{"id":2305,"date":"2012-03-14T17:50:26","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T21:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.arts.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=2305"},"modified":"2017-09-27T12:41:08","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T16:41:08","slug":"2305","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2012\/03\/14\/2305\/","title":{"rendered":"18th C. Expose of Female Artists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melissa Hyde\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s challenge to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cherchez la femme\u00e2\u20ac\u009d defines 18th<\/sup> Century views on femininity within the context of a hostile masculine world; even the colloquial implication of the phrase indicates the accusatory and suspicious dismissal of female influence that confined women artists like Vallayer-Coster, Labille-Guiard, and Vig\u00c3\u00a9e-Le Brun.\u00c2\u00a0 Hyde\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thesis makes the case that the problem with the modern lack of visibility of 18th<\/sup> Century female artists does not rest in any shortage of women painters, but rather the limitations put in place by institutions like the Acad\u00c3\u00a9mie and the Salon that obstructed any significant advancement in the profession.\u00c2\u00a0 The combination of this intrinsic \u00e2\u20ac\u0153culpability\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the female and the hindrances to professional acceptance are weighed on opposite sides of Elizabeth-Louise Vig\u00c3\u00a9e-Le Brun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Madame Rousseau et sa fille<\/em>, from the side of the painter and of the sitter.\u00c2\u00a0 Paradoxically, Vig\u00c3\u00a9e-Le Brun does the work of capturing the confines of a woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s space while still being a successful, albeit scandalous, artist.<\/p>\n

Gill Perry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s introduction to gender and art history charges the reader with not only assessing the constructs of femininity that can be gleaned from visual representations of women, but also contemporary definitions of masculinity.\u00c2\u00a0 An unintentional glimpse into this duality can be gained through the Louvre\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s current mistranslation of Vig\u00c3\u00a9e-Le Brun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work, which lists Madame Rousseau et Sa Fille <\/em>as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Madame Rousseau and His<\/em> Daughter.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 The emphasis on an external masculine possession is fitting, particularly if Perry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s aspect of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153role of gender in the physical or social environment\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is considered.\u00c2\u00a0 Madame Rousseau inhabits the role of mother and, consequentially, dutiful wife.\u00c2\u00a0 Her daughter appears as more of a prop to support Madame Rousseau\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s apparent fecundity; the little girl is <\/p>\n

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held up by the mother but is still forced toward the back of the painting, is mostly covered by shadow, and does not look toward the viewer.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite motherhood being more or less Madame Rousseau\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcprofession,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 it is still a private space.\u00c2\u00a0 Vig\u00c3\u00a9e-Le Brun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own self-portraits even supersede her actual career in place of motherhood; similar to Madame Rousseau et Sa Fille<\/em>, her role as a mother is what defines her.<\/p>\n

Presumably, Madame Rousseau et Sa Fille<\/em> would have been commissioned by Madame Rousseau\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s husband, the architect of the Palais de le L\u00c3\u00a9gion d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Honneur, Pierre Rousseau. \u00c2\u00a0This normative representation of femininity twists the typical definition of the male \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gaze\u00e2\u20ac\u009d into a purely dominating form, sans<\/em> overt sexuality.\u00c2\u00a0 Monsieur Rousseau\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s commission would have given him a work that placed his wife in a respectable context and reminded the viewer of her position within the confines of the Rousseau family.\u00c2\u00a0 This subtle confining of the woman is reflective of the diverting of male concern over the power of female sexuality with references to maternity that Geraldine A. Johnson writes about in her essay on Marie de\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Medici.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Marie de\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Medici\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s allusions to fertility and the Virgin Mary, Madame Rousseau et Sa Fille<\/em> extirpates any \u00e2\u20ac\u0153culpability\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the female sex with the placement of the daughter in what is essentially a portrait of Madame Rousseau.<\/p>\n

Vig\u00c3\u00a9e-Le Brun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s position as the painter of this work, however, does not necessarily lend her to accusations of being complacent to this misogyny.\u00c2\u00a0 Her status as the chosen portraitist of Marie Antoinette would have gained her no ground with the revolutionaries or the conservatives who wished to ground women within the home.\u00c2\u00a0 Vig\u00c3\u00a9e-Le Brun may have been painting a portrait of a woman within the private sphere, but ultimately the fact remains that a female was the one being commissioned.<\/p>\n

\"Madame
Madame Rousseau et Sa Fille<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melissa Hyde\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s challenge to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cherchez la femme\u00e2\u20ac\u009d defines 18th Century views on femininity within the context of a hostile masculine world; even the colloquial implication of the phrase indicates the accusatory and suspicious dismissal of female influence that confined women artists like Vallayer-Coster, Labille-Guiard, and Vig\u00c3\u00a9e-Le Brun.\u00c2\u00a0 Hyde\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thesis makes the case that the problem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2305"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8448,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions\/8448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}