Unsettling Femininity: Selections from the Frye Art Museum Collection

Unsettling Femininity: Selections from the Frye Art Museum Collection | September 21, 2019– May 30, 2021 Guest curated by Naomi Hume, Associate Profesesor of Art History at Seattle University

Introduction

From a young age, we all learn to interpret images of people—from advertisements and fashion spreads to works of art—based on the cultural context in which we live. Portrayals of women are particularly layered with associations that reveal broader social values and expectations. Beginning in the 1970s, feminist scholars and critics led a methodological shift toward a critical examination of representations of women in contemporary Western media. They contextualized the way these representations were conditioned by depictions of women in the tradition of European art, renderings governed by an unspoken assumption: men actively look, and women are objects to be looked at. Unsettling Femininity uses the specific lens of the Frye Art Museum’s Founding Collection to probe the politics of looking and question our habitual ways of viewing images of women.

The exhibition presents portrayals of mostly white women created during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, primarily by German and Austrian artists. This selection reflects a particular area of interest for the Museum’s founders, Charles and Emma Frye, Seattleites of German descent, who assembled their art collection primarily between 1900 and 1925. The women—drawn from subjects encompassing biblical and mythological figures, celebrities and actresses, and rural peasants—assume specific postures, make particular gestures, and display certain expressions, wearing costumes and styles of dress that typify feminine stereotypes of the period. Many of the works emphasize traits such as submissiveness, vulnerability, and sexual availability that correspond to pervasive nineteenth-century cultural attitudes about the ideal feminine nature and body. Others were intended to challenge the increasingly conservative Christian sensibilities prevalent in Bavaria with confrontational images that eroticize female religious figures. From a present-day perspective, these attributes highlight the performative nature of gender as specific sets of socially patterned behaviors informed by race and class. Whether these images associated women with virtue and beauty or danger and sex, they reinscribed moral boundaries that ultimately upheld the patriarchal status quo.

Organized around four primary themes—judgement, morality, performance, and artifice—the exhibition asks viewers to reconsider the very act of looking in all its positive and negative connotations. In doing so, it offers an invitation to unsettle and unpack these enduring, and often unquestioned, notions of femininity.

Unsettling Femininity: Selections from the Frye Art Museum Collection is organized by the Frye Art Museum and curated by Naomi Hume, Associate Professor of Art History, Seattle University. Generous support is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation and the Frye Foundation.

Judgement

In the tradition of European oil painting, the idealized woman is almost always white and typically is portrayed as a sight to be looked at and judged. This is particularly true of the nude, a genre that displays women’s bodies as objects for the gaze of the presumably male viewer. Painters generally situate us to occupy this traditionally masculine and objectifying viewpoint, yet Western culture also prompts female- identifying viewers to compare their own self-image with the painted image—and all the social and cultural ideals embedded within it.

The paintings in this first section provide three examples of nudes from the Frye Founding Collection. All three follow the classic conventions of the genre, with some variations, despite the fact that one was painted by a woman. Each painting conforms to the idea that the most appropriate way to portray a nude body is through an idealized form. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this belief led most European and American artists to suppress signs of a woman’s individuality, as well as the idiosyncrasies of facial or bodily features; they omitted body hair, heightened the whiteness of the skin, and mimicked the poses of Classical marble sculpture. By doing so, painters sought to present nude female figures as abstracted embodiments of supposedly timeless and eternal concepts such as beauty, truth, and virtue. In reality, they were representing the established beauty standards of a particular time and place. While intended to elevate the nude from earthly, vulgar sexuality to a higher moral realm, this treatment perhaps above all else offers the viewer an invitation to survey and judge the body on display.

Franz von Stuck German, 1863–1928 Urteil des Paris (The Judgement of Paris), 1923 Oil on panel 28 3/8 x 39 1/2 in.; framed: 36 1/4 x 48 1/2 x 1 3/4 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.168

This work references the classical Greek myth in which the Olympian gods tasked the shepherd Paris with deciding who was the most beautiful among the three goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena. This story has justified countless paintings of idealized nude women over the centuries that invite the viewer to join Paris in judging the female body.

