Paul Delaroche's Portrayal Of Women In The 19th Century

During the 15th-19th centuries, art was considered to be a subject of superiority and was generally created by men, for the pleasure of other men to view. Women, typically, were not allowed to view art, and were not allowed to create it unless it was in the sphere of her home, and in those cases their art was not to be shared.

Male artists were the only people who were producing art at that time, with women being their preferred subject matter. Because of this, it was easy to identify that the portrayal of women in these works was actually how men perceived women to be in reality. The art produced reflects the dominant patriarchal values formed in Europe in this era. The binary opposition evident in the artwork was a reflection of the male

bias of the artists. They depicted what it meant to them to be male and female in their art by portraying men as the superior figures and women as the inferior figures. It is evident throughout the art that women were typically absent unless being portrayed as ideal feminine figures and sexualised objects of desire. Women in art reflected the socially accepted standard of behaviour for women of that era and were very often seen as passive and inferior, useless unless they were bearing children or sexually arousing men.

The four main themes of these traditional European artworks included painting women as nature, women as mothers/wives/assistants, women as objects to be gazed at and women as femme fatales. In traditional European art, men and women were binary opposites. The stereotype common within traditional art was that women were weak and vulnerable, whereas men were strong and heroic.

This 19th century Paul Delaroche painting is an appropriate example of how women were commonly depicted as being wives and mothers, who are confined to the domestic sphere and live to serve to their husbands’ needs.

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

wife.

The theme of women as objects to be gazed at was evident in a majority of artworks that women appeared in in Traditional European art.

The male artists portrayed women as a projection of their ideal woman. The artist’s often overlooked the women’s identity’s and personalities in favour of creating aesthetically pleasing art for themselves and other superior males to view and enjoy. This was especially harmful because the more popular the art grew to be, the more often women were categorised as objects rather than people. The art contributed to gender construction by creating these gender roles and reinforcing that in all situations, men were superior to

women.

This theme is present in this artwork titled ‘Mars and Venus surprised by Vulcan’ by Alexandre Charles Guillemot. The story projected within this piece is that the woman pictured is committing an act of indecency by cheating on her husband with another man. She appears to be the focal image of the painting, the bright colours of her skin being the focal point for viewers. She is sitting seductively on a man’s lap, who is presumably not her husband, wearing nothing but a nude sheet on the lower half of her body. She is looking down with a neutral expression as her husband watches her with the other man, a disgruntled look surfacing his features. This woman is perceived as a seductress, who’s objective is to arouse these men sexually. The social consequences of this portrayal would have been dire as women were already seen as inferior, so any wrongdoings would have been greatly scrutinised. The woman would have been shamed for her unfaithful actions and being looked down upon by the public as a woman who cannot serve to her husband’s needs, which in that era was a woman’s sole purpose.

The way women were portrayed in these artworks is closely related to the actual treatment of women at that time. With women appearing as nothing more than child-bearers and objects for the male’s satisfaction, an obvious gender bias was especially evident. The harmful portrayal that women were not only inferior to men, as a result gender hierarchy, but also weak and always in need of a man to save them was greatly disempowering to women.

Deconstructing gender is critical in European Art to ensure that women are no longer portrayed in this light and to avoid the potentially damaging effect this generalisation has on not only men’s bias of women but also the women’s own self-concept.