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mdstamper.bsky.social
Michael
@mdstamper.bsky.social
2.8K followers 780 following 1.6K posts
Sharing my research and inspiration featuring #WomenInArt … and for those with time or interest to learn more: detailed #artText in the #AltText including art history & stories with all respect + credit to the original artists & museum curators.
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“Self Portrait” by Sara Rossberg (German–British) - Acrylic on canvas / 1987 - Newport Museum and Art Gallery (Wales, UK) #WomenInArt #SaraRossberg #Rossberg #NewportMuseumAndArtGallery #art #artText #artwork #SelfPortrait #Acrylic #BlueskyArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #PortraitofaWoman
Born in Recklinghausen, West Germany, Sara Rossberg moved to England on a scholarship in 1976 to study at Camberwell in London. She painted this self-portrait in 1987, by then living in London and steadily gaining international recognition for psychologically charged figurative work. At roughly 80 by 69.5 centimeters, the canvas is close to life-size, so she feel almost within arm’s reach. The artist depicts herself as a light-skinned woman with cropped auburn hair reclining sideways on a deep violet sofa. Her head tilts sharply, resting on the back of her hand so that her pale green eyes meet ours at intimate range. Fine, meticulous brushwork records the shadows around her eyes and mouth, suggesting real tiredness rather than idealised glamour. She wears a thick grey knitted jumper whose soft, nubbly texture contrasts with the bony elegance of her crossed forearms and long, slightly tense fingers. A vivid red coral necklace pricks the muted purples and greys, circling her neck like a ring of tiny flames. Background cushions and drapery blur into soft folds, keeping attention on her expressive face and hands, conveying quiet thought and feeling. The close cropping and sideways tilt deny any single “correct” orientation, inviting us to test different emotional readings like is this rest, weariness, or wary alertness? The coral necklace pulses as a fragile sign of energy against the drained pose. Rather than present herself as a heroic genius, Rossberg appears as a working woman caught between exhaustion, resilience and concentration. Painted the same year she exhibited in the touring show “Self-Portrait – A Modern View,” the work anticipates her later portraits that probe identity, memory and the long, often invisible labor of caregiving that shaped her life and practice.
November 26, 2025 at 3:35 AM
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"Truly Grateful" by Beverly McIver (American) - Oil on canvas / 2011 - North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh) #WomenInArt #BeverlyMcIver #McIver #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #NorthCarolinaMuseumofArt #art #ArtText #BlueskyArt #SelfPortrait #gratitude #BlackArt #ContemporaryArt #BlackArtists
Painted in 2011, this self-portrait comes after years in which American artist Beverly McIver navigated profound loss and new responsibility following her mother’s death and her promise to care for her sister Renee, who has a developmental disability. In earlier works, Beverly often centered her mother and sister, but here she turns the gaze gently onto herself, capturing a moment of hard-won calm. She depicts herself as a mature Black woman from the shoulders up, set low in the frame against a flat orange-gold background. Her short black natural hair forms an uneven halo of dark curls, painted in thick strokes. She bows her head and lowers her eyes, so we see mostly the planes of her forehead, nose, and cheeks, modeled in patches of browns, gold, green, and rose. Her full lips, a deep brick red, press gently together. A light blue scarf wraps around her neck and spills to the right, its rough brushmarks suggesting soft folds of fabric. She wears a dark coat over a pale top. Soft, diffuse light creates gentle shifts of color that register emotion more than strict anatomy. The warm background recalls religious icons with gold tones, suggesting a quiet, almost devotional gratitude. Thick, expressive strokes refuse to smooth away age, fatigue, or complex feeling, aligning with McIver’s belief that “all of my portraits are self-portraits” and should tell the truth about a life. Created when she was an acclaimed North Carolina artist and teacher, "Truly Grateful" honors the resilience of a Black woman who has come through grief and caregiving and can finally pause, eyes closed, to acknowledge that ... despite everything ... life is still good.
November 25, 2025 at 9:13 PM
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“Autorretrato (Self-Portrait)” by Marta Pérez (Puerto Rican) - Acrylic on wood / 1980 - Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (San Juan) #WomenInArt #MartaPerez #MartaPérez #MuseoDeArteDePuertoRico #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #art #artText #arte #SelfPortrait #PuertoRicanArt #PuertoRicanArtist
A Puerto Rican woman with a light beige skin tone sits frontally against a wall of pale gray-and-tan diamond tiles. Her long, straight black hair spreads like a dark halo, framing a high forehead and almost heart-shaped face. She has large, almond-shaped blue eyes ringed with teal shadow and long lashes, slim brows, a small nose, and bright red lips that curve into a gentle smile. Yellow and blush-pink roses with green leaves tuck into her hair and cluster at her shoulders and hands, suggesting fragrance and movement around her body. She wears a deep crimson gown with wide sleeves and a deep square neckline, its bodice densely patterned with lacy pinks, blacks, and metallic touches. A delicate green-bead necklace arcs across her neck. Her hands, with softly tapered fingers and pale pink nails, rest calmly at the bottom edge, anchoring the richly colored figure against a dark blue band below. Puerto Rican artist Marta Pérez paints herself as both a specific woman and a fantasy figure, stylizing her own features into an almost doll-like, angelic presence surrounded by tropical flowers. Created in 1980, when she was turning from teaching to painting full-time in Old San Juan, the work reflects her interest in exuberant color, allegory, and femininity. The lush roses and ornamental dress echo the “celebratory and critical” vision she described as art that moves viewers toward laughter and peace while still questioning social norms. Descended from Basque, Jewish, Greek, and Irish forebears and active in the Asociación de Mujeres Artistas de Puerto Rico, Pérez often fused multicultural references, carnival spirit, and sacred overtones. Here, her self-portrait becomes an icon of Caribbean womanhood that is glamorous, introspective, and firmly centered in her own imagined paradise.
