Introduction
Women are an essential component of any civilization and have either created art or contributed to artistic expression. This is seen in paintings from the late 1800s, in which women were both featured and actively engaged in the creation of art. This essay contrasts how women were portrayed by men and women in the late 19th century with how they are portrayed today. Finally, a contemporary drawing is contrasted with the representation of women in the 1800s.
Mary Cassatt's "The Bath"
Mary Cassatt, a female artist, created The Bath using the soft-ground etching with aquatint method for the Japanese exhibition in Paris. The picture shows a concentrating middle-aged woman dressed in a yellow Japanese print dress holding a naked toddler with one hand and using the second hand to bath him. The race of the people in the drawing is ambiguous as you cannot tell whether they are Asians or Whites (NMWA, 2014). This picture shows that it is the role of the woman to take care of her children by doing tasks such as bathing them.
Comparison with Camille Pissarro's Painting
This drawing is compared with the picture by Camille Pissarro, a male painter, showing two young peasants resting in a field. The two girls are sitting in a field dressed in warm clothes and headscarves, while their faces express their tiredness. This drawing used the oil on canvas technique and women from a different perspective where they are shown as hardworking people resting after workday in the fields (NGA 2014). The modern paintings are embracing new surfaces such as the acrylic on board. The woman is depicted to be diverse and not only represented wearing dresses.
"The Hotline for Troubled Teens" by Joe Demers
"The Hotline for Troubled Teens" by Joe Demers shows a teen in an oversized shirt hiding her feminine features (Curatorialintern, 2010).
References
Curatorialintern. (2010). The Portrayal of Women in Art: 1962-2002. Retrieved May 8, 2017 from https://nbmaa.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/the-portrayal-of-women-in-art-1962-2002/
National Gallery Art. (2014). Young Peasant Girls Resting in the Fields near Pontoise. Retrieved May 8, 2017 from https://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.164952.html#provenance
National Museum of Women in the Arts. (2014). The Bath 1891. Retrieved May 8, 2017 from https://nmwa.org/works/bath