Franz von Stuck painted several versions of this scene, and here he arranges the figures in a flat, decorative style indicative of his late work. The repetition of the vertical figures against a shallow space creates a pattern-like composition that reflects the artist’s keen interest in the art of antiquity, specifically recalling the architectural design motif of a frieze. At the same time, Stuck’s version suggests the interchangeability of women in this timeless beauty contest, emphasizing the widespread understanding of the female body as a decorative object of display and desire in the tradition of European oil painting.

Gustav Majer German, 1847–1900 Stella, 1889 Oil on canvas 79 x 48 in.; framed: 85 x 54 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.006

By her posture, Gustav Majer’s subject seems to willingly offer a complete view of her nude body. She assumes the traditional pose of Venus Anadyomene (Venus Rising from the Sea), taken from classical sculptures and reproduced countless times in nineteenth-century European paintings. By directing her gaze outward, just beyond the viewer, Majer emphasizes his subject’s full awareness of being looked at. Her long, unbound hair would have been understood as a sign of unrestricted sexuality during the late nineteenth century, underscoring the thinly veiled eroticism offered to the viewer in the guise of a classic, mythological subject.

Ruth Seaman O’Rourke, Charles Frye’s niece, recalled that Emma Frye did not like Majer’s painting and “insisted that the work be kept in the back room of the [Frye & Company meat]packing plant, behind a curtain.” According to her account, Charles would occasionally “unveil” the painting for business visitors. Stella was omitted in the official inventory of the Emma Frye estate because she had “excluded it from the home collection,” considering it to be the property of Frye & Company.

Lillian Genth American, 1876–1953 Sun Maiden, ca. 1909 Oil on canvas 50 in. x 37 in.; framed: 63 1/2 x 50 1/2 x 3 1/4 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.048

Lillian Genth avoids the standard poses of classical sculpture by depicting her Sun Maiden with her arms extended for balance, producing a natural, candid effect. Unlike others in the exhibition, this nude girl appears unaware of onlookers. By offering us a glimpse of this private moment, Genth turns the viewer into a voyeur.

Genth specialized in portraying nude women in poetic, pastoral settings, reinforcing the classic trope of linking femininity to nature. She achieved great success during her lifetime, becoming one of the most prominent American artists working during the early twentieth century. At the same time, many critics struggled to reconcile Genth’s gender with her subject matter. In a 1910 review, critic Arthur Hoeber praised her work by asserting that she “painted with a masculinity that never for an instant betrayed her sex.”

Morality

What distinguishes an admiring gaze of moral aspiration from one of corporeal temptation? Artists have often used beauty—specifically feminine beauty—to symbolize truth and purity, believing that looking upon beautiful images inspired virtue. At the same time, feminine beauty could also inspire lust, a quality seen as sinful from a religious perspective. The works in this gallery portray and encourage various acts of looking— whether admiring, confrontational, or leering—raising complex questions about the morals and motivations of viewers both inside and outside the frame.

Through reactive documents such as letters and caricatures, this section also chronicles the reception of certain artworks from the time of their origins in Munich during the 1880s and 1890s to their display in mid- twentieth-century Seattle during the Frye Art Museum’s early years. It was often an artwork’s reproduction and display in public settings (and not in museums or collectors’ homes) that incited the greatest backlash. In late-nineteenth-century Munich, residents lodged complaints against reproductions of paintings “that could incite lust” displayed in shop windows, and political parties staged public morality campaigns against “decadent” and “pornographic” artists. In response to these threats of censorship, many Munich artists deliberately provoked viewers by painting religious subjects with erotic overtones, and such works proved to be quite popular, as exemplified by Franz von Stuck’s Sin. These reactions and perceived threats speak to an idea noted by feminist art historian Linda Nochlin that “the erotic element in European painting is not an expression of the model’s sexuality but of those who have access to the picture.”