November 25, 2025 at 4:12 PM
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“Self-portrait #1” by Mona al-Kasabi (Saudi Arabian) - Painting on canvas / Late 1980s - Private collection (Saudi Arabia) #WomenInArt #MonaAlKasabi #منى_عبدالله_القصبي #AlKasabi #SaudiArt #SaudiArtist #SelfPortrait #BlueskyArt #ArabWomenArtists #art #artText #WomanArtist #WomensArt #WomenArtists
In this vertical head-and-shoulders self-portrait, a light brown–skinned Mona al-Kasabi (منى القصبي) faces us directly against a hazy background of blended cream, yellow, and pale blue strokes. Her straight chestnut hair falls in a smooth, layered blowout around the face to her shoulders before dissolving into the surrounding paint. Her large almond-shaped dark eyes are framed by heavy black liner and long lashes. They hold a steady, frontal gaze beneath high arched brown brows. Her nose is straight and narrow, and her full lips, painted a muted rose pink, rest in a closed, neutral expression. A low scooped neckline is only lightly indicated in pinks that merge with the textured field. At the lower left, a long-haired gray-and-white cat with pointed ears, a small dark nose, and bright green eyes looks out toward us. Its soft fur is rendered in feathery strokes that echo the loose, swirling background. Al-Kasabi’s self-portrait asserts a woman’s presence in a Saudi art scene that, when this was painted, offered few public images of women by women themselves. The steady gaze, styled hair, and precise makeup echo popular ideals of beauty, yet the dissolving background and barely defined neckline hint at a more fragile, interior self. The cat is more than a pet. Its bright green eyes mirror the artist’s stare, turning it into a double or confidant that shares her alertness. Commentators link this canvas to a small series of self-portraits in which al-Kasabi repeats the cat as an alter ego and a sign of independence, curiosity, and quiet defiance. Beyond the her painting prowess, Al-Kasabi’s founding of the Saudi Center for Fine Arts in Jeddah has nurtured generations of artists, so this image also reads as a claim to artistic authority as an Arab woman picturing herself as both subject and maker of culture.
November 25, 2025 at 5:30 AM
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“Self-Portrait” by Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence (American, born Barbados) - Oil on canvas / 1991 - Seattle Art Museum (Washington) #WomenInArt #GwendolynKnightLawrence #artText #SeattleArtMuseum #SelfPortrait #GwenKnight #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #BlackArt #AmericanArtist #BlackWomenArtists
This self-portrait depicts artist Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence around age 78, after decades spent painting, teaching, and supporting the career of her husband, Jacob Lawrence, while her own work was only beginning to receive wide recognition. The tight cropping and stark background strip away setting and status, leaving us with a Black woman whose life has been devoted to art and community. The painting shows Knight Lawrence as a close-up bust-length figure turned slightly to her left, meeting us with a steady, appraising gaze. Her brown skin is modeled in thin, translucent layers of beige, green, and rose, emphasizing planes of cheekbone, brow, and jaw rather than smoothing them away. A cap of short, pale gray hair is brushed back from her forehead, threaded with faint streaks of blue and yellow. Her dark eyes sit in softened sockets, ringed by shadow that suggests age and intensity rather than fatigue. The lips are closed and unsmiling, edged with a muted red. She wears a high-collared navy top, creating a solid vertical shape anchoring the lower half of the canvas. Behind her, a field of saturated red on the left presses against a cooler violet-brown on the right, so her head seems to emerge from a charged, uncertain space instead of a clearly defined room. The high collar recalls a studio coat, aligning her with working painters rather than with the glamorous sitters in many traditional portraits. Her expression looks quietly resistant … alert, skeptical, and self-possessed … as if she is measuring how history has seen her and how she sees herself. Created when she began receiving major retrospectives and awards, the work insists on the presence of an elder Black woman artist whose vision never dimmed. Via exhibitions such as “Lives Connected: Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight” and “Never Late for Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight,” this portrait anchors her legacy. She is not merely the partner of a famous painter, but a formidable artist in her own right.
November 24, 2025 at 5:35 PM
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“Self-Portrait” by Priscilla Warren Roberts (American) - Oil on canvas board / 1937 - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia) #WomenInArt #PriscillaWarrenRoberts #PriscillaRoberts #PAFA #SelfPortrait #artText #art #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #PennsylvaniaAcademyoftheFineArts
Painted in 1937, when American artist Priscilla Warren Roberts was about 21 and beginning serious study in New York, this portrait reads as a clear statement of intent. She presents herself not as a polished society woman but as a working artist with her hair askew, no jewelry, and a practical collared-shirt standing in for a studio smock. It’s a vertical, close-up self-portrait showing the light-skinned young woman centered against a dark forest green background. Her dusty brown hair is pulled back but escapes in loose wisps, especially at the right edge, as if caught mid-motion. Large round amber glasses frame wide green-brown eyes that look directly at us, giving her an alert, almost startled focus. Light hits her forehead, nose, and long neck, leaving soft shadows around the eyes and jaw. Her mouth is parted and painted a brick red, as if she might of just inhaled to speak. She wears a dark navy shirt with bright cobalt stripes and pale piping around an open collar and the shoulders cropped close to the edges. Her tilted gaze and tight mouth suggest uncertainty as well as resolve, catching a moment of self-questioning. Roberts would later be praised for painstaking “magic-realist” still lifes that juxtapose everyday objects with near-photographic precision. In this self-portrait, that exacting attention is turned inward, tracing each flare of light on skin and glasses. In PAFA’s collection, the painting marks an early, uncompromising self-image of a woman determined to build a lifelong, quietly unconventional career in art.
November 24, 2025 at 6:54 AM
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“Autorretrato (Self-Portrait)” by María Izquierdo (Mexican) - Oil on canvas / 1946 - Private collection (Mexico) #WomenInArt #MariaIzquierdo #Izquierdo #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #art #artText #artwork #arte #BlueskyArt #MexicanArt #SelfPortrait #ModernArt #MaríaIzquierdo #MexicanArtist
In this self-portrait, Mexican artist María Izquierdo faces us against a mottled red background that feels like warm plaster. Her medium-brown skin is modeled with careful light and shadow while her strong dark brows arch over deep-set brown eyes that look straight out, steady and appraising. She wears matte red lipstick and a closed-mouth expression that reads as composed rather than welcoming. Her hair is braided and wrapped around her head, bound with a multicolored rebozo in earthy greens, reds, and tans. Squared shoulders in a glossy black dress anchor the composition. The dress has a broad, square neckline edged with embroidered white lace that reveals her neck and upper chest. At her ears hang bell-shaped earrings, and around her neck sits an elaborate silver-toned choker and pendant ensemble of stacked plaques, studs, and dangling tassels that evoke pre-Hispanic jewelry. The symmetrical pose, front lighting, and tight framing turn her body into a calm, monumental presence. Painted in the mid-1940s, this work belongs to a period when Izquierdo, already a leading figure of Mexican modernism and the first Mexican woman to have a solo exhibition in the United States, used self-portraiture to assert artistic and cultural authority. Critics like Octavio Paz described her appearance as that of a “pre-Hispanic goddess,” and here she leans into that, combining modern portraiture with references to Indigenous adornment, Catholic votive imagery, and popular dress. The heavy pectoral and stark black gown suggest ritual armor as much as fashion, while the red backdrop intensifies associations with blood, devotion, and sacrifice. In 1946, Izquierdo was recovering from professional setbacks after male muralists blocked her from a major public commission. This painting is a refusal to be diminished. Instead, she is dignified, self-possessed, and rooted in Mexicanidad on her own terms as a pioneering feminist voice who broke clichés of Mexican womanhood.
