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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 3h

“To Tell Them There It’s Got To” by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (British) – Oil on canvas / 2013 – The Box (Plymouth, England) #WomenInArt #WomenArtists #WomensArt #FemalePainter #LynetteYiadom-Boakye #Yiadom-Boakye #TheBox #art #artText #artwork #blueskyArt #BlackWoman #OilPainting #WomenPaintingWomen

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 10h

"Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" by Gustav Klimt (Austrian) – Oil, gold, and silver on canvas / 1907 – Neue Galerie New York #WomenInArt #GustavKlimt #Klimt #art #artText #artwork #AustrianArtist #PortraitofaWoman #NeueGalerieNewYork #NeueGalerie #gold #fin-de-siècle #ViennaSecession #ArtNouveau

Austrian artist Gustav Klimt began this portrait in 1903, after seeing the sixth-century mosaics of Ravenna, which he called of “unprecedented splendor.” Their shimmer helped catalyze his Golden Phase, in which paint, silver, and gold leaf fused icon and portrait. The sitter, Adele Bloch-Bauer was a Jewish Viennese patron and salonnière and was the only person Klimt painted twice in full-length portraits, signaling their artistic rapport and the family’s support of the Viennese avant-garde.

A luminous, mosaic-like field of gold envelops the pale, oval-faced Adele with cropped dark hair and crimson lips. Centered frontally, she gazes outward, her forearms lifted and hands clasped into an elegant, slightly tense knot at her chest. A flat, patterned sheath and diaphanous golden mantle merge with the background, studded with triangles containing “all-seeing” eye motifs and tiny raised monograms “AB.” A diamond choker hugs her neck; bracelets and rings glint at the wrists and fingers. Around her head, a halo of ornament presses forward; below, a band of black-and-white trim at the lower left hints at the artist’s studio furnishings. Space feels ambiguous as she seems at once seated and standing as spirals, rectangles, and circles ripple across the surface like Byzantine tesserae bits of stone and glass pulsing with light.

Commissioned by her husband, industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, the work originally hung in their Vienna, Austria home. In 1938, the Nazis seized the family’s Klimts; in Vienna the canvas was retitled “Woman in Gold” to obscure Adele’s identity. Decades later, her niece Maria Altmann pursued restitution; following the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision enabling the case and an Austrian arbitration, the painting was returned to the heirs.

In 2006, Ronald S. Lauder acquired it for the Neue Galerie in New York, where it has remained on permanent view and is often described as the museum’s “Mona Lisa.”

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 14h

"Dupatta #10" by Shabana Kauser (British–American) - Oil on canvas / 2022 - Fort Smith Regional Art Museum (Arkansas) #WomenInArt #WomenPaintingWomen #WomanArtist #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #FortSmithRegionalArtMuseum #FSRAM #PakistaniArt #Kauser #WomensArt #FemaleArtist #ShabanaKauser #दुपट्टा

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 16h

Thanks for the thanks 😎 … and making my day 👍🏻

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 17h

I love this self-portrait and its companion “Open” sooo much. As I scroll thru my own personal gallery on Bluesky, these 2 paintings always make me pause. 😍

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 1d

“Jeune fille en vert aka Jeune fille aux gants” (Young Woman in Green aka Young Woman with Gloves) by Tamara de Lempicka (Polish-born, later Mexican) – Oil on plywood / c. 1927–1930 – Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) #WomenInArt #art #artText #TamaradeLempicka #Lempicka

Created in Paris after her escape from the Russian Revolution, "Jeune fille en vert" embodies Tamara de Lempicka’s fusion of Cubist geometry and Art Deco glamour. Born Tamara Górska in Warsaw in 1898, she rebuilt her life and name in exile, studying with Maurice Denis and André Lhote. By the late 1920s, she was painting aristocrats, actresses, and lovers with lacquered precision with her brush crafting a visual language of female autonomy.

