Posted by I started this post after I had the idea that there is a different pulse in an image that depicts only women, two or more.
I started searching and this is a sample of what I came up with.
THE “LADIES IN BLUE” FRESCO, Knossos Palace, Crete, Greece
1500-1450 BC
Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete
This is a fresco from the Minoan Palace of Knossos in Crete, on exhibit in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete, Greece. It was made 27 centuries ago and is part of a composition of richly dressed and lavishly bejewelled female figures depicted against a blue ground. Despite its fragmentary condition, the wall painting transmits the sense of opulence and prosperity of the royal court while reflecting the coquetry of the ladies, who gesture displaying the richness of their jewellery.
Theophany Dance, Golden Ring, Knossos Palace, Crete, 1600 BC
Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete
The breast naked female figures dance to celebrate the presence of a goddess (theophany).
Jean Auguste Dominique INGRES (1780-1867)
Deux femmes nues, l’une assise et l’autre couchée
(Two naked women, one seated, the other reclining)
Louvre Museum, Paris, France
H. 0,114 m ; L. 0,25 m
One of the many sketches Ingres drew in the 1850s before settling on the “Turkish Bath” composition.
Jean Auguste Dominique INGRES (1780-1867)
Feuille d’études de femmes pour le Bain turc
(Study for Turkish Bath), Louvre Museum, Paris, France
H. 0,062 m ; L. 0,049 m
Jean Auguste Dominique INGRES (1780-1867)
Le Bain Turc (The Turkish Bath) 1860
Louvre Museum, Paris, France
Diameter 108 cm
Oil on canvas
What a composition! I do not think there is another painting with so much female flesh on it!
Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene, 1864
Watercolor
“The painting, “Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene,” is likely one of the first depictions of same-sex female desire made for a gallery-going audience in the West, and the painter Simeon Solomon, was a gay Jewish artist living in Victorian England whose work has been nearly forgotten.
Solomon, who was associated with the 19th century Pre-Raphaelite movement, had his career cut short when he was arrested twice for same-sex liaisons with men (in 1873 and 1874), at the apogee of his fame, and it tragically changed the course of his life.” (Jacqui Palumbo, CNN)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Yole (The Skiff), 1875
Oil on canvas
71 × 92 cm
We are probably looking at the river Seine near Chatou (some ten miles west of central Paris), although the exact site has not been identified. However, it is likely that Renoir was more interested in creating a generalised image of a summer’s day on the river than in producing an accurate topographical record. Although routinely dated to 1879–80, the picture was probably executed in 1875, the same year Renoir painted Luncheon at La Fournaise (Art Institute of Chicago), which has similar soft feathery brushstrokes.
Boating was a popular subject for the Impressionists, and Renoir includes familiar Impressionist motifs such as the rowing boat itself (in fact, a skiff or small gig), a sailboat, a riverside villa, and a railway bridge (perhaps also a discrete reference to Monet’s interest in railways). The arrival of a steam train from Paris in the background underlines the easy access to the countryside.
The All-Women Student Fire Brigade at Girton College, Cambridge, 1878
Girton Ladies’ College in Great Britain had an all-women’s fire brigade from 1878 until 1932.
Girton was originally founded as the College for Women in Benslow House, Hitchin in 1869. Lecturers from the town colleges volunteered to repeat their lectures to the Hitchin students in their spare time, and the women’s days were largely dictated by the railway timetables.
At Benslow House the Cambridge College system was emulated as much as possible, with a High Table for two and a separate table for the five students. Edythe Lloyd’s book A Memoir gives the account of a priest on a railway carriage approaching Hitchin declaring “Ha! This is Hitchin, and that, I believe is the house where the College for Women is: that infidel place!”
Prior to 1948, women at Cambridge were not given degrees, despite attending lectures and sitting the Tripos exams. Essays and exams were marked voluntarily by good-willed Fellows in the town Colleges. The Council of the Senate declined permission for women to sit exams and be awarded degrees but did not object to examiners looking over papers in their spare time. Personal applications had to be made by women in order to gain access to exams and have them marked.
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, June – July 1907
Oil on canvas
8′ x 7′ 8″ (243.9 x 233.7 cm)
MOMA, New York
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon marks a radical break from traditional composition and perspective in painting. It depicts five naked women composed of flat, splintered planes whose faces were inspired by Iberian sculpture and African masks. The compressed space they inhabit appears to project forward in jagged shards, while a slice of melon in the still life at the bottom of the composition teeters on an upturned tabletop. Picasso unveiled the monumental painting in his Paris studio after months of revision. The Avignon of the work’s title is a reference to a street in Barcelona famed for its brothels.
Fred Boissonas, Women in the village of Gastouri, Kerkyra, Greece 1903
Pablo Picasso, Bathers, 1918
Oil on canvas
Paris, Picasso Museum
Starting from 1918, Picasso spent all his summers at the beach, first at Biarritz, then on the Cote d’Azur or in Dinard. These journeys inspired him to create a series of works on the theme of bathers. This painting was created in 1918 at Biarritz and the first one of the series.
Max Beckmann, Fünf Frauen (Five Women), 1935
Oil on canvas
215.9 x 109.2 cm. (85 x 43 in.)
Courtesy of Phillips de Pury & Company, London, UK
Evita y Libertad (1944)
Eva Perón and Libertad Lamarque appear together during the filming of the movie ‘La Cabalgata del Circo’. The film is best known for being the place where the myth of the alleged slap that Lamarque gave to the secondary actress Eva Duarte was born. This apparently led Lamarque to her subsequent exile in Mexico when Duarte became first lady of the Argentine Republic the following year.
Women working in the cotton fields near Aliartos, Greece,
18 june 1946.; Malindine, Edward
“Peasant women working in the cotton fields near Aliartos, there is not much cotton in Greece but enough to enable many locals to spin it, women to dye it, make garments blankets, clothes with it to meet the clothing shortage which is even worse than the food situation.”
© Daily Herald Archive / National Science & Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library
Dame Diana Rigg as Helena and Dame Helen Mirren as Hermia, 1968. Photograph by David Farrell, courtesy of the David Farrell Estate (c) DFP
The photograph from behind the scenes on Sir Peter Hall’s 1968 film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was taken by David Farrell. He was lucky enough to see Judi Dench, Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren when they were not yet Grandes Dames of the acting world. Filmed on location at Compton Verney, an 18th-century pile near Kineton, Warwickshire, the pictures form part of the venue’s Shakespeare in Art: Tempests, Tyrants and Tragedy exhibition, marking 400 years of the bard’s death. Seeing the sultry Mirren, elegant Rigg and saucy Dench in their gossamer frocks could turn even the most reluctant of us onto Shakespeare.
Vanessa Redgrave as Mary Stuart and Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth I during filming of ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’
by Keystone Press Agency Ltd
bromide press print, 13 May 1971
10 in. x 8 in. (253 mm x 203 mm) image size
Transferred from Evening Standard Library, 1983
Photographs Collection
National Portrait Gallery, NPG x182338
Margit Carstensen and Hanna Schygulla in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant‘.
Magnum photographer Ferdinando Scianna quietly followed model Marpessa Hennink in a small Sicilian town dressed in beautiful simple monochromatic clothes (Dolce & Gabbana Campaign, 1987).
Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon hit the desert highway in Thelma & Louise, Ridley Scott’s rollicking road flick. 1991
Women in a washing station in Alfama, Lisbon, Portugal 1992.
Photo Credit: Nikos Moropoulos