November 24, 2025 at 1:29 AM
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“Seated Self Portrait, Shown in a Cheval Dressing Mirror” by Marie-Louise Roosevelt Pierrepont - Oil on canvas / 1952 - Thoresby Courtyard (Thoresby Park, Nottinghamshire, England) #WomenInArt #artText #Pierrepont #ThoresbyCourtyard #SelfPortrait #BlueskyArt #WomenArtists #WomensArt #WomanArtist
In a warmly lit yellow room, an oval cheval mirror with red wood frame dominates the centre of the painting. Within its tall frame, we see the artist’s reflection depicting a mature light-skinned woman with short softly waved fair hair, seated and turned toward us. She wears a blue housecoat over a skirt, a white cloth draped across her lap, a painter’s palette held in one hand and a brush poised in her other hand, as if caught mid-stroke. Behind her reflection is a brass or iron bedstead, glimpsed through the mirror’s narrow vertical. Outside the mirror, to the left, a small wooden table holds a patterned mug and papers; to the right, a green chaise has a small brown dog sitting upright, ears pricked, and facing off canvas to the right. Books crowd a shelf, framed pictures line the walls, and a red floor anchors the intimate, lived-in studio-bedroom. Painted late in a career that stretched more than seventy-five years, this self-portrait shows artist Marie-Louise Roosevelt Pierrepont, aka Countess Manvers, as a working artist rather than as an aristocrat. Trained in Paris, where she exhibited at the Salon and Société Nationale des Beaux Arts before returning to Britain, she became known for portraits and detailed interior views of Cliffe Castle and later Thoresby Hall. Here, the mirror becomes both literal tool and metaphor as it frames a woman who insists on being seen at work, surrounded by books, paintings, and her dog as an alert companion witness. Created in 1952, after her move to Thoresby Park, the painting belongs to the Pierrepont Collection of more than 600 of her works now housed at Thoresby Courtyard, preserving the self-image of an artist who documented her domestic and estate worlds with affectionate precision.
November 23, 2025 at 5:51 PM
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“Vivian (Self-portrait)” by Vivian Browne (American) - Oil on canvas / 1965 - The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC) #WomenInArt #VivianBrowne #Browne #ThePhillipsCollection #SelfPortrait #art #artText #BlueskyArt #BlackArt #BlackArtists #AfricanAmericanArtist #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
Painted in mid-1960s New York, this self-portrait comes from a period when American artist Vivian Browne, newly trained at Hunter College, was concentrating on figuration and the relationships around her before turning to the more overtly satirical “Little Men” series and later her Africa and tree paintings. Here, she claims space as a working Black woman artist and not a model or symbol, but a painter surrounded by her tools, an art study in the background, and everyday objects. This vertical canvas shows Browne from the waist up, turned three-quarters toward us in a softly lit studio. Her medium-brown skin is modeled with greens, tans, and mauves that pool around her high cheekbones and strong jaw, giving her face a sculpted, shifting presence. Short dark hair with brown highlights frames an intent gaze with her eyes slightly widened, eyebrows arched, and full lips gently closed as if holding back speech. She wears a loose, rose-violet robe or coat that falls in broad planes rather than detailed folds. Behind her, a second canvas with a female figure in warm tones hangs on a pale wall, and a shallow wooden bowl rests on a ledge, anchoring the space. The background is built from creamy yellows and cool grays, so that the artist’s alert expression becomes the image’s brightest focal point. Her chromatic risks of green shadows on brown skin, mauve flesh against a yellow backdrop signal the experimental color that would define her later abstract works. The steady, complicated stare echoes her oft-quoted belief that “Black art is political,” yet the politics live in self-definition rather than slogan. Reintroduced in the traveling retrospective “Vivian Browne: My Kind of Protest,” this self-portrait anchors the story of an artist whose portraiture, activism, and teaching insisted that Black women’s inner lives belonged at the center of American art.
November 23, 2025 at 6:12 AM
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“窗前自画像 (Self-portrait by the Window)” by 潘玉良 / Pan Yuliang (Chinese) - Oil on canvas / 1945 - Anhui Provincial Museum (Hefei, China) #WomenInArt #PanYuliang #潘玉良 #SelfPortrait #ChineseArt #artText #art #1940s #artwork #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #AnhuiProvincialMuseum #安徽博物院 #ChineseArtist
At the center of this oil painting, Chinese artist Pan Yuliang (潘玉良) stands beside a table, her body angled toward the open window while her head tilts toward us. Her light-brown skin is modeled with rough, textured strokes that echo the chalky walls behind her. She wears a short-sleeved brick-red dress with a sharp yellow collar and a string of warm beads around her neck. Her black hair is swept into sculpted rolls and straight bangs. One hand rests on the tabletop beside a tall vase filled with full, blush-pink blossoms and blue-green leaves. Behind her, pale buildings and russet roofs glow in hazy daylight, framed by dark window latches and panes, so that the city outside feels distant from her calm, slightly guarded gaze. Painted in war-scarred France, Pan presents herself as a modern Chinese woman artist living abroad. The Western day dress, victory-roll hairstyle, and urban window view locate her in her adopted Paris, yet her composed stillness and unmistakably Chinese features insist on an identity that refuses to dissolve into the European scene. The sturdy vase of flowers was a motif she repeated across self-portraits and it softens the interior but also nods to the still-life subjects to which women painters were long relegated. Here that vase is pushed to the side while the artist’s own body occupies the center. Born in poverty in Yangzhou of China’s Jiangsu province on June 14, 1895 (birth name 陈秀清 / Chen Xiuqing), sold to a brothel, and later educated in Shanghai, Rome, and Paris, Pan had, by the mid-1940s, already faced public scandal in China for her unapologetic female nudes and had chosen a difficult, often lonely life of artistic independence in France. In this quiet image, she does not advertise success or glamour. Instead, the rough surfaces, muted colors, and slightly melancholy gaze record the persistence of a woman who has crossed cultures and class boundaries, claiming painting and the act of looking back at us as her enduring legacy.
