night at the theatre. Usually, men are the ones that would go out without their wives and enjoy a casual or elegant social scene while women socialize in their houses drinking tea and watching their kids play. “Cassatt’s new images include representations of women as independent public people; women pursuing interests which are not directed toward the needs of others; and women who enjoy the company of other women.” (Yeh) This painting illustrates how women are more than capable to socialize in a public …show more content…
She did not want people to feel uncomfortable or displeased with her art, she wanted them to feel content, orderly, and natural. Berthe Morisot’s The Dress Making Lesson; Le lecon De Couture (1884), depicts a mother teaching her child how to sow. “Morisot’s representation of women’s lives in the suburb of Passy play their part in establishing and maintaining the meanings of such social systems” (Adler). Teaching a child to sow is living within the society’s boundaries of what women are supposed to do and know, and that is exactly what Morisot wanted to portray. Morisot maintained her motherhood paintings very traditional and eye
An influential American printmaker and painter as she was known for impressionist style in the 1880s, which reflected her ideas of the modern women and created artwork that displayed the maternal embrace between women and children; Mary Cassatt was truly the renowned artist in the 19th century. Cassatt exhibited her work regularly in Pennsylvania where she was born and raised in 1844. However, she spent most of her life in France where she was discovered by her mentor Edgar Degas who was the very person that gave her the opportunity that soon made one of the only American female Impressionist in Paris. An exhibition of Japanese woodblock Cassatt attends in Paris inspired her as she took upon creating a piece called, “Maternal Caress” (1890-91), a print of mother captured in a tender moment where she caress her child in an experimental dry-point etching by the same artist who never bared a child her entire life. Cassatt began to specialize in the portrayal of children with mother and was considered to be one of the greatest interpreters in the late 1800s.
The painting depicts a mother and her four children, who are all leaning on her as she looks down solemnly, her tired, despondent expression suggests she felt trapped in her roles as being a mother and a wife. The woman and her children are clearly the focal point of the artwork as the bright colours used to paint them stand out impeccably against the dull, lifeless colours of the background. This painting appears to be centred around the ideology that women are home-keepers, whose main role is to satisfy and assist her husband while simultaneously minding the children and keeping the home tidy and ready for his return. The social consequences of this artwork could have been that the woman could have been berated for not taking pleasure out of being a mother and raising her children, as a woman should. She could have been made redundant as her husband may have felt as though she is no longer useful if she couldn’t adequately adhere to her roles as a mother and a
Prior to the 20th century, female artists were the minority members of the art world (Montfort). They lacked formal training and therefore were not taken seriously. If they did paint, it was generally assumed they had a relative who was a relatively well known male painter. Women usually worked with still lifes and miniatures which were the “lowest” in the hierarchy of genres, bible scenes, history, and mythological paintings being at the top (Montfort). To be able to paint the more respected genres, one had to have experience studying anatomy and drawing the male nude, both activities considered t...
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. "Do Women Need The Renaissance?" Gender & History 20.3 (2008): 539-557. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society 3rd ed. (NY: Thames & Hudson world of art, 2002), 153-160.
McKay’s uses the art of dance and fashion to allure the men and women. He chose to have the woman dancing sensually and half clothed, to capture everyone’s attention. By having the woman portrayed this way, it signifies her worth. Similarly, Rossetti uses art to objectify women, however, she uses the art of painting and fashion as well. “In an Artist’s Studio”, he objectifies the woman by painting her the way he sees her, not the way she actually is; In doing this, it is symbolizing that woman are controlled.
In “Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book,” Elaine Showalter makes a compelling argument that “Edna Pontellier’s ‘unfocused yearning’ for an autonomous life is akin to Kate Chopin’s yearning to write works that go beyond female plots and feminine endings” (204). Urging her reader to read The Awakening “in the context of literary tradition,” Showalter demonstrates the ways in which Chopin’s novel both builds upon and departs from the tradition of American women’s writing up to that point. Showalter begins with the antebellum novelists’ themes of women’s roles as mothers—especially the importance of the mother-daughter relationship—and women’s attachments with one another and then moves to the local colorists of the post-Civil War who claimed male and female models but who wrote that motherhood was not a suitable partner for the true artist. According to these women writers, a woman had to choose to be either an artist or a wife and mother; one negatively affected the other. The literary history then delves...
In her article, Fuller explains how the current society constricts women’s rights in an effort to show the inequalities between the men and women. For instance, she feels that “such woman as these, rich in genius, of most tender sympathies, and capable of high virtue, and a chastened harmony, ought not find themselves in a place so narrow” (Fuller 741). Margaret Fuller explains that all women, even those with “rich genius,” find themselves at a disadvantage because of the society’s inequality. She also feels that the woman are just as “capable of high virtue” as the men, and do not deserve to be in “a place so narrow.” In addition, Fuller is aware that the women can “find their way to purer air, but the world will not take off the brand it has set upon them” (741). Margaret Fuller uses this passage to explain that it possible for women to have their ideas become public, but it would b...