We see a light-skinned young woman in a vivid green satin dress from the waist up, turned three-quarters left beneath a wide white hat. Honey-blond curls arc along her cheek as she lowers the brim with her right hand in a white glove; her left gloved hand seemingly reaches out at her side, fingers slightly splayed. The dress clings and ripples in high-gloss folds; a sheer green scarf runs diagonally across her chest and bursts behind her right shoulder as a large, crisp bow. Hard-edged light carves the planes of her face and arms, leaving a clean crescent shadow under the hat and deep seams in the satin. Her warm red lips and sidelong gaze are poised and self-possessed. A shallow backdrop of angled gray panels suggests an urban or stage-like space.

Openly bisexual, Lempicka moved through Paris’s queer avant-garde, depicting women with unapologetic sensuality. “I live life in the margins of society,” she said, defying norms of gender and respectability. Though not a declared feminist, her career embodied feminist practice: financially independent, self-invented, and commanding male-dominated circles through talent and style.

This anonymous woman in green is simultaneously a muse, mirror, and mask as Lempicka distilled the paradox she lived: desire bound in discipline, beauty shaped into power.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 1d

"La Carmencita" by John Singer Sargent (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1890 - Musée d’Orsay (Paris, France) #WomenInArt #dancer #performer #JohnSingerSargent #Sargent #art #artText #artwork #PortraitofaWoman #Muséed’Orsay #BlueskyArt #ArtoftheDay #AmericanArtist #BelleÉpoque #GildedAge #VictorianArt

Known onstage as La Carmencita, the sitter is Carmen Dauset Moreno, a Spanish dancer who dazzled audiences in Paris, London, and New York. American artist John Singer Sargent was already famous and had recently settled in London after the “Madame X” scandal when he became captivated by her modern theatrical charisma.

She stands against a dark, neutral backdrop, lit as if by a stage spotlight. Her torso tilts proudly, hands at her waist, chin lifted in calm command. Her black hair is swept up with a flower while warm pink makeup accents her lips and cheeks. Wrapped across her shoulders is a shimmering mantón de Manila with long fringe; beneath it billows an incandescent orange-gold dress, its tiered skirt densely embroidered with silvered motifs that catch the light. The hem arcs outward like a dancer’s twirl halted mid-motion. One satin shoe peeks forward, toes angled, the other leg receding into shadow. Her skin reads fair-to-light in this lighting; the costume’s saturated hue and metallic highlights amplify her presence. The paint handling shifts from crisp facial modeling to fluid, bravura strokes in the fabric and fringe, so that light, texture, and movement become part of the portrait’s character.

Sargent fuses portrait and performance: the dancer’s assertive pose, the flared silhouette, and the showman’s lighting convert a studio interior into a stage. The mantón and bright silk read as markers of a cosmopolitan, Andalusian-inflected style then thrilling European and American audiences, while the sitter’s composed gaze resists cliché, asserting control over how she is seen. The painting quickly became a sensation: shown in New York (1890) and London (1891), it affirmed Sargent’s virtuosity with sumptuous surfaces and psychological poise. In 1892 the French state acquired the work for the Musée du Luxembourg (the first museum home for living artists) before its transfer to the Musée d’Orsay.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 1d

“Closed“ by Monica Ikegwu (American) - Oil on canvas / 2021 - Baltimore Museum of Art (Maryland) #WomenInArt #WomenArtists #ArtText #WomanArtist #AmericanArtist #SelfPortrait #WomensArt #BaltimoreMuseumofArt #AfricanAmericanArtist #HipHopFashion #artwork #AfricanAmericanArt #Ikegwu #MonicaIkegwu

A beautiful young Black woman, American artist Monica Ikegwu herself, stands before a field of saturated crimson, the hue echoing across background, coat, and lipstick. She glances back over her left shoulder with a level, downward gaze. The high-gloss, quilted puffer coat is zipped and drawn close; deep, crisp folds gather at the collar and sleeves, catching pinpoint highlights that read like flashes on vinyl. Only a sliver of bare shoulder peeks out from the jacket. Her left hand rises just under her chin. Her hair is pulled into a low ponytail while her brows are neat and mouth composed. The red-on-red palette collapses space so the figure seems almost 3D, her silhouette defined by value shifts rather than outline. Hyper-real textures like stitched seams, knuckled fingers, specks of light on the coat contrast with the velvety, brush-quiet background.

