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“Figure of a Woman” by Marietta Minnigerode Andrews (American) - Oil on canvas / c 1904 - Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Connecticut) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #MariettaAndrews #MariettaMinnigerodeAndrews #Yale #YaleArtGallery #artText #BlueskyArt #WomenPaintingWomen
A full-length woman stands in a quiet green room, facing us as if interrupted mid-preparation. Her complexion is fair with softly flushed cheeks. Dark, curly hair shows beneath a white bonnet. One hand lifts the brim while the other gathers the long ties at her chest. She wears a pale blue, short-sleeved dress patterned with small flowers, falling in a straight, ankle-length line. To the left sits a wooden spinning wheel; to the right, a tall case clock rises beside a bright window that opens to sunlit foliage. A simple chair occupies the foreground, and a small basket of pink and white blossoms has tipped onto the floor. An open doorway behind her deepens the space into shadow. Recorded with the sitter simply as “Unidentified Woman,” the painting lets setting and objects speak. The spinning wheel hints at domestic work while the tall clock turns the room into a place where time is felt and negotiated. The open door and bright window suggest thresholds between private life and the larger world. Her bonnet is held as if she is about to step out, or has just come in and marks a quiet moment of self-presentation as she pauses, meets our gaze, and steadies the ties at her chest. The tipped basket of flowers adds a tender interruption like an accident that won’t stay perfectly arranged. Andrews’s calm geometry and cool palette refuse melodrama, treating the interior as a space of thought and choice. Marietta Minnigerode Andrews, an American painter and designer active in Washington, D.C., trained at the Corcoran School of Art and also studied with William Merritt Chase. Across records the date of this painting shifts as Smithsonian’s catalog says 1904 while Yale’s collection page lists the work as undated … so “c. 1904” is a compromise. The image’s message is durable even into our modern world with preparation as agency, domestic objects as biography, and an ordinary room as a stage for a life being arranged. Meanwhile, her calmness feels deliberate, not passive.
December 21, 2025 at 7:59 PM