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"Endomingada (In Sunday Best)" by Candido Portinari (Brazilian) - Oil on wood / 1947 - Projeto Portinari (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #CandidoPortinari #CândidoPortinari #Portinari #ProjetoPortinari #pintura #arte #1940s #PortraitofaWoman #BrazilianArt #BrazilianArtist
In a close-up portrait, a woman faces us, her shoulders squared and her gaze steady. Her skin is a deep brown tone against a pale, light-blue background. Brazilian artist Candido Portinari simplifies her features into bold, clean shapes like large dark eyes beneath strong brows, a straight nose, vivid red full lips, and a squared chin set on a long neck. She wears “Sunday best” clothing and adornment including a brimmed hat crowded with colorful flowers and bright red earrings striped with yellow. Her blouse is red, patterned with small yellow and blue spots, and cut high at the neck. The paint surface is smooth, with saturated reds, greens, violets, earth tones, black, and white working as accents around her face. Nothing distracts from her presence, so the portrait is intimate in scale and direct in address, inviting us to linger on expression, color, and self-presentation. Painted in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, this portrait sits in the same year Portinari was publicly engaged with politics. Projeto Portinari preserves his notes “for the 1947 electoral campaign,” written when he was a Senate candidate. Against that backdrop, the woman’s careful dress and bright jewelry could be a claim to dignity and visibility. The Portuguese title "Endomingada" names Sunday finery such as clothes chosen for rest, faith, celebration, or simply being seen. An old Paris gallery label on the reverse of the canvas recorded the title “Femme,” a reminder of how easily a woman can be reduced to a category. Portinari resists that flattening with directness via a steady frontal pose, a cool blue vibe that quiets the scene, and reds that pulse with life. As he once said, “I am a son of the red earth… I decided to paint the Brazilian reality, naked and crude as it is.” The smooth oil on wood and intimate 50 × 40 cm scale keep this encounter close ... more a face-to-face meeting than a spectacle.
January 26, 2026 at 7:58 PM
rumiproton.bsky.social
Seen through glass 🪟

Photo Sònia Guasch
.
.@soniagh46

#SoniaRealism #quietmoment #subtlehumor #visualpoetry #blackandwhite #womeninart
January 26, 2026 at 5:34 PM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“বিনোদিনী (Binodini)” by রামকিঙ্কর বেইজ / Ramkinkar Baij (Indian) - Oil on gunny cloth / 1948–1949 - National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi, India) #WomenInArt #NGMA #RamkinkarBaij #রামকিঙ্করবেইজ #Baij #BlueskyArt #ModernIndianArt #Santiniketan #artText #IndianArt #arte #PortraitofaWoman #art #IndianArtist
“Binodini” is widely recognized as a portrait of Indian artist Ramkinkar Baij’s student and muse from Manipur, Maharaj Kumari M. K. Binodini Devi who was an artist and later a major literary figure. Her presence appears across his works during his Santiniketan years. The painting is less a society likeness than a study of interior life showing how a young woman occupies space, carries expectation, and claims a self, even while the world around her feels unsettled and newly forming in the late 1940s. She is depicted as a young Indian woman with medium-light brown skin sitting close to the picture plane, her slim body folded into a compact pose. One knee rises high, creating a strong diagonal across her torso, while her shoulders tilt slightly as if she has just shifted her weight. Long, dark hair falls over one shoulder. Her softly oval face with wide, focused eyes and a small, closed mouth meets our gaze directly, giving the moment a quiet intensity. A loose pale sari crosses her chest and bunches over the lifted knee as the yellow-green garment pools around her legs. Both hands reach down toward a table at the bottom edge, fingers spread and lightly tense, as if preparing to pick up a small, light rectangle paper or magazine near her hands. The background is mottled with warm oranges and muted greens, and the coarse weave of the gunny cloth shows through the paint, making the whole surface feel gritty, tactile, and alive. Painted in 1948 and 1949, the work’s rough support is not incidental as gunny cloth brings everyday materiality into a portrait that is psychologically charged rather than decorative, letting texture and abrasion stand in for uncertainty, restlessness, and emotional friction. In Baij’s image, her forward gaze and lowered, splayed hands read like a body caught mid-decision, perhaps poised between holding herself together and moving forward.
January 26, 2026 at 4:39 PM
karina42.bsky.social
Call for Papers | Views of their Own: The Work of Women Artists enfilade18thc.com/2026/01/24/c...