In "Closed," paired with its companion "Open" (posted by me a few months ago on Bluesky), Ikegwu uses fashion as psychology: a zipped coat becomes armor; an unzipped one (in the other panel) signals exposure and ease. The monochrome crimson operates like a mood conveying heat, attention, and power while also flattening context so that presence itself is the subject. Ikegwu calls her practice a study of “perception… how people are viewed and how they want to appear,” and she aims to “capture the person… their essence” without forcing them into someone else’s ideal. Here, the artist stages herself as both model and message, aligning with hip-hop’s sartorial codes where outerwear telegraphs status and stance.

The downward gaze reads regal rather than deferent; the hand near the chin, a pivot between reserve and declaration. Painted in 2021, while the Baltimore-born artist was consolidating a hyper-real, figure-forward language, "Closed" reflects her broader project: celebrating Black self-presentation including youth, attitude, and choice through academic precision sharpened by contemporary style.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 2d

“Makahiya VI” by Florence Solis (Filipino–Canadian) - Acrylic on canvas / 2025 - EXPO CHICAGO, Navy Pier (Chicago, Illinois) #WomenInArt #WomanArtist #WomenPaintingWomen #WomensArt #art #artText #artwork #FlorenceSolis #Solis #ExpoChicago #MissionProjects #AcrylicArt #FilipinoArtist #CanadianArtist

A beautiful young woman facing calmly to our right, looks ahead with dark almond eyes as straight bangs curve across her forehead. Her features are softly modeled, emerging from a luminous field of blue-violet. From her head, lavish, roped waves of hair envelop her body like a cone. Threaded through the locks are countless fine, pale leaflets and beadlike specks like seeds that glint against the cool monochrome. No clothing is visible as her hair gathers and folds like a shawl, suggesting both warmth and weight. The background is a smooth gradient from indigo to orchid for a still, devotional composition. The overall effect is quiet, protective, and intensely focused on surface via glossy strands, delicate leaves, and a tender, private gaze.

Filipino–Canadian artist Florence Solis names this work for makahiya (Mimosa pudica), whose leaflets fold at a touch like an image of shyness that doubles as strategy. Her protagonists are modern icons built from digital collages, then translated into saturated acrylics, where hair, veils, and woven textures act as armor and constraint. She draws on Filipino folklore and craft, especially the delicacy and resilience of piña weaving, to think about the structures that shape women’s lives: “Threads bind, but they also connect.”

In Solis’s words, “Filipino women, much like the makahiya, have been taught to yield, to soften, to take up less space,” yet “beneath this quietness lies an undeniable force … that persists, adapts, and reclaims space.” The interlaced hair hints at touch-sensitivity and vigilance; the single-color glow reads like moonlight on water.

Shown with “The Mission Projects” at EXPO CHICAGO, “Makahiya VI” holds the paradox at the heart of her practice of vulnerability poised as power to ask whether these bindings are sanctuary, confinement, or the luminous seam where self-possession is made visible.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 2d

"Jacqueline Kennedy" by Aaron Shikler (American) - Oil on canvas / 1970 - White House Collection (Washington, DC) #WomenInArt #PortraitofaWoman #art #artText #artwork #JacquelineKennedy #Kennedy #JackieO #TheWhiteHouse #WhiteHouse #BlueskyArt #AaronShikler #Shikler #AmericanArtist #AmericanArt

In this full-length portrait, Jacqueline Kennedy stands near a mantel, her gaze turned softly to our right. She wears a long, high-neck gown with ruffled cuffs and collar as the fabric falls in gentle, vertical folds to the floor. Her medium-light skin is warmly lit against a brown-gold background, with a vase of large white blossoms and a classical bust statue on the mantel of a fireplace behind her. The former first lady's iconic dark hair frames her face, brushed back at the crown. Her hands rest at her sides, fingers relaxed, conveying stillness rather than pose. The light emphasizes the dress’s sheen and the line of her silhouette while the background remains muted, drawing attention to her presence and calm demeanor.