November 22, 2025 at 8:27 PM
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Selbstbildnis vor der Staffelei (Self-Portrait in Front of an Easel) by Gabriele Münter (German) - Oil on canvas / c 1908–09 - Princeton University Art Museum (New Jersey) #WomenInArt #GabrieleMünter #Münter #PrincetonUniversityArtMuseum #artText #GabrieleMunter #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
Currently on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, this self-portrait was painted soon after German artist Gabriele Münter with her romantic partner and artistic mentor/collaborator Wassily Kandinsky discovered the Bavarian village of Murnau. It proclaims her identity as a modern professional artist. The light-skinned woman in her early thirties faces us head-on, cropped at the torso. She wears a wide straw hat banded in green and crowned with white daisies, its brim casting shadow over blue-grey eyes and flushed cheeks. Dark hair peeks out in loose waves, framing a serious, slightly tired gaze and thin gentle mouth. A cream dress and beige wrap fall in broad planes of color, broken only by a gold chain with a vivid red pendant on her chest. At the lower edge, a brown palette with loaded brushes tilts toward us while more brushes rise in a vase to the left. To the right, the slanted edge of a canvas and easel slices the frame. Thick, visible strokes of rosy pink, orange, and green churn across the background to make her still, upright figure read unmistakably as that of a working painter at her station. Münter, already a leader in the Munich avant-garde and later a founding member of the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, pushed against limits placed on women’s training and careers. Here, she quietly overturns those rules as the big flowered hat signals bourgeois femininity, yet the palette and easel claim the traditionally masculine space of the studio. Her steady, unsmiling gaze suggests both fatigue and resolve, as if meeting the reflection she paints while also confronting any who might doubt her seriousness. The compressed space, tilted tools, and non-naturalistic pinks and greens foreshadow the bold color and simplified forms that would define German Expressionism. The painting stands as a declaration that Münter is not merely Kandinsky’s companion but an artist whose vision shapes modern art in her own right.
November 22, 2025 at 5:21 PM
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“Identity 2 (Self-Portrait)” by Hend Al-Mansour (Saudi-American) - Acrylic on paper / 1999 - Artist’s collection (St. Paul, Minnesota) #WomenInArt #HendAlMansour #هند_المنصور #AlMansour #SelfPortrait #art #arte #artText #BlueskyArt #ContemporaryArt #Identity #ArabAmericanArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists
In this intimate self-portrait, Hend Al-Mansour depicts two versions of her face. On the left, a frontal, softly modeled head-and-shoulders view meets our gaze, eyes steady and unblinking as if painting her own face with a paintbrush. On the right, her profile turns inward toward the other image, as if studying or questioning herself. Loose, expressionist brushwork leaves visible strokes and thin washes so that handwritten Arabic and English text drifts across skin, hair, and background. Some words remain crisp while others dissolve into texture, so the layered script reads as thoughts, prayers, or questions. The result is a portrait where likeness, gesture, and overlapping texts fuse together. By combining Arabic and English handwritten texts, she charges her composition with symbolism. The English text reads: “What am I … I am my window … the wind … I am the vision … I am the beholder … and I am the seen … I am everything I know … and everything I reach … I am my void” The Arabic text consists of scattered words: - perspective - vision - viewer - myself - I am one Both texts revolve around ideas of identity, individualism, and self-recognition. Painted soon after Al-Mansour left Saudi Arabia for Minnesota in the United States and turned from medicine to art, “Identity 2” wrestles with what it means to see and be seen. One face looks outward while the other looks inward, mirroring the tension between public image and inner life for a Saudi woman who dares to unveil herself in paint. By mixing Western modernist brushwork with calligraphic script rooted in Islamic visual culture, Al-Mansour bridges the languages of home and diaspora. This self-portrait becomes an act of defiance and spiritual reflection, claiming space for Arab Muslim women’s voices and self-representations in contemporary art.
November 22, 2025 at 7:50 AM
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"Önarckép lámpával (Self-Portrait with Lamp)" by Éber Anna (Hungarian) - Oil on canvas / c. 1930s - Hungarian National Gallery (Budapest) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists #AnnaEber #ÉberAnna #Eber #AnnaÉber #ArtBsky #art #artText #artwork #HungarianNationalGallery #HNG #SelfPortrait #WomanArtist
In this half-length self-portrait, artist Anna Éber (Éber Anna) depicts herself as a young white Hungarian woman standinding slightly left of center, turned three-quarters toward us. Her dark hair is swept back, exposing a smooth forehead and sharply lit cheekbones. A warm yellow lamp with a veil shade hangs to our right, its harsh light cutting across the darkness and catching her face, neck, and loose white blouse in acidic greens, golds, and blues. Her ruffled collar and full sleeves are rendered with fast, textured strokes that emphasize movement rather than polish. She stares at us with a direct, almost challenging gaze, red lips slightly pursed. Below, her right hand holds a paintbrush, fingers tense at the edge, while the background dissolves into near-black, making the artist and lamp feel suspended in a pool of light. The lamp turns this into a drama of self-scrutiny. Éber paints herself not as a passive muse but as a working artist, interupted in the act of thinking, reading, or preparing to work. The intense side-lighting recalls baroque chiaroscuro, yet the flickering brushwork and electric glow belong to a modern, mid-20th-century Budapest. Born in Baja in 1905, Éber trained at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts under Gyula Rudnay and began exhibiting self-portraits in the National Salon while still a student. Later, she taught evening art courses, created film-studio decorations, and continued to paint portraits and landscapes marked by luminous color and emotional depth. The battered lampshade and stark bulb evoke both vulnerability and resilience as the artist stands alone in the dark, yet she also controls the light that defines her features. This self-portrait with lamp can be read as a quiet manifesto of a woman asserting her presence, intellect, and professional identity within a male-dominated art world, lit by a beam of her own making.
