Dreaming Awake: Images of Women in Pre-Raphaelite Art

Images of Woman in Pre-Raphaelite Visual and Textual Narratives, 2023

Nineteenth century England going through a process of social transformation under the reign of Queen Victoria witnessed a countercultural art movement, namely Pre-Raphaelitism, which brought together rebellion, beauty, subtlety, creative splendour in the pot of symbolic reality. The term Pre-Raphaelite originated in relation to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848), a group of rebellious young painters, poet, and critic formed with the aim of creating a new British school of art by defying all conventions of art, mainly instructed by the British Royal Academy. Foregrounding the interconnections between literature and painting, which all resulted in images rife with photographic realism, their doctrine advocated the uncomplicated and faithful depiction of everything and every figure, typical of Italian painting, for, as their self-given title states, they felt that art had declined with the mid-renaissance painter Raphael, so they gave value to all that preceded him. With the belief of reform in art, they championed the ideology of seeking the real, not the ideal, as a subject matter for their paintings and reflecting it on their canvasses. This reality encompasses not only material but also spiritual purposes; thus, they lay claim to the moral authority of the epoch. Besides, at the same time, they believed that the first step to discovering the pure state of reality was observing nature. With these rigorous observational studies, the Pre-Raphaelites were not only enlightened about the source nature offered them, but they also had an idea about human nature, notably woman. In this sense, aiming to promote resurgence and rejuvenation of simplicity in Pre-Raphael art and medieval mysticism, female figure, for their canvas, became requisite. When women, the important concept of the nineteenth century, is taken into consideration, the Pre-Raphaelites’ approach was different from that of their period. Committed to picturing likeness of real women on the grounds of different approach and treatment, the Pre-Raphaelite artists departed from the entrenched notion of ideal woman, prevalent in Victorian art. From this standpoint, this present inter-disciplinary study aims to analyse images of woman not only depicted in literature from which the Pre-Raphaelites drew inspiration but also created by them for their visual and textual narratives on the basis of their own definition and traditional Victorian stereotypes within the framework of feminist readings in order to find out a) what impact did Victorian ideas/stereotypes of women have on the Pre-Raphaelites’ treatment of the female subject; b) did they herald the birth of a modern woman or actually perpetuate gender norms?

Journal of the Belarusian State University. History, 2021

In the middle of the 19th century Great Britain, Queen Victoria had been imposing her new ethical code system on social and cultural conditions, sharpening evidently the already abyssal differences of the gendered stereotypes. The Pre-Raphaelite painters reacted to the sterile way of painting dictated by the art academies, both in terms of thematology and technique, by suggesting a new, revolutionary way of painting, but were unable to escape their monolithic gender stereotypes culture. Using female models for their heroines who were often identified with the degraded position of the Victorian woman, they could not overcome their socially systemic views, despite their innovative art ideas and achievements. However, art, in several forms, executed mainly by women, played a particularly important role in projecting several types of feminism, in a desperate attempt to help the Victorian woman claim her rights both in domestic and public sphere. This article aims at exploring and commen...

eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics

A significant issue for feminist artists since the 1960s has been the disruption of the binary opposition associating maleness with the mind and culture, and femaleness with the body and nature. The binary has been contested by feminists in their efforts to subvert objectifying conventions and present empowering visual imagery of women, and the results at times have been vexed. This paper will consider some of these works as well as recent theorizing about embodiment, and efforts to separate "woman" from "nature" (to avoid essentialising limitations). Amelia Jones' ( ) theory of 'parafeminism', which aims to extend the achievements of earlier feminist artists in ways that provide strategies for dealing with contemporary regimes of power, will be used to structure the discussion.

British Art Journal (Volume XIX, 3), 2019

This article considers examples of female nudes produced by women artists between 1870 and 1920 in the light of their artistic training, with particular reference to the life-class. It also addresses other significant educational influences that affected these artists as well as factors in their personal lives that made it important for them to seek artistic expression in the female nude. In the 19th century, the female nude became the dominant vision of nudity, embodying abstract notions of ideal beauty. It has been said that mastering these portrayals was not only crucial for artistic success but also ‘central to the construction of artistic identity’, but in any event, for centuries, perfection in the depiction of the nude form was perceived as one of the pinnacles, perhaps the pinnacle, of an academic art education, and the life-class was central to achieving this goal. As social and educational change was gaining momentum, more women began to participate in the art world and in 1871 the British census recorded 1,069 professional women artists, whereas in 1841 there had been only 278. By 1871, after a reluctant start, the Royal Academy had admitted a total of 117 women to its Schools, and yet it continued to keep the doors of the life-class firmly shut to them. Ambitious women artists felt this exclusion keenly and began to demand access to the life-class – or at least to a draped nude. As Linda Nochlin, the first feminist writer to explore ‘the Question of the Nude’, pointed out: ‘To be deprived of this ultimate stage of training, meant, in effect to be deprived of the possibility of creating major art works, unless one were a very ingenious lady indeed.’ This article explores the explores the obstacles women artists had to overcome and the strategies they deployed in their attempts to do so.