#CfP #C18th #C19th #earlymodern #womeninart #womenartists
Call for Papers | Views of their Own: The Work of Women Artists
Fanny Blake, A Rainbow over Patterdale Churchyard, Cumbria, 1849, watercolour and opaque watercolour over graphite, with scratching out, on wove paper (Jointly owned by the Samuel Courtauld Trust a…
enfilade18thc.com
January 26, 2026 at 3:51 PM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“孟霞女士肖像 (Portrait of Ms. Meng Xia)” by 丁衍庸 / Ding Yanyong (Chinese) - Oil on canvas / 1971 - Long Museum West Bund (Shanghai, China) #WomenInArt #LongMuseum #DingYanyong #丁衍庸 #Ding #ChineseArt #WomenPortraits #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #OilPainting #龙美术馆 #西岸馆 #PortraitofaWoman #ChineseArtist
A painted portrait shows an adult Chinese woman seated against a softly mottled field of green, teal, and warm beige. She has light-to-medium skin with gentle pink shading at the cheeks and along the neck, dark eyes, and black hair gathered into a loose, rounded bob with curled strands at the temples. Her head turns slightly to her left, while her gaze looks off to the right, creating a composed, inward, observant expression. Strong, simplified features like arched brows, a long nose, and full red lips are outlined with decisive dark strokes. She wears a plain white long-sleeved blouse with a rounded neckline edged in a thin dark line; the sleeves billow softly and end in ruffled cuffs. She is modeled with thin washes and visible brushwork rather than heavy layers, so the surface feels airy and direct. Her hands rest in her lap with long fingers. A blush of pink appears near the lower edge, hinting at a skirt. In the upper left corner, the artist’s red inscription includes his name (Ding Yanyong) and a clear date, “31/12.71,” which anchors the portrait as a specific moment recorded with speed and intention. The painting’s power comes from restraint so her posture and gaze carry meaning. The calligraphic contour line acts like structure and emotion at once as it sharpens the blouse’s edges, sketches the hands, and crisply defines the face, while translucent color washes soften everything into quiet atmosphere. The sitter’s averted eyes suggest privacy and self-possession. The explicit dating (December 31, 1971) feels like a closing note to a year, turning this portrait into a kind of witness. Even if Ms. Meng Xia’s biography isn’t widely published, Ding’s economical, attentive, and unsentimental treatment frames her as unmistakably individual, with dignity held in line, silence, and steadiness.
January 26, 2026 at 8:16 AM
pressingstories.bsky.social
Into the woods I go
Looking for the truth
To marry winter’s grace ❄️