November 21, 2025 at 10:19 PM
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"Self-Portrait in Blue Sari" by Amrita Sher-Gil (Hungarian-Indian) - Oil on canvas / c 1937 - Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India #WomenInArt #AmritaSherGil #SherGil #KNMA #KiranNadarMuseumOfArt #SelfPortrait #Sher-Gil #artText #IndianArt #AmritaSher-Gil #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
Painted around 1937, after artist Amrita Sher-Gil had returned from Paris and immersed herself in India, this self-portrait belongs to the years she moved between Shimla in the Himalayan foothills, her family estate in rural Uttar Pradesh, and long journeys through South India. Trained in European modernism yet hungry for an idiom rooted in the subcontinent, she studied Ajanta murals, Mughal and Pahari painting, and village life, insisting that “India belongs only to me” as a painterly destiny. Here she casts herself as a modern Indian woman, wrapped in a sari yet bare-armed, with the directness of a city intellectual rather than a conventional bride. The young woman with medium-brown skin sits turned slightly to our left, her large dark eyes steadily peer out with a look of knowledge. Her beautiful face is framed by long black hair and a sheer, midnight-blue veil that drops over her shoulders, a tiny bindi centering her brow. She wears a sleeveless indigo blue sari that pools into broad, textured strokes around her lap. One bare arm angles across her body, the other forearm rests along her knee, her hands rendered as soft, sketchy planes. Against a pale, almost unfinished background, the saturated blues and her luminous full pink mouth pull us toward her interior life rather than surface detail. The loose, unfinished hands and swathes of blue resist salon polish, asserting process and doubt, while her unsmiling gaze confronts both us and the male-dominated art world she was determined to enter. Within just a few years she would paint her great village scenes and die suddenly at twenty-eight (in 1941), yet works like this helped secure her place as a pioneer of modern Indian art and a touchstone for later women artists who use self-portraiture to claim complex, fearless identities.
November 21, 2025 at 7:21 PM
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“Self-Portrait” by Frances Cranmer Greenman (American) - Oil on canvas / 1923 - Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minnesota) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #FrancesCranmerGreenman #Greenman #MinneapolisInstituteofArt #SelfPortrait #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #FrancesGreenman
Painted when Frances Cranmer Greenman was a rising modern portraitist in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this image is part self-branding and part self-revelation. She depicts herself as a young white woman with pale greenish skin and short auburn hair standing front and center against a turbulent teal sky, her body facing us and her head slightly tilted as she meets our gaze. She wears a vivid orange coat with a wide, fuzzy gray-brown fur collar and deep violet lapels that open to a chartreuse dress at her chest. A rounded blue cloche hat covers most of her hair, casting a soft shadow over her watchful, yet tired eyes. Her gloved hands meet at her waist, the light green leather creased as her fingers tug the coat closed. Behind her, a sketchy city riverfront unfurls: pale water and paths edged with small trees on the right, and tan and brick-red buildings that rise loosely on either side. The orange coat, snug cloche, and sketchy city riverfront present her as a confident 1920s professional who belongs in the modern street as much as the studio. Brash oranges, sharp greens, and deep purples signal her interest in Expressionist color that some patrons found too radical, so she experiments on her own likeness. Born in South Dakota to suffragist Emma Cranmer, Greenman studied in Washington, New York, and Paris before settling in Minneapolis, where she painted socialites and taught portraiture near the museum. Around 1923, she was winning prizes in Twin Cities exhibitions and beginning to court East Coast and Hollywood patrons, yet local critics sometimes dismissed her style as too bold or unfeminine. By placing herself in this chilly, windswept cityscape, she links her own body to an urban, post-suffrage world where women claimed public space, paychecks, and reputations as professionals. The painting becomes a manifesto declaring that Greenman is not simply recording a face but announcing, with color and stance, that she intends to be seen.
November 21, 2025 at 8:05 AM
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"Munni" by Rudolf Swoboda (Austrian) - Oil on panel / 1886–1888 - Royal Collection, Osborne House (Isle of Wight, UK) #WomenInArt #RudolfSwoboda #RudolfSwobodaderJüngere #Swoboda #art #artText #BlueskyArt #RoyalCollectionTrust #OsborneHouse #PortraitofaGirl #SouthAsianArt #IndianArt #AustrianArtist
Royal Collection records identify Munni as a 16-year-old sweeper, or mehtrani, from Lahore in the Punjab region of British India (today in Pakistan), a worker from one of the lowest-ranked caste communities whose essential cleaning labor was often treated as socially “unclean” and disregarded. In 1886, Queen Victoria commissioned Austrian painter Rudolf Swoboda, born in Vienna in 1859, to travel through India and paint the peoples of her empire; over forty of these portraits, including Munni’s, were later hung together in the Durbar Corridor at Osborne House. The vertical panel shows a young South Asian girl in quiet profile, her body turned to the left (our right). A warm red tunic, edged with a narrow band of gold, wraps her torso and rises toward her neck, its rich color glowing against a plain, softly textured background. Large hoop earrings threaded with tiny glass beads catch the light, while her dark hair, partly covered, falls back in loose strands under a thin beige covering that extends across her body. Swoboda models her medium-brown skin with careful, naturalistic highlights along cheek, nose and lips, so that her features feel observed rather than idealized. The panel pulls us into an intimate distance, as if we’ve paused beside her in a brief, thoughtful stillness during her day. Swoboda had impressed the Queen with his portraits of “live” Indian artisans at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London and painted "Munni" on site from close observation, using oil on a small wooden panel to preserve fine details of clothing, jewelery and expression. Seen today, the work sits uneasily between imperial cataloguing and individual presence: commissioned to exemplify a “type,” Munni nevertheless appears as a specific teenager with a name, history and life. Her steady, gaze to the side invites us to recognize both the power inequalities that shaped her portrayal and the quiet dignity she maintains within them.