Edith Wharton Review, 2015

From medieval-style robes gathered with tasseled belts to high-waisted Grecian gowns decorated with woodblock prints to kimono-inspired breakfast wrappers with capacious sleeves, "artistic dress" (later called Aesthetic dress) was a style-and a movement-that captivated the public imagination in the second half of the nineteenth century. Kimberly Wahl offers a thorough and fascinating study of this phenomenon, using fashion as a way to explore the complex and interwoven endeavors of artistry, activism, and commerce. Wahl's study devotes most of its attention to the end of the nineteenth century, but the issues that coalesced around the aesthetic movement begin in the 1850s and continue into the twentieth century. Depicted in paintings and advertised in catalogues and women's magazines, artistic dress was born of both practical and aesthetic concerns. The crinoline and corset-free fashions featured sleeves set high on the shoulder and loose, drapey fits, allowing for the freedom of movement necessary to a class of women who increasingly participated in craft work and outdoor activities. As wearers of artistic dress were depicted in plein air paintings by artists like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and Thomas Armstrong, Wahl argues that proponents-who often designed their own costumes-"occupy simultaneously a position as subject of Aesthetic sensibility and object of Aesthetic contemplation" (xxviii). The occasion of artistic dress also created spaces for the exchange of ideas that expanded from intimate settings to the public sphere: James McNeill Whistler's studio, the Grosvenor Gallery, and the burgeoning forum of women's print media. In the 1870s and 1880s, the pre-Raphaelite aesthetic of a return to "natural" forms unaltered by restrictive fashions met with the more politically motivated rational dress reform movement. Dress reformers like the novelist Margaret Oliphant argued that health ought to be the ultimate sig-nifier of beauty and condemned unhealthy styles that confined their wear-ers to unnatural shapes and positions. The idea that fashions of the past were the key to successful, and fashionable, dress reform also recalled the pre-Raphaelite tendency to return to medieval forms. Women's magazines in the late seventies and eighties began featuring these styles, with added elements of the newly popular orientalism, heavily in their illustrations. Wahl argues that the popularity of artistic dress suggests a need for

7th International Conference on Gender Studies:Gender, Space, Place & Culture, 2019

Family home might be the first place where LGBT+ individuals intensely experience pressure and various forms of violence. For many LGBT+ subjects, leaving home is a liberating action that opens a way for eliminating domestic violence and offers a resource for establishing/experiencing their identity. Since then, the spaces that queers can be "queer" starts to be formed for the LGBT+s and gay venues (e.g. gay bars) are one of the critical components of this transition. They offer adequate information related to identity diversity, relatively safer zones and a sphere to find oneself or others. It also can enable new forms of relations and a sense of belonging to a place. However, there is still a risk that these venues can be repressive for several reasons that have similarities to the family home dynamics that put obstacles towards queer liberation. This study focuses on the opportunities and pitfalls of LGBT+ venues by comparison with the experience of the family home. I investigate the possibilities: Do these venues keep individuals away from oppression or do they become places where a different form of oppression emerges by expecting certain performances from their attendees similar to the inside home performance? Furthermore, I inquiry whether the gay individuals associate these venues with the notion "home", or the people in the community with the notion "family". To be able to acquire these possibilities, the in-depth interviews have been conducted with LGBT+ persons (n=13) who have experienced physical or digitally gay venues.

The self-portraits of Anguissola, Gentileschi, Labille-Guiard, Cassatt, and Beaux, ranging across five centuries from the fifteenth century of the Italian Renaissance to the beginning of the twentieth century, present an unusual pictorial perspective: the painter’s body leans towards the viewer, invading the viewer’s space. Through physical closeness and through the depiction of the act of painting, these works attempt to persuade the viewer that apart from their presentation of allegories of painting or genre scenes, what lies at the heart of these works is the reinforcement of gender identity as professionalism in art. The fact that the number of paintings representing women painters painting their own portraits is very small raises the question of why these particular women painters chose such an unorthodox formula of composition when they painted themselves painting. My paper examines two possibilities: first, the female artists were more inclined to experiment with representation while painting themselves since they did not necessarily expect to sell the painting; and second, their occasional clients were aristocratic women who wanted to make a statement through the artwork they purchased.

2013

Art Journal, 1976

Assesses the feminization of art in the United States, and the concomitant devaluing of art in American culture, from the 18th century to the present