The Female Muse

thefemalemuse.blogspot.com

Curated by Amanda Smith

Collection consists of oil paintings and photographs

The Female Muse

Featuring the work of:

Dante Gabriel Rossetti 

Salvador Dali

Gustave Courbet

Pablo Picasso

Sir John Everet Millais

Peter Lindbergh

Amedeo Modigiliani

Edouard Manet

Man Ray

Egon Schiele

All of the works featured are examples of art created by male artists who were inspired by a particular female. More often than not these muses were also their lovers. I have always been interested in the tragic love stories associated with some of these artist's bohemian lifestyles, so some of the stories I was already familiar with. For others, I looked at different artist's work for female faces to pop up more than once, then did some research on whether or not they were anyone significant.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Day-dream
Oil on canvas
62 ½ x 36 ½”
1880

Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882) was an artist and poet who founded an artists' movement known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848.

Rossetti wrote this poem to accompany the portrait:

“The thronged boughs of the shadowy sycamore

Still bear young leaflets half the summer through ;

From when the robin ‘gainst the unhidden blue

Perched dark, till now, deep in the leafy core,

The embowered throstle’s urgent wood-notes soar

Through summer silence. Still the leaves come new ;

Yet never rosy-sheathed as those which drew

Their spiral tongues from spring-buds heretofore.

Within the branching shade of Reverie

Dreams even may spring till autumn : yet none be

Like woman’s budding day-dream spirit-fann’d.

Lo! tow’rd deep skies, not deeper than her look,

She dreams ; till now on her forgotten book

Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.”

This portrait was painted of the artist’s secret lover, Jane Morris. Clues to the affair are in the painting, such as the honeysuckle in her hand. Honeysuckles were a Victorian symbol of love.

Since the theme of this gallery is the female muse, it made sense to me to open with a painting from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, since the artists were notorious for obsessing over whoever their current muses were and often began tumultuous affairs with them. Rossetti spotted Jane Morris in a theatre and then spent years using her as a subject for his art.

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali
Galarina
Oil on canvas
64 x 50cm
1945

Salvador Dali (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989) was a surrealist painter from Spain.

Dali said of this painting: “Begun in 1944, this work was completed in six months, working three hours a day. I called it Galarina because Gala is to me what La Fornarina was to Raphael. And, without any premeditation, here again we have…the bread! A rigorous and keen-eyed analysis will show that Gala’s crossed arms are like the interwoven wicker of the breadbasket, and her breast, the crust of bread. I have already painted Gala with two lamb chops on her shoulder, as an expression of my subconscious desire to devour her. That was the age of the imagination’s raw meat. Today, now that Gala has risen in the heraldic hierarchy of my nobility, she has become my basket of bread”.

This painting is of Dali's wife, Galarina Dali.
She was his muse throughout their marriage and he created many works of art that showed her nude or partially nude. There is speculation that she was also a muse (and lover) to other artists at that time.

Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet
Jo, La Belle Irlandaise
Oil on canvas
22 x 26”
1865

Gustave Courbet (June 10 1819 - December 31 1877) was a French painter who was a leader in art's Realist movement during the 19th century.

Courbet referred to this painting as "the beauty of a superb redhead whose portrait I have begun."

This painting is of his muse and lover Joanna Hiffernan. She modeled for other artists before meeting Courbet. This was the first painting he did of her. He did other variations of this same painting as well.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo PicassoThe Weeping Woman
Oil on canvas60 х 49 cm
1937

Pablo Picasso (October 25 1881 - April 8 1973) was a Spanish artist who pioneered the style of Cubism. He lived in France for most of his life.

The Weeping Woman was part of a series of political paintings regarding a war in Spain, but his lover and muse Dora Maar was the model, and in a way, the painting is about her as well. Picasso said of Maar, "For me she's the weeping woman. For years I've painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one... Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman....And it's important, because women are suffering machines.”

Picasso had a long list of muses throughout his life who he would obsess over for a while and then leave for another. Dora Maar is thought to have been his most influential muse. She was also an artist herself.

Sir John Everett Millais

Sir John Everett Millais
Ophelia
Oil on canvas
30 x 44”
1852

Sir John Everett Millais (June 8 1829 - August 13 1896) was a painter who helped found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Ophelia was not received well when first exhibited in London. One critic said, "there must be something strangely perverse in an imagination which souses Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and robs the drowning struggle of that lovelorn maiden of all pathos and beauty." Now this is a very famous and admired painting.

Millais' model was the muse Elizabeth Siddal. He had her lie in a bathtub for seven hours (in the middle of Winter) to pose for this painting. When the gas lamps he used to warm the water went out, he did not bother to turn them back on which resulted in Elizabeth catching pneumonia which weakened her for the rest of her life. It is thought that she had other ailments as well. Throughout her short life, she was muse to other Pre-Raphaelites and was also married to Rossetti.