Painted seven years after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and unveiled in 1971, American artist Aaron Shikler’s image favors quiet introspection over ceremony. The choice suits a first lady best known for stewarding the White House’s historic restoration, launching the White House guidebook, and inviting the nation in through a televised tour. Her efforts helped found the White House Historical Association and reframe the Executive Mansion as a living museum. By 1970, Jacqueline Kennedy (then Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) was a global cultural figure; here, however, she is rendered private and contemplative.
Shikler, who also painted President Kennedy’s official portrait, uses a restrained palette and soft edges to suggest memory and dignity rather than spectacle. The result is a modern, empathetic image of public service and personal resilience, now a touchstone in the Vermeil Room and in American visual memory.

“The White House belongs to the American people,” she said, a belief this portrait quietly affirms.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 2d

弁財天と琵琶 (The Goddess Benzaiten and Her Lute) by 清原雪信 / Kiyohara (Kanō) Yukinobu (Japanese) - Ink, color, & gold on silk / 1660s–1680s - Denver Art Museum (Colorado) #WomenInArt #WomanArtist #JapaneseArt #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #清原雪信 #Yukinobu #KiyoharaYukinobu #雪信 #(清原 #狩野派 #WomensArt #掛物

In this hanging scroll (掛物) from the 1600s by ground-breaking Japanese female artist Kiyohara Yukinobu (清原雪信), a luminous goddess sits cross-legged on a low rise of grass, centered against a softly glowing silk background. Her long, dark hair falls in smooth strands over layered robes that shimmer with gold highlights and fine patterns. Resting diagonally across her lap is a pear-shaped lute (aka biwa or 琵琶); her left hand steadies the neck while her right hovers to pluck, pausing at the threshold of sound. The oval of a moon-like disc halos her upper body, and the faintest traces of landscape suggest open air around her. Her face is calm, eyes lowered in attentive focus; the body reads feminine and composed. The spare setting, precise ink line, and restrained color bring all attention to touch, listening, and breath create an image of music about to begin.

Benzaiten (弁財天), adapted from the Indian goddess Sarasvatī, is the patron of music, eloquence, learning, and good fortune in Japan; the biwa is her emblem. Meant to be unrolled for intimate viewing or devotion, this work channels blessing through stillness and refinement.

Yukinobu (1643–1682), a professional woman artist of the early Edo period, trained within the Kanō network that blended Chinese ink-brush discipline with Japanese color and decoration. She often signed “Brush of Yukinobu, Daughter of the Kiyohara clan,” affirming lineage and authorship in a male-dominated art world.

Yukinobu’s career traversed Kyoto and Edo; celebrated in her lifetime, she received commissions across social ranks as a rarity for Japanese women painters. The Kanō school’s courtly elegance is evident in the rhythmic drape of sleeves, the poised hands, and the controlled negative space that amplifies the goddess’s presence. As a woman depicting a woman deity of the arts, Yukinobu scripts a doubled advocacy: for music’s power to shape character, and for women’s creative authority to shape culture.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 2d

Girl in a Chemise by Pablo Picasso (Spanish) - Oil on canvas / c. 1905 - Tate Modern (London, England) #WomenInArt #Picasso #PabloPicasso #art #artText #artwork #Tate #TateModern #PortraitofaGirl #BlueskyArt #ModernArt #OilPainting #chignon #bskyart #artbsky #ArtOfTheDay #TheTate #SpanishArtist

Made in Paris, France as Spanish artist Pablo Picasso moved from his Blue Period to his Rose Period, the sitter appears in a thin white chemise whose strap slides off the near shoulder. Her build is slight and androgynous with a narrow chest, fine jaw, and long neck tapering to a delicate collarbone. Her dark hair is drawn into a low chignon. Her mouth is small, softly red; the eyelid and nose ridge are tenderly modeled. Cool light from the upper left flattens deep shadow, leaving planes of pale peach and cool blue to meet in quiet transitions. Firmer lines beneath her chin and at the temple hint at another figure under the surface that is stronger, sharper, and more boyish like a memory through skin.

This canvas embodies a pivot from melancholy to warmth while keeping Picasso's Blue Period’s restraint. Technical study shows an earlier image, likely of a young saltimbanque (street performer) boy, over which Picasso re-drew, lengthening the neck, refining the jaw, and adding the chignon to transform gender and mood. The result is a poised, ambiguous presence: tender yet reserved, hovering between boy and girl, blue and rose, poverty and poise.