Franz Xaver Winterhalter German, 1805–1873 Susanna and the Elders, 1866 Oil on canvas 64 5/8 x 46 5/8 in.; framed: 72 x 51 1/2 x 4 1/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.199

Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s Susanna looks at us in fear and consternation as she tries to cover her nakedness. In the biblical story, a group of elders (just visible in the upper left corner of the painting) spy on married Susanna and vainly try to coerce her into sex by threatening to accuse her of adultery. Their testimony nearly leads to her demise until contradictions in their story are revealed, resulting in their deaths instead.

By offering the viewer the moment before Susanna succeeds in hiding herself, Winterhalter allows us to assess and admire her naked body. This representation of modesty renders Susanna virtuous for trying to cover herself without denying the viewer the pleasure of looking. At the same time, her gaze meets ours rather than those of the elders behind her, implicating us as voyeurs.

Ludwig Knaus German, 1829–1910 The Gypsy Camp, 1857 Oil on linen 38 5/8 x 49 3/4 in.: framed: 45 1/2 x 57 3/8 x 2 5/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.083

In The Gypsy Camp, Ludwig Knaus arranges the young woman and her child in a vertical, triangular format that echoes timeless images of the Madonna and Child. However, the black-hatted man in the upper left disrupts the familiar composition, as he leers and cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of the woman’s exposed breast. A popular painter of comic scenes from everyday life, Knaus expected his nineteenth- century audience in Germany to recognize the “stereotype of the bohemian outlaw” in the painting’s foreground and to interpret the male farmer’s behavior as harmless rustic bawdiness.

By casting the primary characters as Romany—a collective term for various, sometimes itinerant, peoples living on the margins of European societies and subjected to widespread discrimination—Knaus expected middle-class Bavarian viewers to sympathize with the farmer. Yet the farmer’s behavior also reminds us of how the act of looking can sexualize even the most commonplace behaviors, such as nursing one’s infant.

Franz von Stuck German, 1863–1928 The Duel, 1907 Oil on canvas 30 7/8 x 32 7/16 in.; framed: 38 3/4 x 40 x 1 3/4 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.166

The woman at the center of Franz von Stuck’s The Duel wears a brightly colored skirt, fringed mantilla, and red flower that conjures the late nineteenth-century stereotype of the exotic Spanish “Gypsy” dancer, commonly imagined by northern Europeans to be wildly and indecently sensual. Both men wear fitted leggings and short jackets over bright sashes that conform to the stereotype of the male “Gypsy” from Andalusia in southern Spain, a caricature then associated with aggression and deceit but also with heightened masculinity and freedom from bourgeois strictures.

Stuck sets the scene in a strange, unidentifiable historical space with a Renaissance flavor—a tiled floor with a coffered wooden ceiling in the foreground and vaulted stone above rows of columns receding into the background—signaling that we witness an archetypal struggle rather than a specific event. The woman directs her proud smile toward the viewer with her chin raised, passive and inanimate in relation to the action around her as the duel relegates her to the position of a trophy for the victor.

Gabriel von Max German, born Bohemia, 1840–1915 The Christian Martyr, 1867 Oil on paper affixed to canvas 48 x 36 3/4 in.; framed: 58 1/2 x 47 1/2 x 4 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.116

Gabriel von Max’s The Christian Martyr represents the epitome of the mid-nineteenth-century fashion for pale, breathless women. Despite the gruesome nature of crucifixion, the martyr appears to rest against the cross as if she is merely sleeping, the gentle, contented expression on her face signaling her spiritual salvation. This painting provoked a particularly strong response when first exhibited in Munich, as art critic Friedrich Pecht reported: “All the women left the [exhibition] with tears in their eyes, and every time a group encountered another of their Munich circle, they posed the same question: ‘Have you seen the martyr yet?’” According to art historian Richard Muther, the painting’s ambiguity, its simultaneous evocation of perfect virtue and sensuality, provoked the contradictory “horrified fascination” and “shudder[s] of delight” in viewers.

