Entre Aphrodite et Médée, la femme vue par les peintres des années 1860 à 1930

Lecture presented by Laurent Genest

While women, after a long struggle between the Second Empire and the 1920s, finally gained in 1897 the right to attend the theoretical courses at the École des Beaux-Arts, and managed to establish themselves on the artistic scene (one only has to mention figures such as Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Suzanne Valadon, and others), the image of women conveyed by the literary and visual arts and by painting in particular did not immediately reflect this emancipation. From Manet’s Olympia, a sensual figure and object of male desire, to Klimt’s scandalous Judith, and through the themes of motherhood and intimacy found in the works of Bonnard or Vuillard, there exist many other “faces” of womanhood: allegorical, enigmatic, fatal, or resigned, preceding the image of the emancipated, modern woman as portrayed by Tamara de Lempicka.