Three Women

Thoughtful online talk from the National Gallery taking three pictures of women from the collection where they are not named and represent a type not an individual while obviously being a portrait of a real person.

Holly Morrison, Kate Devine and Jenny Staff each took a picture and talked us through different ways to looking at it. These including “The Old Woman/The Ugly Duchess” by Quintin Massys from 1513, the portrait of a black woman shown here by an unknown French 19th century artist and “Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernando” by Edward Degas in 1879.

Although in the latter picture we do know the subject they discussed whether Degas was painting her as a type rather than wanting to capture her individuality . This was an interesting contrast to the second picture, which I didn’t know and has been on long term loan to Dublin, where we aren’t burdened by what we know about the artist when we look at it. The Massys may represent a satirical type or a portrait of a real woman with Paget’s Disease and the speakers talked about how it can make us think about disability in art.

I liked the way this talk made you think about ideas not just the pictures and I took away from it two quotes to think about. “With each view a picture is a different work” and “Women have lent their likeness to ideas”. 

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