The artist wrote of his original intent to paint Saint Wilgefortis, whom he described as “the Christian daughter of non-believers who was ordered to marry a pagan prince, put into prison to break her resistance, and whose fervent prayers were answered by her growing a beard.” With her feminine beauty marred by facial hair, the prince refused to marry her, and her father ordered her crucified as punishment for her willfulness. But Max heeded his professor, who “strongly advised against the beard.” The subject of the bearded saint confounded the European painterly tradition that used feminine beauty to symbolize virtue.

Franz von Stuck German, 1863–1928 Die Sünde (Sin), ca. 1908 Syntonos [tempera] on canvas 34 7/8 x 21 5/8 in.; framed: 49 x 39 x 5 1/2 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.169

With its blend of eroticism and religious imagery, Franz von Stuck’s Sin shocked viewers when it first appeared at the debut exhibition of the Munich Secession in 1893. Yet the painting proved immensely popular, leading Stuck to paint multiple versions of it over his career (the one exhibited here being completed nearly fifteen years later). According to art historian Beth Irwin Lewis, Sin “attracted crowds, repelled many critics, and established itself as an icon of fin-de-siècle Munich.”

This work is most often interpreted as depicting a moment in the biblical story of Eve, when she was tempted by a serpent to disobey God’s command and eat from the tree of knowledge, causing her and Adam to become aware of their own nakedness. However, Stuck’s interpretation integrates various references that complicate its moral push and pull. Originally trained in the applied arts, the artist crafted frames for his paintings that add to their meanings. Here, he created a gilded representation of a Classical Greek temple, situating our encounter with the female figure outside the realm of Christianity. He also inscribed the title on the frame and excluded the figure of Adam from the painting, implying that viewers must take responsibility for their own temptations in the face of her unwavering gaze.

Ferdinand von Reznicek Austiran, 1868–1909 Art critic in Parliament, 1899 Reproduction of chromolithograph as published in Simplicissimus, March 25, 1899 7 x 9 in. Courtesy of Duchess Anna Amalia Library, Weimar, Germany

In 1899, concerns about the immoral content of paintings, in particular those of Franz von Stuck, were raised in the German Parliament. The caricaturist Ferdinand von Reznicek satirized this incident in the Munich-based journal Simplicissimus by depicting a rhinoceros attacking Stuck’s most provocative painting, Sin, in a work he captioned “Art Critic in Parliament.” By casting the politician as a blundering beast, Reznicek critiques conservatives for meddling in the art world and mocks their overly aggressive reaction to works they deemed indecent.

Mary Cassatt American, 1844–1926 Little Eve, ca. 1902 Pastel on toned machine paper 28 x 20 1/2 in.; framed: 38 3/8 x 30 3/8 x 1 1/8 in. Frye Art Museum, 1962.001

Like her colleagues, the men and women of the Impressionist group, Mary Cassatt painted people from her immediate familial and social circle in both domestic and public settings. Art historian Griselda Pollock has noted how Cassatt’s paintings of children, with their working class nannies or fashionably dressed mothers, draw attention to the processes of “socializing women from little plump girls who have no reason to believe their lives will be limited, to becoming a finished product, where they will always be on show.”

The girl depicted in Little Eve resembles the nearly identical figure of a child in a slightly larger, undated pastel by Cassatt titled Reine Lefebvre with Blond Baby and Sara Holding a Cat (Maternité). In that work, the child sits in the crook of her caregiver’s arm, turning around to stroke a cat’s ear, which explains her unusual twisting pose.

