How do relations between women and men manifest themselves in nineteenth century painting?

Jolanta Cyrek

Doctrine of separate spheres

Man: occupies the outside world (flaneur) provides and represents the family Woman: homebound looks after the children and the household Queen of the Garden only working woman operates in the outside world The Breakfast: implicit gender roles.

C. Monet, The Breakfast, 1868, Stdelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany.

Ideal of Victorian marital bliss. Crisis of Victorian marriage. Need for a social change.

E.H. Landseer. Windsor Castle in Modern Times. 1841-2. Oil on canvas, 44 5/8x56 7/8. Collection of Her Majesty the Queen.

Reality.

Robert Martineau. Last Day In the Old Home. 1862. oil, 41 x 56. The Tate Gallery.

Woman should provide her husband with support, create a house where he can rest. Ruskin: womblike refuge, heaven. Companion to manhood based on self-sacrifice.

Gentle support that grows out of feminine, inherited altruism.

George Elgar Hicks. Womans Mission: Companion to Manhood. 1863. Oil on canvas, 30 x 25. The Tate Gallery.

Faces of Victorian romance.

TAINTED
versus

PURE

W.H. Hunt. The Awakening Concious. 1845. Oill on canvas, 29 x 21 . The Tate Gallery.

J. E. Millais. The Huguenot. 1852. Oil on canvas. Makins Collection.

New Woman.

Emancipated, intelligent, natural evolutionary offspring of advances in higher education and hygiene, reforms in marriage and divorce laws, suffragettes movement.

Some men embraced, some showed disdain. At Homburg is rather neutral but caused a storm in England, country that wasnt as liberal as Germany at the time.

William Powell Frith. At Homburg. 1870. Oil on canvas, 23 x 19 . Courtesy of Christies London .

Conclusion:
Nineteenth century painters recognised and addressed the issues raising in the relations between men and women, The paintings either reinforce or challenge the ideas of femininity and masculinity, The image we get is full of paradoxes, especially when depicting the female, who often becomes the Other to presented masculinity, simultaneously weak and strong, full of wisdom but incapable of fending for herself, The concepts of masculinity and femininity in Victorian painting are constructed upon the idea of opposition and division on stronger and weaker sex.

Bibliography:
Casteras, Susan P. 1987. Images of Victorian Womanhood in English Art (Teaneck, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press) Gerish Nunn, Pamela 1995. Problem Pictures: Women and Men in Victorian Painting (Hants, Scolar Press) Kestner, Joseph K. 1995. Masculinities in Victorian Painting (Hants, Scolar Press) Pollock, G. Parker, R. 1981. Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (London, Harper Collins Publishers) Casteras, Susan P. 1987. Images of Victorian Womanhood in English Art (Teaneck, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press)