Some identify the sitter as “Madeleine,” Picasso’s companion before Fernande Olivier; others say the evidence is inconclusive. That uncertainty makes this a portrait of becoming rather than being.

In Montmartre around 1904–1905, Picasso pared his means to contour, thin veils of color, and small inflections of mouth and eye. “I paint forms as I think them,” he later said, a line that suits this metamorphosis: one body revised into another by vision and paint.

The painting also reveals the young Spanish artist’s economy and restlessness with one canvas, two lives. The sitter’s identity may be uncertain, but the life around her is not: Picasso, just 23 years old, balancing hunger and ambition, testing how far a line and a wash of blue can carry feeling and how a portrait can hold the trace of who was there before.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 3d

“Market Woman in Ghana” by Lebrecht (Liebrecht) Hesse – Oil on canvas / 1947 – University of Sussex Art Collection (Falmer, East Sussex, U.K.) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #LebrechtHesse #BlueskyArt #UniversityofSussex #oilpainting #portraitofawoman #GhanaianArt #GhanaianArtist #AfricanArt

A Ghanaian woman sits and leans over a large bowl filled with red fruit or seeds, her left arm submerged as if washing or sorting. Her skin is a deep brown, illuminated by the warm glow of reflected light. She wears a voluminous green dress patterned with horizontal stripes of red and gold, its angular folds creating rhythmic movement through the composition. Barefoot and poised in motion, her bent limbs form strong geometric lines, while her bowed head and focused expression convey strength, labor, and concentration. The dark brown, nearly abstract background pushes her body forward, framing her as the undeniable center of gravity.

Painted in 1947, Lebrecht Hesse’s “Market Woman in Ghana” emerged at a pivotal time when Ghanaian artists were shaping visual identities independent of colonial narratives. Hesse, working within early modern Ghanaian realism yet embracing stylized abstraction, captures the market woman as both archetype and individual. The market, a traditional space of female entrepreneurship and social authority, becomes a symbol of Ghana’s cultural resilience. Her body bends with purpose, but her scale and composure assert quiet power.

Hesse’s work aligns with a generation of African painters who localized Western techniques to articulate national identity. His bold contouring and deliberate simplification recall the emerging synthesis of African formalism and European modernism. Through restrained color, tactile brushwork, and monumental form, “Market Woman in Ghana” celebrates both the dignity of labor and the cultural agency of Ghanaian women as anchors of community whose daily work sustained and defined urban life long before independence.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 3d

💯😎

Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 3d

Vivid color + important perspective/message = 💙

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 3d

Harmony in Pink and Gray: Portrait of Lady Meux by James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American) – Oil on canvas / 1881 – The Frick Collection (New York) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #Whistler #JamesAbbottMcNeillWhistler #pink #TheFrick #TheFrickCollection #OilPainting #BlueskyArt #portraitofawoman

Lady Valerie Susan Meux stands, poised yet assertive, her porcelain-pale face framed by dark hair under a sweeping hat trimmed in soft feathers. She wears a floor-length gown of pale silvery gray satin, its sheen gently reflecting the rose-pink interior lining that gives the painting its chromatic “harmony.” Behind her, the background dissolves into an atmospheric haze of gray, creating a tonal field that makes her appear to emerge from mist. Light ripples across the satin folds and subtle pink highlights, lending to a sense of hushed luxury. The portrait’s quiet balance mirrors Whistler’s belief that painting should be composed like an arrangement of musical notes rather than narrative.

When American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler met Lady Meux in 1881, she was one of London’s most talked-about social figures. Born Valerie Susan Langdon, she had worked as an actress and reportedly a barmaid before marrying Sir Henry Meux, heir to a brewery fortune. Their marriage scandalized Victorian high society, but Lady Meux used art and architecture to shape a bold new identity. She commissioned Whistler to paint three portraits that would place her among the aristocracy’s cultural elite. She posed proudly, unrepentant about her past. Whistler’s refined aestheticism transformed her public image: instead of portraying her as an outcast, he bathed her in harmony and grace. Yet their relationship was volatile as she found his pace infuriating and he found her demands extravagant. Only two portraits survived their disagreements.