Frye Art Museum billboard with reproduction of Mary Cassatt, Little Eve (ca. 1902), 1965 Walser Sly Greathouse–Juliana Richardson correspondence, April–May 1965 Photograph, letters Photograph: 8 1/4 x 10 1/2 in.; each letter: 8 1/2 x 11 in Frye Art Museum Archives

The Frye Art Museum acquired Little Eve in 1961, more than twenty years after Charles Frye passed away, under the title L’Enfant Nu (The Nude Child). In the early 1970s, the Cassatt Foundation advised then- director Ida Kay Greathouse of records identifying the image as Little Eve. The symbolic associations of the new title add an ironic twist to the pastel’s history in Seattle.

In 1965, the museum reproduced the work on a billboard, inciting the ire of Seattle resident Juliana Richardson, who wrote a letter of complaint to the Frye’s founding director, Walser Greathouse. Richardson believed nude paintings would be “misunderstood by those with ugly minds” and that “ugly thoughts lead to ugly words and ugly deeds.” Greathouse responded, “Charles and Emma Frye certainly had no prejudice against good paintings of the human body” and suggested that “no two people would place the borderline [between art and obscenity] at the same location.” He blamed Richardson herself for projecting sexual overtones onto Cassatt’s pastel, writing that “anyone who would see in L’Enfant Nu suggestive or obscene matter would seem to us . . . to be straining fact to create fiction.”

Performance

The paintings in this gallery show women and girls in the act of performing, both consciously and unconsciously, whether they are professional dancers, actors, or young children in costume. The paintings are arranged in pairs, juxtaposing related works to call attention to the effects of slight shifts in viewpoint, scale, posture, and expression. Many of the women depicted are international celebrities of the era: dancers, singers, and stage and screen actresses. Their dramatic poses, conspicuous makeup, and exaggerated expressions demonstrate the license granted to performers to break through the narrow limits of decorum and respectability imposed on women at that time. The paintings vacillate between representations in which the artist strove to capture the unique personality and individuality of the sitter and those that reduce the model to a stand-in for a particular concept or idea. Taken together, the various poses, gestures, and costuming depict diverse markers of what could be classified as feminine. The inclusion of young girls among the adult women underscores the ways children begin to mimic gendered postures, symbols, and behaviors before they understand their meanings.

Franz von Lenbach German, 1836–1904 Eleonora Duse, 1886 Oil on canvas 30 x 27 1/2 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.094

Friedrich August von Kaulbach German, 1850–1920 Geraldine Farrar, ca. 1905 Oil on paperboard 16 3/4 x 12 7/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.077

These portraits portray two of the most internationally renowned performers of the period, Italian actor Eleonora Duse (1859–1924) and American soprano opera singer Geraldine Farrar (1882–1967). Without knowledge of their professions, these depictions—with the dramatic posturing, costumes, and makeup— would appear quite strange. They deviate noticeably from the more constrained conventions of female portraiture and expectations of respectability attached to the high-society women of that time.

Franz von Lenbach’s portrait of Duse captures her economy and simplicity of gesture, perhaps offering a glimpse of her notable ability to suffuse silence with emotion. In this painting, Duse turns sharply away from the viewer, one hand to her chest as the other trails reluctantly, suggesting a sense of drama and deep feeling.

Friedrich August von Kaulbach, then among the most sought-after portrait artists in Germany, paints Farrar with her face whitened by stage makeup, wearing what appears to be a plain white shift and an ornate gold diadem. Her costuming and expression are likely a reference to one of her iconic roles in either Jules Massenet’s Manon or Charles Gounod’s Faust; she appeared in both in Berlin to great acclaim between 1901 and 1904.