During the Victorian Era, society had idealized expectations that all members of their culture were supposedly striving to accomplish. These conditions were partially a result of the development of middle class practices during the “industrial revolution… [which moved] men outside the home… [into] the harsh business and industrial world, [while] women were left in the relatively unvarying and sheltered environments of their homes” (Brannon 161). This division of genders created the ‘Doctrine of Two Spheres’ where men were active in the public Sphere of Influence, and women were limited to the domestic private Sphere of Influence. Both genders endured considerable pressure to conform to the idealized status of becoming either a masculine ‘English Gentleman’ or a feminine ‘True Woman’. The characteristics required women to be “passive, dependent, pure, refined, and delicate; [while] men were active, independent, coarse …strong [and intelligent]” (Brannon 162). Many children's novels utilized these gendere...
Adèle Ratignolle uses art to beautify her home. Madame Ratignolle represents the ideal mother-woman (Bloom 119). Her chief concerns and interests are for her husband and children. She was society’s model of a woman’s role. Madame Ratignolle’s purpose for playing the pia...
While Madame Ratignolle, Madamoiselle Reisz and Edna are very different characters, all of them are unable to reach their potentials. Madame Ratignolle is too busy being the perfect Louisiana woman that she no identity of her own; her only purpose in life is to care for her husband and children. Madamoiselle Reisz is so defiant and stubborn that she has isolated herself from society and anyone she could share her art with. Edna has the opportunity to rise above society’s expectations of females, but she is too weak to fight this battle and ultimately gives up. While these three characters depict different ideas of what it truly means to be a woman and what women’s role in society should be, none of them can reach their full individual potential.
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,
“There is a double standard here that shapes our perceptions of men and women in ways that support patriarchy as a system. What is culturally valued is associated with masculinity and maleness and what is devalued is associated with femininity and femaleness, regardless of the reality of men’s and women’s lives”,( Johnson 64). In the movie Mona Lisa Smile, Betty’s mother was pressurizing Betty to make her husband read a poem at the wedding not just to act like he enjoyed the marriage but mainly because it was a tradition for men. When Betty said she didn’t care about it, her mother refused and still insisted that she should do it. Women are looked down upon when it comes to the assignment of gender roles and this is because of labels that the society has placed on the female gender. In a home, the father is always the head of the home, providing food and clothing for every family member but there are some women who like to be independent and would also love to work and make money and cater for the family. In the 19th century, women were told they were home makers and were not allowed to endeavor further in higher educational studies. Wellesley College was a college built to raise future wives and not future leaders meaning that society had already placed women below the ladder without any intention or thoughts of them climbing back
In 1953, a time when women's roles were rigidly defined, free-spirited, novice art history professor Katherine Watson inspired her arrogant, newly married college student Betty Warren to rebel from the belief that- success of a woman is measured by 'how well’ she marries. Watson believed that women should look beyond the roles that they are forced upon by society, since for the most part, the students all seem to be biding their time, waiting to find the right man to marry. “I thought that I was headed to a place that would turn out tomorrow's leaders, not their wives,” said Watson. Unfortunately, Betty’s marriage hits rock bottom when she finds out that her dear husband is a cheat. As a result, Watson encourage her to strive for a more enlightened future, Watson inspires Betty to look beyond the image of what is, and consider the possibilities of what could be--contrary to popular belief. This led Betty to file for divorce as she became fed up with trying to please her husband and unreasonable family, but herself. Like Watson, she wanted to live by her own terms that are free of unrealistic expectations, “My teacher, Katherine Watson lived by her own definition...I dedicate this my last editorial to an extraordinary woman who lived by an example and compelled us all to see the world through new eyes.” If it wasn’t for Watson, will Betty find the true courage within herself to look beyond-to be different; to be unique in a world full of mimics? Therefore, Katherine Watson’s incomparable character inspired Betty to seek for liberty from a patriarchal society that chains women’s individual freedom and
The movie, “Mona Lisa Smile” is an inspirational film that explores life through feminism, marriage, and education lead by a modernist teacher at the end of a traditional era. It begins by introducing the lead character, Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), a liberal-minded novice professor from California, who lands a job in the art history department at a snobbish, all-girl college, called Wellesley, in the fall of 1953. Despite warnings from her boyfriend Paul that a Boston Brahmin environment was out of her element, Katherine was thrilled at the prospect of educating some of the brightest young women in the country however, her image of Wellesley quickly fizzles after her first day of class, in which, was more like a baptism by fire. Her smug students flaunted their exhaustive knowledge of the text and humiliated her in front of a supervisor. However, Katherine, determined not to buckle under pressure, departs from the syllabus in order to regain the upper hand. She quickly challenged the girls’ idea of what constituted art and exposed them to modern artist not endorsed by the school board. She dared them to think for themselves, and explore outside of their traditional views. This form of art was unacceptable by the students at first however, overtime Katherine penetrated her student’s distain and earned their esteem.