#drawing #painting #womeninart #hope #eastcoastkin #peace #community #nature #healing
January 26, 2026 at 1:39 AM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Kah-béck-a, The Twin, Wife of Bloody Hand” by George Catlin (American) - Oil on canvas / 1832 - Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC) #WomenInArt #GeorgeCatlin #Catlin #SmithsonianAmericanArtMuseum #SAAM #Smithsonian #NativeAmericanArt #art #arte #artText #AmericanArt #PortraitofaWoman
It’s a bust-length portrait of an Indigenous woman, shown front-facing and centered, her posture steady and composed. She has long, dark hair that falls over her shoulders, and a direct gaze that meets ours. Her skin appears warm brown in tone, softly modeled with light across the cheeks and forehead. Her hair-part and upper cheeks are painted vermilion red which was a widespread women’s custom American artist George Catlin observed. She wears a light-colored hide garment with feathery edging at the neckline and sleeves. Multiple strands of blue and white beads layer across her chest, adding weight and texture. Her hands rest together near the lower edge of the picture, suggesting a seated pose. The background is spare and atmospheric, a muted, open field of color that keeps attention on her face, hair, and adornment. Painted during Catlin’s 1832 journey along the Missouri River, this work records Kah-béck-a (“The Twin”), identified as the wife of Bloody Hand, a chief of the Arikara (Sahnish) people, and painted at a Mandan village. Catlin’s project was to create a self-styled “Indian Gallery” which was driven by urgency and ambition to document Native lives as the United States intensified expansion, forced removal, and the cascading disruptions of disease, trade, and violence. The portrait therefore holds a tension. It offers a rare named presence of an Arikara woman in early U.S. painting, but it is also shaped by an outsider’s framing and the era’s collecting impulse. Even within that constraint, Kah-béck-a’s stillness reads as self-possessed like an image of personhood rather than spectacle. It invites us to consider what is known, what is omitted, and whose voice gets to define the story.
January 25, 2026 at 9:51 PM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Portrait d’une jeune fille en noir” (Portrait of a Girl in Black) by André Derain (French) - Oil on canvas / 1913–1914 - The State Hermitage Museum (Saint Petersburg, Russia) #WomenInArt #HermitageMuseum #StateHermitageMuseum #AndreDerain #Derain #AndréDerain #arte #art #artText #PortraitofaGirl
Made in 1913–1914, this portrait reflects French artist André Derain’s move away from the high-key color of early Fauvism toward a quieter, more austere seriousness with dark tones, elongated forms, and a deliberate sense of “severity” that critics often linked to a Gothic mood. A nearly empty background refuses anecdote with no home, no street, and no props … just a young woman’s presence, dignified and self-contained. She sits upright on a rounded wooden chair, centered against a wide, cool blue-gray background. Her skin is medium-brown, softly modeled with visible brushwork like warm blush at the cheeks, a long straight nose, and slightly downturned lips that keep her expression peaceful but muted. Her gaze drifts just past ours rather than meeting us directly. Her black hair is parted and smoothed close to the head, gathered into neat side coils at the ears. She wears a high-necked black dress with a faint floral pattern, its dark fabric absorbing light, and a broad white lace collar that fans across her shoulders like a delicate, scalloped shield. Her posture is closed: arms folded across her lap, one