Friedrich August von Kaulbach German, 1850–1920 Portrait of Hanna Ralph, n.d. Oil on paperboard 41 7/8 x 30 3/4 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.080

Friedrich August von Kaulbach German, 1850–1920 Portrait of Hanna Ralph, ca. 1917 Oil on canvas 31 3/8 x 25 7/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye 1952.079

These portraits by Friedrich August von Kaulbach depict the German stage and silent film actor Hanna Ralph (1888–1978). In both paintings, and especially in the three-quarter-length portrait, Ralph appears decidedly modern in the fashionable clothing of the 1910s, when designers reacted against the late- nineteenth-century’s hourglass waist, bustle, and S-curve silhouette with looser, less constrictive designs. Here, Ralph stands uncorseted with hand on hip in a dropped-waist dress and enormous Edwardian hat.

Leopold Schmutzler German, 1864–1940 Here I Am, ca. 1910 Oil on paperboard 41 1/4 x 29 1/2 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.150

Leopold Schmutzler German, 1864–1940 Woman in Costume, ca. 1910 Oil on canvas 41 x 29 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye 1952.151

These two nearly identical portraits by Leopold Schmutzler highlight subtle shifts in color, gesture, and expression that call attention to the constructed nature of portraits. In both portrayals, the woman’s saucy, suggestive expression heightens the artificiality of her pose. The bright, peachy background of Here I Am creates a lighter, more playful atmosphere, while the darker gray that surrounds the figure in Woman in Costume helps heighten the eroticism as her chemise falls away to reveal her bared breast. The brightly embroidered mantilla wrapped around her torso and over her shoulder would have conjured associations with the sensual, exotic Spanish dancer, conflated in northern European minds at this point with the stereotype of the wild “Gypsy.”

Franz von Lenbach German, 1836–1904 Saharet, 1899 Oil on cardboard 25 x 23 3/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.104

Franz von Stuck German, 1863–1928 Saharet, 1902 Oil on cardboard 18 7/8 x 14 5/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.164

These two paintings depict the performer Paulina Clarissa Molony (1878–1942). Born in Australia, she began her career as a teenage burlesque dancer in San Francisco, took the stage name Saharet in the mid-1890s, and became an international sensation in Europe. Ironically, she went to great lengths to hide her mother’s partial Chinese origins in Australia, only to later rely on an invented exoticized identity as part of her allure.

Franz von Stuck offers a decidedly more modern and confrontational portrayal, with Saharet in bright white stage makeup, her eyes, contoured with kohl, gazing intently at the viewer, while Franz von Lenbach’s portrait is romanticized and sensuous. Lenbach was a great admirer of Saharet’s spectacular performances, which included “wild whirling dances” with “somersault splits, fabulous high kicking, [and] cart wheels.” He was determined to paint her portrait in the late 1890s, at the height of her fame, calling her “the most beautiful woman in the world.” Apparently, he paid her one hundred pounds for the privilege at a time when he could charge about six times that amount for a commissioned portrait.

Franz von Lenbach German, 1836–1904 Ecstasy, 1903 Oil on canvas 45 1/6 x 33 7/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.103

Franz von Lenbach German, 1836–1904 Voluptas, 1897 Oil on canvas 43 3/8 x 34 1/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.102

Voluptas and Ecstasy appear to be pendant images: two thematically related paintings intended to be hung as a pair. The loose, tangled hair and languorous, heavy-lidded abandon of the woman in Voluptas emphasize a sensuous bodily experience. In Ecstasy, the rigidly flexed hands and trancelike expression suggest the subject is gripped by a fanatical obsession or mystical vision.

As their titles state, each figure is meant to embody an idea rather than portray a specific individual. Both paintings illustrate Lenbach’s tendency to, in the words of critic Christian Brinton, a contemporary of the artist, “reduce his sitter to a mental conception, a specific word, even, [which] while he was painting [he would] keep repeating . . . over and over to himself.”

Ludwig von Zumbusch German, 1861–1927 At the Beach, ca. 1904–05 Pigment and varnish on pressboard 12 3/4 x 16 3/4 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.210

Ludwig von Zumbusch German, 1861–1927 Children by the Sea, n.d. Pigment and varnish on pressboard 9 x 12 7/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.211

Ludwig von Zumbusch likely intended his paintings of young children mimicking archetypal nineteenth-century masculine and feminine roles as humorous—although their affectation of mature, coquettish behavior may now seem disturbing.

