Women Artists at VMFA
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Women Artists at VMFA VMFA has a growing collection of works by women artists, including those highlighted here. The collection features works from across time and place. With such a vast arch across time, these works collectively underscore the dramatic shifts in the artistic, social and political landscape and their impact upon the creative expression. Collection: African American Art, African Art, American Art, Decorative Arts after 1890, European Art, Impressionism, Modern and Contemporary Art, Native American Art Culture/Region: Africa, America, Europe Subject Area: Women Activity Type: Resource Set Women Artists at VMFA Two Sisters- Marguerite and Her Sister Edith 1921 , American Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 2013.194 Level 2, American Galleries Celebrated for her strong sense of color and design in painting and textile, Marguerite Thompson Zorach belonged to America’s pioneering generation of avant-garde artists. Along with her husband, William, she exhibited her post-impressionist and fauve-inspired paintings in a number of important exhibitions of modern art, including the landmark 1913 Armory Show. This striking painting from 1921—an intimate portrait of Marguerite (left) and her younger sister, Edith, in a dynamic cityscape of fragmented buildings—is representative of the family themes that run throughout her career. Its simplified forms and angularity reveal the artist’s contemporary study of American folk art as well as Egyptian sculpture. Suggested Activities Looking to Learn: Perceive, Know, Care About (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-perceive -know-care-about/) Moving to Learn: Strike a Pose (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/moving-to-learn-strike-a- pose/) Writing to Learn: Words in Their Mouths and Thoughts in Their Heads (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/words-mouths-thoughts- heads/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Mother and Child 1902 , American Medium: Bronze Accession ID: 2010.3 Level 2, American Galleries Vonnoh, like her colleague Mary Cassatt, cultivated a successful career producing sculptures of upper-class women at different stages of life. Images of mother and child, like this one, were among her most popular works, reproduced in numerous castings. Here the artist’s modeling skills are revealed in the controlled naturalism of the figures and the graceful treatment of the drapery. By the time she modeled Mother and Child, Vonnoh’s reputation was well established. The novelist William Dean Howells praised her for giving “the Muse of sculpture…a chance to become a fellow citizen, and to vote with the rest of us when her sex gets the suffrage. Suggested Activities Writing to Learn: Narrative (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-narrative /) Looking to Learn: Perceive, Know, Care About (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-perceive -know-care-about/) Sketching to Learn: Before and After (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-before -and-after/) Writing to Learn: Words in Their Mouths and Thoughts in Their Heads (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/words-mouths-thoughts- heads/) Alexander Harrison 1888 , American Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 2009.2 Level 2, American Galleries Already an accomplished painter when she arrived in Paris for further training at age thirty-three, Cecilia Beaux quickly distinguished herself with bravura works such as this: a collaborative portrait of fellow Philadelphian Alexander Harrison. It is one of two fully realized paintings she produced in Concarneau, a summer artist colony in Brittany. A transitional work that reveals her embrace of plein-air (outdoor) painting and a lightened palette – an approach Harrison encouraged – it inspired his comment that Beaux had the “right stuff” to become a serious painter, “the stuff that digs and thinks and will not be satisfied and is never weary of the effort of painting nor counts the cost.” Suggested Activities Moving to Learn: Strike a Pose (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/moving-to-learn-strike-a- pose/) Sketching to Learn: Beyond the Frame (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-beyon d-the-frame/) Writing to Learn: Headlines, Tweets, and Memes (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-headline s-tweets-and-memes/) Writing to Learn: Words in Their Mouths and Thoughts in Their Heads (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/words-mouths-thoughts- heads/) Books and Pottery Vase early 1900s , American Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 71.23 Level 2, American Galleries At the turn of the 20th century, Hirst’s meticulous still lifes held such public appeal that, as one critic wrote, “they are apt to be hanging crooked…as people take them down so many times to hold them and look at them.” While touching art in galleries was discouraged then, as it is now, close examination was precisely the response that Hirst sought. The painter was one of a handful of Gilded Age artists – and the only female (her first name was shortened from Claudine) – to gain critical acclaim for illusionary imagery. In this painting, Hirst presents an arrangement of old books and a ceramic pot with Asian motifs. She draws the eye to a brightly lid, opened book rendered with such precision that words can be read from its pages. The worn volume was one of the artist’s favorites: a 1795 English translation of Bernardin de Saint- Pierre’s romantic novel, Paul and Virginia. The painting’s frame – contemporary with the canvas but not original – offers its own visual surprise. The beautiful curling grain is actually painted. One trompe-l’oeil triumph supports the other. Suggested Activities Looking to Learn: Ten Times Two (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-ten-time s-two/) Moving to Learn: Make It Move (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/moving-to-learn-make-it- move/) Sketching to Learn: Lines, Shapes, and Pattern Hunt (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/%ef%bb%bf%ef%bb%bfs ketching-to-learn-lines-shapes-and-pattern-hunt/) Writing to Learn: Haiku (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-haiku/) Child Picking a Fruit 1893 , American Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 75.18 Level 2, American Galleries Child Picking a Fruit merges the subject that made Mary Cassatt famous—a young woman (possibly a mother) and child—with her more ambitious examination of “modern woman,” a topical theme at the turn of the 20th century as the women’s suffrage movement gained momentum. The image derives from the artist’s now-lost Modern Woman mural commission, produced for the Woman’s Building of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. For this prestigious world’s fair, Cassatt presented her allegorical subject in a three-panel lunette. The large central panel, Young Women Plucking the Fruits of Knowledge, featured women of different ages, clad in contemporary dress and communally harvesting fruit from an orchard. Suggested Activities Writing to Learn: Narrative (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-narrative /) Writing to Learn: Sensory Inventory (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-sensory-i nventory/) Sketching to Learn: Before and After (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-before -and-after/) Looking to Learn: Perceive, Know, Care About (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-perceive -know-care-about/) War Torn Dress 2002 , Salish/Kootina Medium: Mixed media on canvas Accession ID: 2018.353a-b Level 2, American Galleries A profound visualization of the struggle between Native and non-Native philosophies, War-Torn Dress presents a legacy that is more cautionary than celebratory. Quick-to-See Smith often uses clothing to highlight the human element of her powerful indigenous narratives. The diptych format literally tears the dress in two, reminding the viewer of the brutal American practice of tearing Native communities from their land under the guise of civilizing them. The implication of a body inspires contemplation on lives lost and the contested spaces they occupied. Placed prominently across the dress, “Your God, My God” proposes that within the fight over whose God is greater, all people reside in the Sacred, breathe the same air, and are of the same life force. The dress is now destroyed but deploys an urgent warning. Suggested Activities Looking to Learn: What Makes You Say That? (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/looking-to-learn-what-ma kes-you-say-that/) Sketching to Learn: Hand and Voice (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-hand- and-voice/) Writing to Learn: Headlines, Tweets, and Memes (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/writing-to-learn-headline s-tweets-and-memes/) Sketching to Learn: Contour Drawing (https://www.vmfa.museum/learn/resources/sketching-to-learn-conto ur-drawing/) Portrait of the Comte de Vaudreuil 1784 , French Medium: oil on canvas Accession ID: 49.11.21 Level 2, European Galleries Vigée-Lebrun, daughter of a Paris pastelist, was a successful portrait painter from the age of fifteen. In 1779 she was called to court to paint Queen Marie-Antoinette’s portrait; she quickly became the queen’s favorite artist. Like the Comte de Vaudreuil, Vigée-Lebrun fled France at the beginning of the revolution, but was later invited to return, which she did briefly in 1802 and permanently in 1810. The