The ideal woman in American art, 1875-1910. (Volumes I and II).
Item
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Title
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The ideal woman in American art, 1875-1910. (Volumes I and II).
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Identifier
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AAI8821126
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identifier
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8821126
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Creator
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Van Hook, Leila Bailey.
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Contributor
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Adviser: H. Barbara Weinberg
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Date
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1988
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Fine Arts | American Studies | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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Images of ideal women were among the most predominant subjects in late nineteenth-century American art. However those images have often been ignored because they were not strong and masculine but genteel and feminine, not democratic but elite, not uniquely American but cosmopolitan, and not original or naive but traditionally academic.;The prevalence of ideal women in American art in the late nineteenth century must be traced to the European training of contemporary artists. Teachers like Gerome and Cabanel essayed ideal women in mythological, classical or orientalist contexts. However, when Americans returned home, they found that those subjects favored in Europe--especially nudes--were not popular if painted by American artists. In response, American artists turned to idealized paintings of women that were less specifically identified, more poetic or decorative, and less erotic than their European counterparts. Precedents can be found in works by La Farge and Whistler.;The types of ideal women that American artists essayed tended to evolve chronologically. In the 1870s, classicizing, allegorical, mythological and Arcadian imagery was prevalent, reflecting the painters' academic training. In the 1890s, the classicizing tendency was absorbed by mural painting in which the female figures would embody more public-minded virtues and assume a more active appearance. Concurrently, in easel painting there were more Whistlerian images of contemporary women in decorative and beautiful settings.;The images of ideal women in American art have salient characteristics in common--they were ideal, real, beautiful, decorative, pure, and American. Such imaging of women was inevitable because the aim of art coincided with the prevailing perception of women's traits and roles in the Gilded Age: both image and woman were ideal because they were removed from the realities of late nineteenth-century life. They were real in so far as the quality of the model (or the nineteenth-century woman) was insistent. They were beautiful because women had traditionally been perceived as embodying beauty; decorative because women's position was not perceived as important for the operation of American society; pure because women's sexuality was commonly denied; and American because that innocence was perceived as particularly American.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