Franz von Lenbach German, 1836–1904 Marion Lenbach, ca. 1895 Oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 29 3/4 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.098

Franz von Lenbach German, 1836–1904 Marion Lenbach and the Daughter of the Painter Nikolaus Gysis, 1899 Oil on paper mounted on board 38 x 29 1/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.101

Artifice

The works in this final gallery portray contrasting notions of femininity: the broad archetypes of the virtuous, caregiving mother and the vain, self-absorbed beauty; and the culturally specific stereotypes of the docile rural peasant girl of northern Europe and the boldly uninhibited southern Spanish dancer. The mother and the seductive beauty represent two divergent archetypes of femininity found across the tradition of European art. Representations of peasant girls and Spanish dancers, both costumed in traditional folk dress, proliferated during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries due to growing market demand.

On the one hand, many artists favored the fantasy of the northern European peasant as a healthy, obedient girl who joyfully performed heavy labor over the reality of the overworked, prematurely aged, rural woman. The enormous popularity of this subject suggests the affluent art-buying public’s determination to believe in a nostalgic fiction that was already being undermined by the numbers of poverty-stricken peasants moving to urban areas in search of factory work. On the other hand, the craze for images of the exoticized Spanish dancer stemmed from the conflation of this image in northern European minds with the myth of the “Gypsy” outsider, imagined as free, unburdened by the demands of industrialized capitalism, and openly, sensually expressive.

This blatant cultural artifice satisfied and benefited only the paintings’ intended owners and did little for their subjects’ real-world counterparts. The popularity of these particular types of portrayals highlights the use of feminine stereotypes not only to represent timeless notions but also to justify and palliate the effects of immense social and cultural change brought about, in this case, by rising urban industrialization.

Gabriel von Max German, born Bohemia, 1840–1915 Seifenblasen (Soap Bubbles), 1881 Oil on canvas 42 1/2 x 31 3/4 in.; framed: 56 3/8 x 44 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.111

Depictions of a woman gazing into a mirror were typically understood to condemn feminine vanity, while soap bubbles connoted the temporal and fleeting nature of life on earth. However, Gabriel von Max also includes in this composition a strangely mature and knowing Cupid who meets the viewer’s eyes. The combination of Cupid and the woman engrossed in her own appearance would seem to suggest themes of love and the longing to be desired in return.

Whether intentionally or not, Max pictures for us the conundrum of the nineteenth-century European society woman, dependent on her appearance for acquiring the conventional security of male support yet chastised for her focus on the “superficial” matter of her own appearance.

Hans Dahl Norwegian, 1849–1937 Norwegian Girl, ca. 1905 Oil on canvas 57 1/2 x 36 3/8 in.; framed: 65 x 45 x 4 1/4 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.026

Hans Dahl’s Norwegian Girl conveys a nostalgic longing for an imagined simpler time. The girl wears a folk costume from the Hardanger region in western Norway that, by 1905, would have been worn only on festive occasions. But Dahl presents her as a timeless vision of a young, working peasant girl. Though the nineteenth-century stereotype of Norway emphasized its harsh climate and stoic peasants, Dahl conjures here an idealized femininity that stresses connection to the land, tradition, and a cheerful disposition. This outlook was indicative of his body of work as a whole. As art historian Richard Muther wrote of Dahl’s work in 1895, “Everything is sunny, everything laughs, the landscapes as well as the figures.”

