When women have freedom to depict themselves in paint they find their images no longer confined by the expectations of the male gaze. Instead automomy over female self presentation is given. Sofinisba Anguissola (1532-1625) for example, created numerous self-portraits during her early career, largely as a means by which she could publicise her talents.
In this painting, she shows herself at work on a small devotional work, a Madonna & Child. She looks away from her labour to gaze directly at the viewer. There is no ornament to her clothing (and no exposed flesh), just a small frill of lace at her collar and cuffs, and her eyes are large and her forehead wide. These features indicated to her contemporary audience that she was educated, creative and intellectual. Sofinisba was exceptional for the time. She saw herself as a gentildonna, a gentlewoman, but also one of notable accomplishment. Her dress and demeanour are virtuous and modest but these qualities only serve to emphasize her abilities.
Similarly, Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) was equally proud of her achievements. In Self Portrait at the Clavichord with a Servant, she shows herself to be a skilful musician, but importantly, the painting was intended as a gift to her prospective father-in-law. She shows herself looking out confidently at the viewer, almost challengingly, and in the background she shows an empty marriage chest by an open window to indicate clearly what she wants to happen next in her life, but also shows an easel, as if to say ‘I am not just a good catch because of my high birth, but I am poised, self-assured, self-reliant and highly talented.’
Artemisia’s self-portrait pictured here also shows her at work, but goes another step further by presenting herself as an allegory (and only women in the period could embody allegorical figures). She is saying to her audience: this isn’t just a painting of me doing what I do, instead it is saying: I am painting personified. The gold chain that hangs round her neck carries a pendant mask to represent ‘imitation’. Her appearance conforms to the conventions of allegories as set out in Iconologia by Cesare Ripa[1]. She has unruly hair to indicate the feverish passion of creativity, and her eyebrows are arched to point to active inspiration and imagination. In this work, Artemisia doesn’t address the viewer directly. Her concentration is on her work, or perhaps on the sitter whose image she is about to capture. Nothing else matters. The painting has energy and purpose and a freedom of expression unusual in seventeenth century painting. Her shapeliness is shown, but not presented in a seductive way. Given the history of Artemisia’s rape and the subsequent trial (during which her veracity was tested by use of thumbscrews), as Frances Borzello observed ‘The absence of any artistic equivalent of a gauze on the lens suggests this is the work of a woman unafraid of facing facts.’ (Borzello, Seeing Ourselves - Women's Self-Portraits 1998).[2]
Up until the early twentieth century, women had been disallowed the privilege of attending life-classes. Laura Knight (1877-1970) came to the Nottingham School of Art in 1899 when this remained the case, and she was only ever permitted to study plater-casts and drawings of nude figures. This makes her Self-Portrait all the more remarkable. It shows the artist at work in her studio with her back to the viewer, working on a canvas with her own life-model (her friend Ella Naper) in front of her, thus creating a clever double nude painting. The work was shocking to the art establishment, because the artist shows herself in everyday work clothes, going about her business: the practice of painting a nude subject, just as any male artist felt himself entitled to do. It is a striking declaration of independence created at a time when women’s suffrage was a pressing issue, and represented a direct challenge to the artistic patriarchy. Although dismissed patronizingly by The Times art critic at the time as ‘vulgar’, the work is now recognized not only for its inherent merit, but for what it represents as a milestone in female emancipation. The critic Simon Sharma described it as ‘incomparably, her greatest work, all at once conceptually complex, heroically independent, formally ingenious and lovingly sensual.’ (Scharma 2015)[3]
The reclining nude had been a favourite subject for male artists for many centuries, but it was only in the second half of the twentieth century and the onset of the feminist movement, that women artists used their art to make more political statements. Sylvia Sleigh took a great painting by Velasquez, The Rokeby Venus, as the basis for her own self-portrait. In the original, Venus lies with her back to us while Cupid holds up a mirror in which the viewer can see her reflection. The mood is languid and sensual and narcissistic self-absorption is celebrated while the (usually male) viewer voyeuristically gets the pleasure of looking on. Interestingly, in seventeenth century Spain, artists were obliged to use male models as sitters, as the use of females was strictly prohibited. The painting suffered major damage in 1914 when it was slashed by suffragette Mary Richardson in protest at the imprisonment of Emmeline Pankhurst, so its reputation as a prominent artefact in the history of female emancipation was well established when Sylvia Sleigh referenced it in her own work Philip Golub Reclining.
In this, the artist uses the same pose as Venus, but a male model is both used and depicted. The mirror he is shown looking into this time though, reflects the artist herself, and it is this self-portrait that manages to subvert the idea that men control the image: the entire artist / model / viewer relationship is challenged and we are made to think about all those centuries of pre-conceptions and expectations.
Rose Garrard (1946-), born in Worcestershire, has referenced some of the sixteenth and seventeenth century women artists mentioned above and absorbed them into her own work partly as an homage to under-appreciated women artists (specifically Judith Leyster, Artemisia Gentileschi and Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun) working in a man’s world, and partly to make a point about those women who chose to become their own models. Her work is distinguished by distressed reproductions of the original works the frames of which are disintegrating ‘to symbolize their escape from the traditional world of women.’ (Borzello, Seeing Ourselves - Women's Self-Portraits 1998).[4] As the frames crumble, they suggest an opening up of an escape route for other women who should refuse to simply be the passive subjects of male art and instead should recreate themselves in their own images. The broken frames are constructed from traditionally macho objects, like guns and other forbidden objects from the artist’s childhood. The controlling power of these objects is shattered and (women) artists need no longer be ‘framed’ or constrained by conventional male views of women.
[1]Iconologia by Cesare Ripa, 1593
[2]Borzello, Frances. A World Of Our Own - Women As Artists.London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
[3]Scharma, Simon. The Face of Britain - The NationThrough Its Portraits.Viking, 2015.
[4]Borzello, Frances. Seeing Ourselves - Women's Self-Portraits.London: Thames & Hudson, 1998.
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