Metropolitan Museum

21 Aug Marie Baltshirtseff: In The Studio

[caption id="attachment_6066" align="alignleft" width="295"] Marie Bashkirtseff[/caption] The self-portrait is probably the most interesting tradition among women artists. Often women artists portray themselves as artists, or rather claim their status as an artist though self-portraiture; paintings of other women artists painting are a related tradition, involving a...

21 Aug 19th Century Painter Rosa Bonheur

Posted at 09:00h in art history, Metropolitan Museum, nasty women by Professor Andrew Lear

One of the great animal painters of the 19th century, Rosa Bonheur, portrayed by her life-partner, the American painter Anna Klumpke. For once, Bonheur is wearing women's clothing, but her gown's monochrome simplicity and its jacket-like bodice, along with her strong features and lack of make-up, coiffure etc. certainly make her somewhat gender-ambiguous. In fact, it's hard to say what modern category (if any) Bonheur fit in. A trans activist recently suggested to me that she may have been intersex, which I consider interesting. Whatever the case was, however, she certainly was an early example of a modern, unmarried career woman—and the painting absolutely conveys her strength and independence.

17 Aug Highlight from our fashion and beauty tour

Posted at 03:30h in art history, beauty standards, fashion, fashion history, Metropolitan Museum by jenni

As you walk around any museum, you will see portraits that include far more fashion than person. Here is a great Renaissance gentleman with the vast mink collar, his elegant double brocaded with gold thread, his two gold chains, his beautifully manicured hands and probably...

08 Aug Anne de Pisseleu, the Duchesse d’Étampes

Posted at 11:07h in art history, fashion, Metropolitan Museum, Shady Ladies, Women's History by jenni

People often ask if our tours change over time, and the answer is absolutely yes, they change—both because the museum's displays change, and because we discover things about the artworks. Here for instance is a portrait of a royal mistress that just came onto display at the Met. It isn't certain who the artist is, but the subject is clearly Anne de Pisseleu, the Duchesse d'Étampes, who was one of the most important mistresses of François I, France's most important Renaissance king. Anne was a typical Shady Lady: she was famously beautiful, but also famously intelligent. In fact, she was called "the most beautiful of the learned, and the most learned of the beautiful." It was also typical of the French court that François married her off and gave her husband a title: the French always wanted their royal mistresses to be titled and married (perhaps to prevent their children from making claims on the throne). Want to know more about the Shady Ladies of art and history? Come on our Shady Ladies tours!

08 Aug Comic Actress Elizabeth Farren

Posted at 10:50h in courtesans, Metropolitan Museum, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

Elizabeth Farren was the great comic actress of 18th century London. She was the mistress of the Earl of Derby and when his wife died, he married her, so she became the Countess of Derby. Don't imagine that this put their relationship beyond the aim...

08 Aug Shady Ladies Tours presents: Kitty Fisher

Posted at 10:37h in Metropolitan Museum, Women's History by jenni

Kitty Fisher was one of the most famous Shady Ladies of early 18th century London—so famous that she still survives in the child's rhyme "Lucy Locket lost her pocket/Kitty Fisher found it" and so on. Fisher was an early example of a celeb, and she used portraits to get publicity, including this one, which shows her holding an elegant cloth up to block the public's view of her bosom. The painting contains a joke about her name in the form of a kitty fishing in a goldfish bowl—in the side of which you can see reflected the curious public at the window. Curious about the scandalous ladies of the past? Come on the Shady Ladies tour!

14 Dec Fashion History in Art

Posted at 22:42h in art history, beauty standards, courtesans, fashion, fashion history, Metropolitan Museum, Shady Ladies, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

We have been giving fashion history tours at the Metropolitan Museum for several months now, and the more we work on them, the more we see that fashion history is probably the biggest theme in the entire museum. If you think about it, you might think thathttps://shadyladiestours.com/fashion-and-beauty-tour/beauty—human beauty—is the biggest theme in the art history. But if you look carefully at the beautiful people in the museum, you will see that (aside perhaps from the Greek male nudes), the person's features are only a secondary aspect of the images. It isn't their natural beauty that makes people beautiful in art. Instead, the artworks focus on many other aspects of the beautiful person: on hairdos and make-up and jewelry and clothing and accessories and shoes. In short, human beauty in art consists not of beautiful features, but of costume or fashion.

07 Dec Who was the greatest Shady Lady?

Posted at 23:26h in art history, courtesans, Metropolitan Museum by jenni

People often ask us who the greatest Shady Lady was. And it's a hard question, because there are lots of possibilities: famous royal mistresses like Diane de Poitiers or Madame de Pompadour, famous courtesans like Marie Duplessis (the original of the Lady of the Camellias...

12 Sep Why were high foreheads once considered a sign of beauty?

Posted at 19:14h in art history, Metropolitan Museum, Shady Ladies, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

This painting portrays Saint Justina of Padua as a Renaissance fashion plate. The pearls, rubies, and emeralds sewn onto her clothing, cap, and hair tie were the mark of an aristocratic lady; her embroidered stomacher (the triangular piece covering chest and stomach) was the height of fashion, as were her elegant green sleeves (as in the song!), separate from her bodice, with the blouse pulled through the gaps in a style called 'slashing'. Most noticeable to a modern eye is her amazingly high forehead.

01 Sep Courtesans and mistresses in art

Posted at 01:12h in art history, courtesans, Metropolitan Museum, Paris tour, Shady Ladies, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

Elegant women are a huge theme in art history, and people mostly assume, as they stroll through art museums, that they are looking at queens, duchesses, and the wives of the wealthy. But often enough, they aren't. They are looking at royal "favorites," mistresses, and courtesans. Courtesans are in fact a particularly large theme in art, probably bigger than queens and duchesses. But people today pass by them without realizing who or what they were, because courtesans, if they exist today, are not important in our culture, so we're unaware of them.