Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

With their ability to freeze a specific moment in time, portraits can be powerful devices for documenting appearance and uncovering personality or mood. They can show one’s appearance while also lending a glimpse of one’s inner being, thereby unveiling and recording changes in the deportment of individuals throughout this era of modernity as the gender balance shifted and women gained more self-confidence and assumed more control over their own lives. This paper focuses on a handful of portraits from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries by American and European artists whose subjects, from friends to Presidents, look back directly at the viewer, allowing intimate glimpses of their status, personalities, emotions, and authority – with special attention on issues of gender during this period, paralleling the rise of women’s empowerment. Through close scrutiny of portraits and self-portraits of men and women by male and female artists, and by studying provenance, personal letters, and analysis of prior scholarship, the sitters’ personalities emerge, and their roles are revealed, giving the viewer additional information into the demeanor and purpose of the figure depicted. The focus will be on the reinforcements and challenges presented to gendered stereotypes and long-held patriarchal traditions (which are often discovered in expression, gesture, posture, dress, location, and other details) and how they are communicated by the sitter and the painting’s creator, noting differences between masculine and feminine projections, interpretations, expectations, and innovations.