November 20, 2025 at 8:45 PM
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"Lady With a Mirror" by Rukmini Varma (Indian) - Oil on canvas / 2018 - Sandeep & Gitanjali Maini Foundation (Bangalore, India) #WomenInArt #RukminiVarma #Varma #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #art #ArtText #BlueskyArt #SandeepGitanjaliMainiFoundation #IndianArt #SouthAsianArt #IndianArtist
Indian artist Rukmini Varma paints a “lady of noble lineage, possibly a princess,” echoing her legendary great-great-grandfather Raja Ravi Varma’s 1894 "Nair Lady With a Mirror." The mirror theme is a way to explore how royal and elite women of Travancore fashioned themselves in private: arranging hair, choosing jewelry and quietly judging the image they present to the world. A young South Asian woman with brown skin fills the canvas from chest up, turned slightly while checking herself out in a oval hand-mirror with an ornate gold frame with a focused sidelong gaze. Dark, wavy hair spills over her shoulders as she lifts a gold forehead ornament into place along her hairline. Her large kohl-lined eyes, arched brows and soft red lips are rendered with precision. Dense gold jewelry including a broad gem-set necklaces, pearl strands, armlets, bangles and rings encircles her neck, chest and arms over a bodice edged in pearls. A dark, softly blended background throws her illuminated skin, hair, ornaments and mirror into focus, turning a routine moment of grooming into an intimate close-up. Painted in Bengaluru in 2018, when Varma was in her late seventies, the work belongs to a mature period in which she balanced studio time with leading the Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation, researching, documenting and exhibiting her ancestor’s art. Born in 1940 as Princess Bharani Thirunal Rukmini Bayi, granddaughter of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, she grew up between palace traditions and post-independence Bengaluru, absorbing stories of court life and how images of gods and royals shaped public ideas of beauty and power. The young woman's composure, heavy jewelry and gaze into the mirror allude to the splendor and constraint of royal womanhood, while the act of adjusting her own adornment suggests agency and self-fashioning. Varma preserves a familiar ideal of South Indian femininity yet infuses it with familial history and a belief that women are authors of their own image.
November 20, 2025 at 5:31 PM
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"Kikuyu Bride" by Joy Adamson (Austrian-Kenyan) - Watercolor on paper / c. 1950s - National Museums of Kenya (Nairobi, Kenya) #WomenInArt #JoyAdamson #JoyFriederikeVictoriaGessner #Adamson #NationalMuseumsOfKenya #arte #artText #PortraitofaWoman #art #BlueskyArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists #WomanArtist
This bride is identified by artist Joy Adamson’s own inscription as Njeri Nyagesua Njiri, painted at Sharagu, Kenya, and belongs to a wider mid-20th-century series (now preserved at the National Museums of Kenya) in which Adamson documented Kenya’s communities in ceremonial dress. The painting shows a young Kikuyu woman facing us directly, her rich brown skin illuminated by soft, even light against a muted, hazy background. Her hair is mostly hidden under an elaborate halo of tightly coiled beadwork that flares out from each side of her head like twin crowns with threads of pink, lilac, and pale tones looping in dense rings. Fine painted or scarification marks frame her eyes and brow, echoing the curves of the beads. Her gaze is steady, serious, and slightly downturned, without a smile. Heavy strands of multicolored glass beads layer her chest, anchored by a large pale disc pendant that rests high on her sternum. A warm, brown cloth is draped over one shoulder, leaving the other bare so the textures of skin, paint, and jewellery are clearly visible. Her skin, the beads, and the fabric have been rendered with meticulous, almost botanical attention so that we feel the weight of the necklace, the tightness of the headpiece, and the stillness of her pose. The intricate beadwork and facial markings signal a pivotal life transition: through marriage rites, Njeri moves from girlhood into adult womanhood, gaining new status and responsibilities within Kikuyu society. The coils of beads, the layered necklaces, and the carefully applied cosmetics are not mere decoration but visual language, communicating beauty, maturity, and the honor of her family at the moment of ruracio and wedding celebration. At the same time, the bride’s calm, unsmiling expression resists romantic cliché. She appears thoughtful, self-possessed, and slightly guarded, reminding us that this is an individual with her own history, not simply an ethnographic “type.”
November 20, 2025 at 5:05 AM
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"Untitled" by Akinola Lasekan (Nigerian) - Oil on board / 1967 - Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Pan-Atlantic University (Lagos, Nigeria) #WomenInArt #AkinolaLasekan #Lasekan #art #artText #BlueskyArt #YemisiShyllonMuseumofArt #YSMA #Pan-AtlanticUniversity #NigerianArt #AfricanPortrait #NigerianArtist
Painted in 1967, a few years after Nigeria’s independence, this untitled portrait reflects artist Akinola Lasekan’s commitment to portraying Nigerians with seriousness and grace rather than as ethnographic types. Recognized as a pioneer of Nigerian modernism and especially admired for portraiture, Lasekan combined formal training under British educator Kenneth Murray with close observation of everyday people, using color and light to affirm their individuality. This vertical bust-length portrait depicts a Black woman facing slightly left against a curtain-like wash of mint and teal greens. Her deep brown skin is modeled with warm highlights across her forehead, nose, and collarbones, and a small scar on one cheek. She wears a tall, carefully wrapped pink and peach head tie that twists into a knot above her head, echoing the soft folds of cloth at her shoulders. Her blouse is patterned with narrow vertical stripes of rose, coral, and pale cream, as its rounded neckline frames the strong column of her neck. Long gold earrings with rounded drops hang just below her jawline. Her dark eyes are focused, but not on us. Her lips are gently closed, giving her expression a mix of composure and quiet resolve. Soft, blended brushstrokes keep surfaces smooth while faint vertical bands in the background suggest fabric behind her, keeping all attention on her calm, dignified presence. The woman’s elaborate head wrap, striped dress, and possible facial marks signal cultural rootedness, yet her direct, weighing gaze feels unmistakably contemporary. Set against the luminous green field, she appears neither idealized nor romanticized, but present as a thinking person who holds our look. By centering a Black woman as the sole subject, with no narrative scene around her, Lasekan quietly challenges colonial hierarchies that had long marginalized Africans. The work conveys beauty, self-possession, and the importance of seeing Nigerian women as protagonists in their own visual histories.