hand resting over the other, wrists relaxed but held close. Behind her head, the chair’s striped back (muted reds, creams, and greens) frames her like an arch, and a pale pink seat cushion peeks from the left side. The paint surface stays intentionally plain with edges simplified, shadows restrained, so her face and hands feel weighty and still, as if she is holding a long pose with practiced patience. This painting also carries a major collecting history: it entered Sergei Shchukin’s Moscow collection via the Paris dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, then passed through the state museums formed after 1917 before arriving at the Hermitage. In that long journey, the sitter remains unnamed, but not generalized as the crisp lace, folded arms, and steady near-sidelong gaze insist on individuality. She is seen not as decoration, but as a person with a real life.
January 25, 2026 at 6:29 PM
ienvdpol.bsky.social
SUNDAY REPOST
'Cold track'
#Art #artist #kunst #Dutchart #Dutchartist #OutsiderArt #ArtCollector #ArtGallery #ArtLover #WomenArtists #WomensArt #WomeninArt #painting #schilderij #expression #expressionist #essentialist #acrylic #Landscape
January 25, 2026 at 2:56 PM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Portrait of a Maslawi Woman” by مروان فتحي / Marwan Fathi (Iraqi) - Oil on canvas / 2019 - Al-Ghad Radio (Mosul, Iraq) #WomenInArt #MarwanFathi #مروان_فتحي #Fathi #AlGhadRadio #PortraitofaWoman #Maslawi #BlueskyArt #IraqiArt #art #arte #artText #artwork #IraqiArtist #Symbolism #ContemporaryPortrait
A luminous chest-up portrait centers an unidentified woman facing forward, her expression focused and unyielding. Her eyes meet ours directly beneath sharply arched brows and long lashes while warm reds and cool shadows model her light-to-medium skin. A black crow perches close on her left shoulder, looking to the side like a watchful companion. Above, her hair erupts into a dramatic crown of flame-orange and red with whorls, ribbons, and looping marks dotted with bright rings that hover like sparks. Her dress is painted as overlapping, scale-like strokes in greens, aquas, yellows, and coral, creating a shimmering surface that feels protective and celebratory at once. The background melts into soft gold, mauve, and pale green with floating shapes, giving the figure an icon-like stillness inside a dreamlike atmosphere. The title only identifies the woman as being Maslawi (Moslawi), which means “from Mosul” or a person who belongs to the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. Artist Marwan Fathi, a Mosul-born painter and professor of fine arts, made this work after years of living through the city’s occupation and the devastating campaign that drove ISIS (Daesh) out. He has spoken about lasting trauma and still jolting awake at night expecting an airstrike, but his art insists on survival in full color. The crow is a close witness to coercion and fear, perched at the body’s edge but unable to eclipse her presence. The scale-like garment evokes fish skin and the Jonah-and-the-whale story tied to Mosul’s cultural memory. This was especially resonant after the destruction of Jonah’s shrine and turns local history into a symbol of endurance and return. Presented through Al-Ghad Radio’s documentation of Mosul’s cultural revival, the portrait is both testimony and reclamation depicting a woman rendered not as erased, but as radiant, composed, and unquestionably seen.
January 25, 2026 at 7:17 AM
rumiproton.bsky.social
In search of you 👢
.
@soniagh46
.
#SoniaRealism #quietlonging #visualpoetry #innerjourney #blackandwhite #womeninart
January 25, 2026 at 7:04 AM
rumiproton.bsky.social
Just a moment

