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.

Peter Lindbergh

Peter LindberghWhite Shirts for Vogue
Photograph - Tri-X ISO50 B&W film
35mm negative
1988

Peter Lindbergh (November 23 1944-) is a German photographer who created superstars out of models in the 1980's and 90's. 

One of his first editorial shoots was of a group of models on the beach for Vogue magazine. The editor at the time was not impressed with the photos. 

Lindbergh said, "Early in my career American Vogue contacted me. The style of fashion photography was much different then. I met with Alexander Liberman, and he said, 'You are a young photographer, so why tell me that you don’t want to work for American Vogue? We are the leading fashion magazine.' I said, 'I can’t match my mind with your image of a woman – the perfect makeup, the perfect hair, always in the most beautiful apartment. That is not my feeling of a woman.' And he said, 'Okay. Do a story and bring me back some pictures of what you think a woman could be.' I went to L.A. with an editor, Carlyn Cerf du Dudzeele. The first problem was with the fashion. I said, 'Let’s put a great cast of models together and put them all in just white shirts.' We went to the beach with Tatjana Patitz, Linda Evangelista, ChristyTurlington, Karen Alexander, Rachel Williams, and Estelle Hallyday, and I shot them totally natural. I still love the pictures. I came back to New York, and everyone just looked at each other and said, 'Hmmmm, it’s great...' They didn’t know what to do with them. The pictures ended up running small in a story about how hair could be loose on the beach."

Linda Evangelist and Christy Turlington went on to become two of Lindbergh's favorite subjects. Both could be considered his muses. He created so many iconic images of both of them and made them internationally famous. 

Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani
Reclining Nude
Oil on canvas
23 7/8 x 36 1/2”
1917

Amedeo Modigliani (July 12 1884 - January 24 1920) was a Jewish-Italian artist who painted portraits of women. He did not want to be classified by any of the art movements at the time such as Dada or Cubism.

Reclining Nude is one of many works of art inspired by his muse and lover Jeanne Hebuterne. A statement provided by the Met Museum website, "Unlike depictions of Venus from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, in which mythological or allegorical attributes provide a context for the figure’s nudity, Modigliani provocatively presents his Reclining Nude without any such references, highlighting the figure’s eroticism."

Jeanne was his last and most influential muse. She was fourteen years younger than he and she was extremely devoted to him. She even killed herself the day after he died of tuberculosis. She was nine months pregnant at the time.

Edouard Manet

Edouard Manet
Olympia
Oil on canvas
51.4 × 74.8"
1863

Eduoard Manet (January 23 1832 - April 30 1883) was a French painter and one of the leading artists of the Impressionist movement.

Olympia is portrait of a prostitute being attended by a servant. It was unique for its time because of her "confrontational" stare. It shocked viewers and people thought it was vulgar, partly because it represents a "working woman" who is sexually independent of men.

The model for this was Manet's muse Victorine Meurent. She modeled for him for other shocking portraits, particularly one where she is naked in the woods with two clothed men. He always painted her with a look that is a cross between aloofness and confrontation, somehow challenging the viewer.

Man Ray

Man Ray
Noire Et Blanche
Photograph, gelatin silver print
17.5 x 21cm
1926

Man Ray (August 27 1890 - November 18 1976) was an artist most famous for his surreal style of photography. 

Noire et Blanche was a photo of his muse that was meant to show the idealized beauty standards of the time. Her long oval face and pale white skin was very envied in the 20's, and the dark mask next to her was supposed to contrast and complement her beauty. 
It was originally printed in Paris Vogue magazine, accompanied with this text, "Face of a woman, calm transparent egg straining to shake off the thick head of hair through which she remains bound to primitive nature. It is through women that the evolution of species to a place of full mystery will be accomplished. Sometimes plaintive, she returns with a feeling of curiosity and dread to one of the stages through which she has passed, perhaps before becoming today the evolved white creature."

The muse's name was Kiki de Monparnasse who started modelling nude at age 14. She was Man Ray's favorite subject for many years and they had a long affair, which is unsettling, considering her age.

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele
Portrait of Wally
Oil on panel
13 x 15.7”
1912

Egon Schiele (June 12 1890 - October 31 1918) was a Viennese artist who painted mostly self-portraits and portraits of women, all with a distinct style that made his portraits appear boney, and sometimes sick.


His most notorious muse was Wally Neuriz, who was his lover and muse for about four years. The image I included is the first one he created when their relationship became a serious affair. “She’s not just a model. She looks back. She motivated his self-reflection, and was a catalyst for his work,” says Diethard Leopold, son of the late Rudolf Leopold, who owns much of this collection. Although it was difficult to find any statements from Schiele himself, his and Wally's relationship is such a perfect and tragic story of artist and muse and I had to include it. Their story ends sadly though, because he left her for another woman after she was loyal for many years. She died soon after of scarlet fever.

Portrait of Wally  was later stolen by the Nazis during WWII and caused many lawsuits later on over who was the rightful owner of this painting. The story has now been made into a feature length film.

Conclusion

The process of organizing an exhibition requires a lot of research, which is a very interesting but difficult task. I was very exciting to start this project, but once I got it started I was shocked by how little information there is on many famous works of art, especially photographs. I even had to change my theme at one point because there just wasn’t enough information on my original choices, which was very frustrating Being a curator would be a frustrating job, but also a fascinating one. Once you learn the backstory on a piece of art it takes on a whole new meaning for you. Some works of art that I did not particularly care for became more interesting to me after doing some research.