Franz von Defregger Austrian, 1835–1921 Head of a Girl, ca. 1890 Oil on panel 16 x 13 3/6 in.; framed: 28 x 25 1/4 x 5 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.032

Franz von Defregger’s Head of a Girl looks out modestly at the viewer with a gentle gaze and healthily flushed cheeks. Her neatly arranged, braided blond hair and shawl conjure an idealized vision of a peasant girl from Bavaria or Tyrol. Defregger’s Blonde Bavarian, also on view in this gallery, depicts a similar figure in a traditional bodice and blouse. Although they were likely painted about fifteen years apart, the similarities between Defregger’s two images reinforce the nostalgic belief that the countryside remained unchanged despite Germany’s rapid modernization over the last thirty years of the nineteenth century.

Gabriel von Max German, born Bohemia, 1840-1915 Mutter und Kind (Mother and Child), ca. 1909 Oil on canvas 39 1/2 x 26 1/2 in.; framed: 46 1/2 x 33 1/2 x 3 3/4 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.120

This work presents a sensual, sculptural figure of a mother pervaded with contradictory messages of the physical and the spiritual, virginity and fertility. The woman’s modest clothing and blue headcovering invoke the image of the Madonna holding the baby Jesus. The Virgin Mary is arguably the most represented woman in the European tradition, held as the ideal model of femininity, despite the contradiction of her status as both mother and virgin.

Franz von Defregger Austrian, 1835–1921 The Blonde Bavarian, ca. 1905 Oil on panel 19 5/8 x 15 5/8 in.; framed: 31 1/2 x 27 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, Frye Art Museum, 1952.034

Charles and Emma Frye’s Home Gallery, 1920s Reproduction of photograph 8 x 10 1/4 in. Frye Art Museum Archives

This archival photograph of the Fryes’ home gallery illustrates that Charles and Emma considered Rosario Guerrero and Spanische Tänzerin (Spanish Dancer) to be pendant images, hung as a pair on either side of Kaulbach’s portrait of his wife and daughters. They are flanked by the Fryes’ own commissioned portraits by Henry Rachsen (Emma on the far left and Charles on the far right).

The Fryes designed this wall with curtains that could be drawn across the paintings of the Spanish dancers, creating the appearance of curtained windows on a wall of paintings, emphasizing the ties characterized by Kaulbach’s family portrait. When the curtains were open, as here, the two paintings associated the Fryes with modernity, celebrity, and risqué, fashionable dance. Ruth Seaman O’Rourke, Charles Frye’s niece, recalled dinner parties during which hidden paintings were “dramatically…reveal[ed]…to dinner guests while music was piped into the gallery.”

This image offers a chance to consider how the Fryes might have viewed these paintings—with their varied depictions of femininity—and what associations or values the works would have conferred upon them as collectors and prominent business leaders in a rapidly developing Seattle. 20

Friedrich August von Kaulbach German, 1850–1920 Rosario Guerrero, ca. 1908 Oil on canvas 49 1/2 x 37 3/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.082

Otto Hierl-Deronco German, 1859-1935 Spanische Tänzerin (Spanish Dancer), n.d. Oil on canvas 44 3/4 x 33 7/8 in. Founding Collection, Gift of Charles and Emma Frye, 1952.068

These portraits by Friedrich August von Kaulbach and Otto Hierl-Deronco are yet another appearance of female performers dressed in traditional Spanish costume in Charles and Emma Frye’s collection, emphasizing the popularity of the subject among German artists at the time.

The two portrayals convey strikingly contrasting characters. Kaulbach captures international celebrity Rosario Guerrero in mid-motion, looking off into the distance behind her. Hierl-Deronco’s unnamed dancer raises her chin to look down at her audience and at the viewer, brashly smoking a cigarette and unimpressed by the flowers of an admirer at her feet. While Kaulbach reproduces the myth of the ideal beauty and seductress in his depiction of Guerrero, Hierl-Deronco’s more nuanced portrayal suggests a complex and self-possessed personality and seems to reach deeper than the limited, stereotyped conception of the Spanish “Gypsy” dancer suggested by the title.

Installation photography by Jueqian Fang