@soniagh46
.
#SoniaRealism #quietlonging #visualpoetry #innerjourney #blackandwhite #womeninart
January 25, 2026 at 7:01 AM
rumiproton.bsky.social
No addiction.. Clearly 🍎

@soniagh46

#SoniaRealism #innerstrength #quietpower #visualpoetry #blackandwhite #womeninart
January 25, 2026 at 6:27 AM
rumiproton.bsky.social
No addiction.. Clearly 🍎

@soniagh46

#SoniaRealism #innerstrength #quietpower #visualpoetry #blackandwhite #womeninart
January 25, 2026 at 6:27 AM
rumiproton.bsky.social
Water doesn’t put out fires 💧

@soniagh46

#SoniaRealism #innerfire #quietstrength #visualpoetry #blackandwhite #womeninart
January 25, 2026 at 6:22 AM
rumiproton.bsky.social
Water doesn’t put out fires 💧

#SoniaRealism #innerfire #quietstrength #visualpoetry #blackandwhite #womeninart
January 25, 2026 at 6:20 AM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Georgia On My Mind” by Jean-Marie Hamel (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 2010s - Northwell Health, Women Who Dared Collection (New Hyde Park, New York) #WomenInArt #JeanMarieHamel #art #arte #artText #NorthwellHealth #WomenWhoDared #PortraitofaWoman #JoannaKerns #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
Painted at an intimate scale, this work showcases American artist Jean-Marie Hamel’s fascination with light and how it can move, soften, or hold emotion so that illumination becomes this portrait’s true subject. The title, “Georgia On My Mind,” borrows the language of remembrance hinting at a private, inward image, as if the woman with light skin and long, loose blonde to light brown hair streaked with warm gold is caught between presence and recollection. She is American actor and director Joanna Kerns, most famous for playing Maggie Seaver, the mom, on the hit 1980s–early 1990s TV sitcom Growing Pains. It’s less like celebrity portraiture than a character study, emphasizing concentration, resilience, and perhaps emotional privacy. Her hair falls over both shoulders, with a single braid on to our right. She wears a soft white blouse with a V-shaped neckline which is painted in broad, pale strokes that suggest folds rather than crisp seams. Her face is turned slightly toward us while her eyes meet ours, giving a steady, guarded expression. Subtle blush warms the cheeks and her closed lips are softly defined. A strong highlight catches her forehead and left cheekbone, while the opposite side of her face drops into shadow, deepening the sense of quiet intensity. The background is an unobtrusive, warm gray-brown field that keeps our focus on her gaze and the shifting light across her features. Hamel (born in Louisiana in 1949 and now based in Santa Barbara, California) describes herself as a visual storyteller. Here, she strips away props and setting to focus on face, hair, and atmosphere, inviting us to slow down and meet Joanna’s steady gaze. Shown through Northwell’s Women Who Dared collection, created to counter the historic underrepresentation of women artists and displayed across Northwell locations with audio commentary, the portrait also quietly argues that women’s stories belong in spaces of care and healing.
January 25, 2026 at 3:16 AM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Étude de femme noire avec couvre-chef noir et robe blanche” (Study of a Black Woman) by François Joseph Navez (Belgian) - Oil on canvas / c. 1822-1835 - Musée de la Ville de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium) #WomenInArt #BrusselsCityMuseum #FrancoisJosephNavez #Navez #artText #arte #PortraitofaWoman
As an “étude” (study), the painting sits between portraiture and practice for an image made to understand likeness, light, and the fall of cloth, while still granting the sitter unmistakable presence. At the Brussels City Museum (Musée de la Ville de Bruxelles in French and Museum van de Stad Brussel in Dutch), a period label visible on the frame uses outdated, racist terms in both French and Dutch. The museum’s current title shifts to more respectful language, but the sitter’s identity is still not recorded. That tension of careful observation paired with archival silence matters. Belgian artist François Joseph Navez, a leading neoclassical painter and a sought-after portraitist in Brussels, trained in the orbit of French artist Jacques-Louis David and later held a major academic role in the city. Within that world, Black women were often treated as “types” or anonymous models rather than fully documented individuals. Here, her averted gaze and composed posture resist that flattening as she is not performing for spectacle, but quietly, firmly occupying space and inviting us to view the work as both a technical exercise and a reminder of whose names history chose not to keep. She is an adult Black woman shown from the upper chest against a softly mottled gray background. She has medium-deep brown skin and dark brown eyes plus closed lips, relaxed brow, and gaze turned slightly up and to our right. A dark green-black head covering falls in broad, heavy folds around her face while a narrow, beige band wraps across the crown, catching the strongest light. Her simple white dress has loose sleeves and a wide neckline edged with a thin red trim leaving her collarbones and the top of her shoulders bare. Light from our left warms her cheek, forehead, and nose, while the right side of her face and neck deepens into shadow. Brushwork is economical and attentive, prioritizing the weight of fabric and structure of the beautiful face of the unnamed woman.
January 24, 2026 at 7:53 PM
pressingstories.bsky.social
Breathe deep
Have hope
Art remains ☀️

#painting #womeninart #art #eastcoastkin #beauty #peace #expression #poetry
lolajovan.com Lola Jovan @lolajovan.com · 2d
Inhabitant and Witness
oil on paper
18 x 18

It is my belief that the World…wishes an Inhabitant for Itself to be a witness to its Beauty and the recipient of its Mercies. - Susanna Clarke

Get the art: www.lolajovan.com/store/p532/i...