For Whistler, “Harmony in Pink and Gray” came during his mature “harmony” period, after public clashes over his painting “Nocturne in Black and Gold.” The portrait reveals his devotion to tone over story and his mastery of restraint. For Lady Meux, it was self-reinvention of a woman who refused to be confined by class or gossip. Together, they created a portrait of grace, defiance, and the subtle music of color.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 4d

😎

Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 5d

“Lure of Beauty” by Steven Stipelman (American) – Gouache on colored paper / c. 1970s – Sharjah Art Museum (United Arab Emirates) #WomenInArt #FashionArt #Fashionillustration #art #artText #artwork #StevenStipelman #Stipelman #gouache #SharjahArtMuseum #beauty #BlueskyArt #AmericanArtist #fashion

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 5d

Thanks! 😎

Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 5d

“Danseuses sous un arbre” aka “Danseuses roses” (Two Dancers in Pink) by Edgar Degas (French) – Pastel on paper / c. 1895 – Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena, California) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #EdgarDegas #Degas #Pastel #NortonSimonMuseum #BlueskyArt #arte #Ballerina #dancers #FrenchArt

French artist Edgar Degas, captivated by the ephemeral qualities of movement, used pastel to explore immediacy and intimacy. Here, line and smudge create both structure and atmosphere, suggesting not photographic precision but the fleeting sensation of dance. The focus on the dancers’ backs rather than their faces highlights gesture over personality, echoing Degas’s fascination with “the body in its natural state of effort.”

His ballet works of over 1,500 drawings, paintings, and sculptures were less portraits than studies of rhythm, repetition, and the grueling discipline behind the art form. He once remarked, “People call me the painter of dancers; it has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement.”

Two ballerinas stand side by side beneath a branching tree, their long brown hair tied in trailing braids that fall down the backs of their pale pink tutus. The pastel’s soft textures capture the gauzy fabric of the skirts, scattered with delicate floral details, as their arms stretch upward in mirrored arcs, suggesting a moment of poised practice. Their bodies are turned away from us, angled so that only the curve of cheek, shoulder, and arm are visible.

The figures are shown in mid-motion: one with her left arm lifted higher, the other echoing the gesture just a beat behind. Their skin is rendered in light tones that glow against the muted gray floor and the cool teal sky, a contrast that emphasizes the physicality of dance. The earthy tree trunk at left and horizon of green fields beyond lend a surprising outdoor backdrop, unusual in Degas’s ballet scenes, which more often unfolded in rehearsal studios or stage wings.

Painted late in his career, this pastel reveals a softer palette and more contemplative mood than his earlier, bustling stage depictions. The outdoor setting dissolves the barrier between performance and nature, suggesting a universal harmony of art, body, and landscape.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 6d

鏡の前 (Girl Before a Mirror) by 平野白峰 / Hirano Hakuhō (Japanese) - Woodblock print (ink and color on paper) / c. 1930s - Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art (Washington, D.C.) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #平野白峰 #HiranoHakuho #smithsonian #JapaneseArt #JapaneseArtist #mirror #新版画 #shin-hanga

A Japanese woman kneels before a tall lacquered dressing stand with a mirror box, shown mostly from behind. Her glossy black hair is gathered in a low bun, adorned with a hairpin. She wears a patterned red kimono with a green collar and a wide red-and-white obi belt. In the mirror, her face is partially visible: a fragment of her brow, eye, and cheek emerges faintly, enough to confirm her presence without giving away her full expression. Her hands delicately hold a small comb, poised as if to adjust her hair. Light falls from the right, highlighting the nape of her neck and the edge of her mirrored face while leaving parts of her kimono in softer shadow.

Created in 1932 (Shōwa 7), this impression is part of the Robert O. Muller Collection at the Smithsonian. Hirano Hakuhō (平野白峰, 1879–1957), a largely self-taught Kyoto-born artist, contributed only a handful of bijin-ga to the shin-hanga movement, often published by Watanabe Shōzaburō. While many of his designs depict women turned away from the viewer, “Girl Before a Mirror” complicates that formula by revealing a partial reflection. This choice balances concealment with disclosure, drawing us into a moment suspended between privacy and display.