November 19, 2025 at 10:19 PM
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“La Guadalupana” by Ángel Rodríguez-Díaz (Puerto Rican-American) - Oil on canvas / 1999 - National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago, Illinois) #WomenInArt #AngelRodriguezDiaz #ÁngelRodríguezDíaz #AngelRodríguez-Díaz #NationalMuseumofMexicanArt #ArtBsky #art #artText #PuertoRicanArtist #SandraCisneros
Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros appears life-size, seated on the floor before a sofa. Bare legs extend toward us, knees bent, body angled diagonally across the canvas. Her torso twists as she leans into an oversized white satin pillow perched on the couch, its slick folds catching a hard, theatrical light. Her face, rendered with meticulous realism, meets us in a steady, unsmiling gaze as pores, creases, and highlights register the heavy, almost overheated air. Dark hair frames her features and spills toward her shoulders, echoing a deep, uncertain space behind her. In the upper right, the Virgin of Guadalupe materializes like a vision, framed by a scalloped mandorla edged with tiny, jewel-bright spheres that punctuate the dark ground and visually bind living woman to holy icon. Created as Ángel Rodríguez-Díaz’s second portrait of Cisneros, the painting stages an encounter between a celebrated Chicana author and the Virgin who haunts her essay “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess,” where she insists that her “Virgen” must be a woman like her and even declares, “She is God,” rejecting passive, silent models of brown womanhood. Here, the close rhyme between the two faces collapses distance between writer and apparition, casting Guadalupe as a real, Indigenous-featured woman and Cisneros as a contemporary goddess. The artist’s unforgiving photorealism of glistening skin, flexed muscles, and wrinkles at the knees refuses airbrushed ideals, honoring bodies often policed or shamed. Painted in 1999, when “The House on Mango Street” had already become a landmark of Latina coming-of-age literature, this work also marks a moment of mutual recognition between literature and visual art. Cisneros later donated the painting to the National Museum of Mexican Art in memory of her father, anchoring this intimate, contested self-portrait in Chicago’s Mexican and Mexican American cultural home.
November 19, 2025 at 6:55 AM
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"Retrato de María Félix (Portrait of María Félix)" by Diego Rivera (Mexican) - Oil on canvas / 1948 - Pérez Simón Collection (Mexico City, Mexico) #WomenInArt #DiegoRivera #Rivera #PerezSimonCollection #MariaFelix #PortraitofaWoman #art #artText #ArtOfTheDay #BlueskyArt #MexicanArt #MexicanArtist
Mexican artist Diego Rivera depicts María de los Ángeles “María” Félix Güereña, aka La Doña, diva of Mexico’s Golden Age cinema, as an icon of modern glamour and self-possession. By 1948, Félix was an international star whose fierce screen personas and legendary wit made her a symbol of female power and sophistication in Mexican culture. Rivera, already a celebrated muralist, was enamored with her beauty and charisma so he produced several portraits. The glamorous celebrity with medium-light golden skin fills the canvas from the chest up, turned slightly toward us with her head tipped in calm defiance. Her voluminous black-violet curls billow outward like a dark halo, catching cool blue and purple highlights as they swirl against a hazy, violet-brown background. She looks directly at us with arched brows, dark almond eyes, and a small, knowing smile framed by deep red lipstick. Large gold hoop earrings catch the light at either side of her neck. Her bare shoulders and upper chest are modeled in smooth gradations of peach and rose so the light gathers softly along her collarbone and the curve of her breast rather than emphasizing hard edges. A white ruffled neckline peeks out from beneath a rich magenta drapery that she gathers across her body with a long, elegant hand, each finger tipped in bright red polish. The pose and cropping bring us close, making her luminous face, hair, and hand the undeniable center of attention. Félix later recalled that Rivera wanted to paint her nude, while she had asked to appear in traditional Tehuana dress, asserting her own ideas about Mexican femininity and Indigenous style. Instead, he presents a compromise that is still unapologetically sensual with bare skin, cascading hair, and a theatrical, almost cinematic light, but no explicit nudity. Her controlled smile, tilted chin and firm grip on the drape suggest a woman who understands exactly how she is being looked at and insists on owning that gaze.
November 19, 2025 at 12:24 AM
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"Girl in a Green Cap" by Laura Wheeler Waring (American) - Oil on canvas / 1930 - Howard University Gallery of Art (Washington, DC) #WomenInArt #LauraWheelerWaring #art #artText #Waring #BlackModernism #AfricanAmericanArt #WomenArtists #AmericanArt #HowardUniversity #WomanArtist #HarlemRenaissance
Painted at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, this portrait captures American artist Laura Wheeler Waring’s passion for dignified Black representation. The sitter’s name is unrecorded, but Waring refuses anonymity of type with the a fashionable cap, jewelry, and tailored layers that announce a modern woman who chooses how to be seen. A poised young Black woman sits three-quarter length against a gray-green wall brushed with lively diagonals. Her medium-brown skin is modeled by cool, even light. Her mouth carries a quiet vermilion and her eyes half-lidded are observant. A mint-green cap frames her slicked-back hair and echoes polished studs in her ears and a chunky bead necklace. She wears a sheer white blouse over a dark dress with "blooming" gauzy sleeves at the shoulders that catch pearly highlights, while the black bodice anchors the composition like a strong vertical. Her left forearm crosses the knee. A gold ring glinting, her right hand drops toward the seat’s edge. Broad, confident strokes leave ridges of paint visible, especially in the background’s leaf-like marks. The pose, slightly angled and unapologetically frontal, asserts self-possession rather than flirtation. No props or narrative setting disctracts us from the young woman's style, presence. Waring trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and, supported by the Harmon Foundation, studied in Paris in the 1920s, absorbing Impressionist color and a direct, modern brush. She spent her career teaching at Cheyney (the nation’s oldest HBCU), where she mentored young artists while exhibiting widely; commissions and exhibitions brought her portraits of writers, educators, and community leaders to national attention. In the early 1930s, she refined a language that fused academic draftsmanship with painterly economy which we see here in confident edges, restrained palette, and psychological immediacy.