#art #oilpainting #landscape #abstraction

Story-ALTtext⬇️
An abstract landscape in oils. The quote continues: “If I leave, then the [world] will have no Inhabitant and how will I bear the thought of it Empty?” Does beauty exist if no one is there to see it? Is our job, as humans with all the senses and ability to appreciate beauty, to be witness to the beauty of the world?
January 24, 2026 at 3:49 PM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Tête de femme de Biskra” (Head of a Woman from Biskra) by Marie Caire Tonoir (French) - Oil on canvas / 1899–1900 - Musée du quai Branly (Paris, France) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #MarieCaireTonoir #Tonoir #quaiBranly #art #arte #artText #PortraitofaWoman #MuseeDuQuaiBranly #WomenArtists
Made after French artist Marie Caire Tonoir’s winter stay in Biskra, Algeria (بسكرة) in 1899–1900, the portrait sits at the crossroads of intimate observation and the colonial-era “traveler’s” gaze that shaped so many North African images in French art. The title locates the sitter by place rather than name. It’s an absence that matters, yet the painting refuses spectacle with no theatrical setting and just the quiet insistence of her presence. The close, bust-length portrait centers an unidentified young woman against a softly brushed, gray-beige background. Her medium-toned skin is modeled with warm light across the cheeks and nose. Her dark eyes are heavily shadowed, steady, and direct. Fine facial tattoos mark her features including a small motif on the forehead and a narrow vertical line descending from the lower lip to the chin. Her head with dark black hair is crowned with an abundant, turban of dark wrapped fabric that swells outward on both sides. Long, tiered earrings hang beside her face with silver discs above darker, fan-like pendants. She wears a red-brown blouse with a modest opening at the throat, wrapped in a darker shawl. The paint surface is visibly textured, as if the artist worked quickly and confidently, letting edges soften into the surrounding air. Her tattoos and jewelry are rendered with restraint and specificity, suggesting lived adornment rather than costume, while her unsmiling mouth and level gaze read as self-possessed, even guarded. For Tonoir, trained within academic circles and exhibiting in Paris, Biskra offered subjects outside metropolitan life. For the sitter, this moment records a person whose identity exceeds what the archive preserves. Seen now, the work asks us to hold both truths at once: its beauty and dignity, and the unequal power that determined who was named, who was looked at, and how that image traveled.
January 24, 2026 at 7:51 AM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Vahine no te Tiare” (Tahitian Woman with a Flower) by Paul Gauguin (French) - Oil on canvas / 1891 - Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Copenhagen, Denmark) #WomenInArt #PaulGauguin #Gauguin #NyCarlsbergGlyptotek #PostImpressionism #arte #Tahitian #BlueskyArt #art #artText #Glyptoteket #PortraitofaWoman
French artist Paul Gauguin presents a half-length portrait of a young Tahitian woman seated against a flat, radiant yellow field. She turns slightly to our right, eyes looking past us with a guarded peacefulness. Her skin is warm medium-brown and her dark hair is center-parted and braided over her shoulder. She wears a long-sleeved, high-necked blue-violet dress with a crisp white collar and lace-trimmed cuffs. Behind her, a broad red chair back frames her shoulders, while stylized green leaves float around her like decorative motifs. Her forearms rest across her lap and she holds an orange-yellow blossom with a green stem near her fingers. At the top, the painted words “Vahine no te Tiare” sit like a caption, and Gauguin’s signature and date appear to the upper right. Dark outlines and simplified planes flatten the space, making yellow, red, and cool blue colors do much of the emotional work. Her face is modeled with visible brushstrokes: softly shaded cheeks, a straight nose, and full lips. A small gold earring catches light at one ear. The dress gathers at the chest and sleeves, suggesting weight and heat, yet the background stays abstract. The overall effect is quiet and monumental, inviting us to linger on her expression and on the careful way her hands hold the flower. The sitter’s personal name is not recorded in surviving documentation, but Gauguin did describe her simply as a young "neighbor" who at first refused to pose, then returned later dressed for church, wearing a flower. That detail matters because in 1891 Tahiti was limited by French colonial rule and long shaped by missionary pressure, and the European-style "mission dress" signals imposed norms as much as individual choice. Gauguin’s Tahitian inscription of “woman of the flower” both honors local language and reduces her to an emblem. Viewing the painting today means remembering both truths at once: her undeniable dignity and the people and systems that rendered her identity anonymous.
January 23, 2026 at 9:31 PM
mdstamper.bsky.social
"Femme à l'orchidée (Woman with an Orchid)" by Edgard Maxence (French) - Oil on canvas / 1900 - Musée d’Orsay (Paris, France) #WomenInArt #EdgardMaxence #Maxence #EdgarMaxence #MuseeDOrsay #Muséed’Orsay #Smoking #arte #artText #BlueSkyArt #Pre-Raphaelite #PreRaphaelite #FrenchArtist #FrenchSymbolism
A young adult woman with light, peach-toned skin and soft, rounded features turns toward us, her pale grey-green eyes meeting ours with an almost knowing calm. Her copper-red hair is swept up and crowned with a large white orchid, the petals catching light against a darker, thicket-like background. She wears a pale, patterned cream and olive dress decorated with small floral motifs. Over her hands are sheer, gauzy gloves that soften the contours of her fingers. In her raised right hand, she holds a lit cigarette between her fingers as a thin, wavering line of smoke rises into the air, barely visible against the foliage. Her other hand lightly gathers a length of translucent fabric, as if pausing mid-gesture. Behind her, dark branches cut across a warm golden background, creating a layered, intimate space that feels like a garden at dusk. It's designed to frame her face, the orchid, and the cigarette as the painting’s brightest points of attention. That small thread of smoke changes the picture’s psychological temperature. In 1900, a woman portrayed smoking is likely a deliberate marker of modernity: quietly transgressive, self-possessed, and public-facing even within a private, dreamlike setting. The cigarette introduces time as the smoke appears, thins, and disappears like an emblem of the fleeting, the sensual, and the momentary while the orchid (prized and cultivated) suggests beauty shaped by care (and by artifice). Together they create a tension between permanence and vanishing: the woman’s poised stillness versus the smoke’s restless drift. This is also where French artist Edgard (Edgar) Maxence’s Symbolist sensibility lands hardest. Rather than telling a story, the painting builds a mood where femininity is not merely decorative, but intentional and slightly untouchable. The scene feels like a type or persona more than a specific person. It's an image of elegance that includes autonomy, appetite, and a controlled refusal to be read as purely innocent.
January 23, 2026 at 5:49 PM
rumiproton.bsky.social
Love you 💋