Critics of shin-hanga have praised such works for their ability to merge technical precision with lyricism: beauty is not fully shown but suggested through gesture, fabric, and atmosphere. This print is specifically admired for its restraint and quiet tension. Hakuhō’s subtle composition ensures the sitter remains both present and unknowable for an intimate portrait that denies certainty, inviting us to linger in the space between secrecy and revelation.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 7d

“Colored TV” by Robert Colescott (American) – Acrylic on canvas / 1977 – San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (California) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #RobertColescott #Colescott #Neo-Expressionism #Blueskyart #AfricanAmericanArt #AfricanAmericanArt #SFMoMA #SanFranciscoMuseumofModernArt

A Black femme-presenting person sprawls in a scarlet armchair. Cigarette smoke curls upward and spells out the title “colored T.V.” across a hot-pink wall, while a flickering television glows with the busty blonde image of a prime-time starlet. The sitter seems to sit between relaxation and resistance. Behind them, a tidy fireplace radiates warmth, and a window frames the night sky with a shooting star, almost cartoonish in its wish-granting clarity. At the bottom edge, American artist Robert Colescott has literally written out the punchline: “WISHING ON A PRIME TIME STAR.” The scene is both cozy and uneasy, a living room where race, class, and desire collide.

This painting is about longing, exclusion, and how television scripts identity. Colescott, known for wielding satire like a scalpel, described his method as “bait and switch” by drawing viewers in with humor, bright colors, and kitsch before cutting deep with social critique. The title itself is a double hit: “Colored TV” nods to the relatively-new color broadcasting technology, but also to the loaded racial label “colored.” The starlet on the screen is white, blonde, and unattainable; the viewer is Black, present, and excluded from the fantasy.

Curators at SFMOMA underline the contrast: the work “asks us to notice the racial difference between the person who’s on the television and the person watching the television.” Colescott even added a gender twist, referring to the seated figure as a “colored transvestite,” which flips the lens back on how identity itself including race, gender, sexuality is performed, masked, and policed in American media.

Colescott grew up on TV that erased or caricatured Black people, and he wasn’t shy about skewering the disconnect. The puff of smoke scrawling words, the melodramatic window star, and the campy set design doesn’t soften the blow; it sharpens it. It’s a reminder that for many in the 1970s, the American dream on-screen wasn’t built with them in mind.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 7d

“Well Prepared and Maladjusted” by Amy Sherald (American) – Oil on canvas / 2008 – Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) #WomenInArt #WomenPaintingWomen #WomenArtists #art #artText #artwork #WomensArt #AfricanAmericanArt #AfricanAmericanArtist #WhitneyMuseumofAmericanArt #AmySherald #Sherald

A tall Black woman stands against a vivid, turquoise-blue ground mottled with faint, watery red drips. American artist Amy Sherald renders her skin in nuanced grays of soft charcoal, pewter, and silver so that tonal shifts depict her cheekbones, brows, and hands. Her gaze meets ours directly, steady and calm. She wears a short-sleeved, pink blouse scattered with small white polka dots and tied with a large bow at the collar, paired with a plain white skirt. Her bare arms rest alongside her body. Her short natural hair forms a simple silhouette. The composition gives primacy to presence, poise, and style.

Painted soon after Sherald completed her training in Baltimore, this work marks the emergence of key strategies that would define her practice. She had encountered the sitter, a curatorial intern at the Walters Art Museum, and was struck by her height, hairstyle, and thrifted polka-dot outfit: “I saw my story in her,” Sherald recalls. Photographing the model and then translating the likeness to paint, she eliminated place to focus on personhood. The grayscale skin is a deliberate nod to the history of black-and-white photography and self-representation. Sherald refuses to let color stand in for race, inviting viewers to read character, not stereotype.

The title, lifted from a poem, functions like one of Sherald’s “small poems,” offering a runway into the painting’s psychology: a subject who is impeccably composed yet out of step with rigid social expectations. The speckled blue ground, with its faint reddish drips, signals an earlier phase in Sherald’s evolution, before she moved toward flatter planes of color; nevertheless, the essentials are here: stylish self-presentation, quiet authority, and a reparative re-centering of Black life. Sherald has said her mission is “to put more complex stories of Black life in the forefront of people’s minds and on the walls of museums…to take up space and reclaim time.”