November 18, 2025 at 4:39 PM
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“Negra vestida de negro”’by Jorge Severino (Dominican) - Acrylic on canvas / 1988 - Centro León (Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic) #WomenInArt #art #BlueskyArt #artText #artwork #JorgeSeverino #Severino #CentroLeon #portraitofaWoman #DominicanArt #arte #AcrylicPainting #DominicanArtist
“Negra vestida de negro” (“Black Woman Dressed in Black” or “Black Woman Wearing Black”) centers a Black Dominican woman as a dignified protagonist. The title foregrounds Black identity, while the sober black attire and dark field read as elegance and seriousness; the red cloth and small white accents (lace collar, headband/veil, jar) punctuate the scene, signaling vitality and refinement rather than exoticism. A poised Black woman stands behind a table draped in saturated red cloth with knotted fringe. Her deep-brown skin is modeled in cool light. She wears a blue-black dress which tapers at the waist and has structured sleeves. A crisp white lace collar glints like jewelry at her neckline, while a white headband play off tightly dressed hair. Her gaze is steady and self-possessed, meeting ours. Both hands rest on the tabletop in a grounded stance. To the right, a white jar with a red lid punctuates the stillness. The background is dark, with a faint floral pattern as it recedes so the sitter’s luminous face, lace, and the ceremonial red textile command the scene. Severino is celebrated for centering Black women as protagonists in Dominican art, rendered with couture-like fabrics, pared-back symbolism, and disciplined light. Here the high contrast is purposeful as the red textile reads as vitality and ceremony. White accents like the collar, headpiece, and porcelain suggest refinement or ritual, depending on our lens. Rather than a social type, the sitter asserts individuality through posture and gaze, placing Black elegance at the forefront of Dominican modern portraiture. Painted in 1988, the work belongs to his mature “morenas” arc, where cool tonal harmonies and precise edges counter folkloric cliché. By this period, Severino had already earned early recognition at the Eduardo León Jimenes contests (1966, 1968) and was exhibiting nationally and abroad.
November 18, 2025 at 8:43 AM
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一位年轻女士的肖像 (Portrait of a Young Woman, Christina Li Hui Wang) by 徐悲鸿 / Xu Beihong (Chinese) - Oil on canvas / 1940 - CAFA Art Museum (Beijing, China) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #XuBeihong #徐悲鸿 #Beihong #BlueskyArt #CAFAArtMuseum #portraitofawoman #ChineseArtist #中央美术学院美术馆 #ChineseArt #1940s
The sitter, Christina Li Hui Wang (李惠望 often recorded in English as Christina Lee / Christina Li Hui Wang and in Chinese name order as Li Hui Wang), was a young Singaporean Chinese woman who would later marry film magnate Loke Wan Tho (陆运涛). Painted in 1940 at Jiang Xia Tang in Singapore, the portrait comes from Xu Beihong’s Southeast Asian years, when he combined fundraising exhibitions for a war-torn China with commissioned portraits of the Nanyang Chinese elite. The young East Asian woman sits turned sideways on a wooden chair, her body angled towards us while her gaze drifts slightly upward and left, as if listening to someone just out of frame. Her skin has a warm, light-golden tone as soft light from the left catches her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, leaving gentle shadows under her chin and around her dark, thoughtful eyes. Her short, wavy black hair frames her face and brushes the collar of a close-fitting, short-sleeved dress patterned with bright red, yellow, blue, and green flowers. One bare forearm rests loosely along the chair back, fingers relaxed, suggesting ease. Behind her, a flat beige wall and a vertical band of darker tan are broken only by a slim hanging scroll with Chinese characters and a red seal, anchoring her in a Chinese cultural space. Xu’s European academic training shows in the careful modeling of Christina’s face, the convincing weight of her arm, and the natural fall of her floral dress, yet he strips away props of status to focus on her personality. She is a modern Chinese woman rooted in Chinese culture, yet dressed in cosmopolitan fashion, and living amid the uncertainties of war and empire. At this moment, Xu was emerging as a leading voice of modern Chinese art, arguing that realism could humanize national struggle. In Christina’s far-off gaze and poised, slightly tense arm, he captures a private experience of that larger history, turning a society beauty into the quiet protagonist of a modern Chinese story.
November 18, 2025 at 3:13 AM
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徒然 (Ennui) by 湯浅一郎 / Yuasa Ichirō (Japanese) - Oil on canvas / 1904 - Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (Takasaki, Japan) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #YuasaIchiro #湯浅一郎 #Yuasa #BlueskyArt #MuseumOfModernArtGunma #群馬県立近代美術館 #portraitofaWoman #JapaneseArt #yōgapainting #kimono #着物 #JapaneseArtist #洋画
Japanese artist Yuasa Ichirō (湯浅一郎) titled this work Tsurezure (徒然), often translated as Ennui or “idleness,” a word that suggests both boredom and the luxury of unscheduled time. Painted in 1904, when he was in his mid-thirties and exhibiting with Kuroda Seiki’s (黒田清輝) Hakubakai circle, the painting adapts Western oil technique (洋画 aka yōga) to a very Japanese scene of a woman at rest between reading and daydreaming. A young Japanese woman sits sideways at a window in a narrow room, her body turned in profile as she leans against a wooden sill. She wears a long pale kimono that gathers around her legs, the folds modeled in soft light and shadow rather than bold pattern. Her cheek rests on one hand, elbow propped, and her gaze drifts downward, unfocused, as if caught between daydream and fatigue. Behind her, pale shōji screens, faint green garden outside, and the dark strip of the threshold carve the scene into vertical and horizontal bands that frame her figure. Sunlight touches her face, sleeve, and the edge of the sill while the rest of the room sinks into shadow, emphasizing her stillness and the close, boxlike space she occupies. The shōji and threshold lock the composition into an almost architectural grid, but the woman’s casual pose and downcast eyes introduce a quiet emotional turbulence, echoing late-Meiji romanticism and its fascination with inner feeling. Here, “ennui” is not a dramatic crisis but a subtle, everyday weariness like a student, daughter, or wife suspended between expectations and her own private interior world. Today, the painting is one of the touchstones of The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma’s (群馬県立近代美術館) collection, marking Yuasa as a key regional voice in modern yōga (洋画) painting and preserving a tender, ambiguous image of Meiji-era womanhood that is self-contained, elegantly dressed, and deeply, visibly thinking.
November 17, 2025 at 5:36 PM