Ph Sònia Guasch

#SoniaRealism #quietmoment #subtlehumor #visualpoetry #blackandwhite #womeninart

@soniagh46
January 23, 2026 at 2:45 AM
rumiproton.bsky.social
Love you 💋

Ph Sónia Guasch

#SoniaRealism #quietmoment #subtlehumor #visualpoetry #blackandwhite #womeninart

@soniagh46
January 23, 2026 at 2:44 AM
mdstamper.bsky.social
“Love’s Messenger” by Marie Spartali Stillman (Greek-British) - Watercolor, tempera & gold on paper / 1885 - Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington) #WomenInArt #MarieSpartaliStillman #DelawareArtMuseum #PreRaphaelite #artText #Pre-Raphaelite #MarieStillman #WomensArt #WomenArtists #WomenPaintingWomen
A light-skinned young woman, likely in her late teens or twenties, is shown in quiet profile by an open window. Her chestnut hair is gathered into a low knot and topped with a russet cap and a soft gray bow as a sheer scarf trails behind her. She wears a deep teal outer dress over a mauve gown, with a frill of white lace at the neckline. With her left hand, she presses a folded note to her chest, while her right hand is held palm-up to feed a white dove perched delicately on her thumb. Golden kernels (some cupped in her palm, others spilled on the stone window sill) almost glow against cool interior light. A thin cord trails from the bird toward the message, suggesting it has just arrived as a courier. On the table below, skeins of crimson and olive thread and a partially finished embroidery show a winged, blindfolded Cupid with bow and arrow, paused mid-stitch. To the left sits a vase of dark red flower blossoms. Beyond a leaded “bull’s-eye” glass window, a calm river recedes toward a pale horizon, bordered by tall, umbrella-crowned pines as ivy climbs the sill, knitting the room to the landscape. British (of Greek descent) artist Marie Stillman (née Spartali; Greek: Μαρία Σπαρτάλη) emerged from London’s Anglo-Greek circle into the later Pre-Raphaelite world, first as a renowned model and then as an artist. In 1906, she called this work “merely a study from a model,” inspired by a bull’s-eye studio window. Still, the scene is carefully coded with the dove as courier (and Venus bird), the rose, the ivy, and the blindfolded Cupid to tell a story of love as devotion, desire, and danger. The story stays unresolved. Has the bird just arrived, or is it being sent away? Is the note tender, troubling, or both? Even the scattered grain could be a welcome, or a tremor after sudden news. Between the intimate room and the cool river landscape beyond the panes, the picture lingers on a moment when a woman receives a message, holds it close, and decides what it will mean.
January 22, 2026 at 11:23 PM