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 7d

“Angelic Ari” by Linda Hinojos (American) – Acrylic and airbrush on canvas / 2025 – Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts (Spring, Texas) #WomenInArt #WomanArtist #art #artText #artwork #AirbrushArt #PFMFA #PearlMuseumofFineArts #LindaHinojos #Hinojos #BlueskyArt #WomenArtists #FemaleArtist #ThePearl

A beautiful young Latina woman rests against a field of tightly packed pink roses that carpet the entire canvas. She has medium-brown skin, long black hair falling in soft waves, and large gold hoop earrings. Barefoot and poised as if gently descending or rising, she wears an off-the-shoulder white dress with ruffles and a front slit that reveals one bent knee and the blue-cool shadow of the lining. Her arms extend slightly outward, fingers relaxed; a green-stone ring catches light on one hand. Airbrushed halation edges the figure, creating a faint aura while warm yellows glow between petals, and crisp green leaves punctuate the rose ground. Subtle pink reflections wash her lower legs and feet, as if color radiates from the floral surround. The overall effect blends precise portrait detail with an ethereal, floating stillness like human presence made luminous.

Shown at the the exhibition "A Curated Life," the painting channels American artist Linda Hinojos’s airbrush mastery into a portrait that reads both devotional and contemporary. Hinojos is a Houston-based artist who began her career airbrushing at Six Flags Astroworld in the early 1990s and later moved into large-scale murals, teaching, and community arts leadership; the disciplined gradients and soft-edge atmospheres of airbrush remain central to her style. She describes her message as “pointing out the oppression of women… but always showing them overcoming from their own spirit and declaration. They claim the moment” which gives us a lens that clarifies the painting’s title and stance. “Ari” stands as an emblem of resilience and grace rather than a biographical portrait: white dress as purity and renewal; roses as love, memorial, and devotion; the bare feet as honesty and groundedness; the airy glow as uplift. The figure’s slight forward motion and outstretched hands invite, bless, and steady at once, binding the sacred and everyday.

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Michael @mdstamper.bsky.social · 8d

“Young Woman by a Window” by Auguste Toulmouche (French) – Oil on canvas / late 19th century – University of Michigan Museum of Art (Ann Arbor, MI) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #AugusteToulmouche #Toulmouche #UMMA #PortraitofaWoman #BlueskyArt #FrenchArtist #AcademicRealism #GenrePainting

A pale young woman stands in a room beside an open window. She wears a gown combining soft pink and white fabrics, with a bustle and trailing train that pool gently on the floor. Her sandy brown hair is arranged modestly, and her left hand holds back a heavy drapery with golden exterior while her right rests by her side. Light streams through the window, casting soft illumination on the folds of her dress and the potted plants on a tall gold table immediately beside her. The wallpaper behind her is a cool blue-green with subtle patterning, echoing the curtain tones and lending depth to the interior. With a hint of a smile, she appears to be slyly paying attention to something outside.

French artist Auguste Toulmouche, celebrated for his refined domestic scenes, composed this painting as a delicate interplay of interior and exterior worlds. By framing the figure partly in shadow and partly in daylight, Toulmouche invites us to dwell on questions of privacy, curiosity, and threshold moments. The gesture of pulling back the curtain seems loaded: is she peering outward in anticipation, reflecting inward, or simply caught mid-movement?

At the time “Young Woman by a Window” was painted, Toulmouche (1829–1890) was an established figure in Parisian artistic circles, known for his refined depictions of fashionable women in carefully arranged interiors. Born in Nantes and trained in Paris, he achieved success, admired for his technical precision and elegant treatment of fabrics, décor, and gesture. His marriage to the cousin of Claude Monet linked him to the Impressionist circle, though Toulmouche himself remained loyal to the Academic style, catering to the tastes of wealthy collectors and a bourgeois audience that valued refinement and domestic ideals. He was often commissioned by patrons who appreciated his ability to blend genre painting with high-fashion portraiture, earning him a reputation as a painter of “elegant genre” works.

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