Category Archives: Feminism

June 08

The Feminine Side of Cubism: Marie Laurencin

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On the 8th of June 1956, Cubist artist Marie Laurencin died in Paris at the age of 72. During her lifetime, Laurencin achieved a successful international reputation, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. Even earlier though at the Salon des Indépendants (1910-1911) and the Salon d’Automne (1911-1912) she exhibited alongside Pablo Picasso, and Cubists associated […]

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June 04

Female Decorative Artists in Early 20th-Century Britain

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On the 4th of June 1879, British illustrator and designer Mabel Lucie Attwell was born in Mile End, London. At the turn of the century, her drawings of sentimentalized rotund cuddly infants, started appearing in various media such as: cards, calendars, nursery equipment, pictures, crockery and china ware, dolls, postcards, advertisements, posters, books and figurines. […]

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May 22

The Model-Mistress-Muse Paradigm: Henrietta Moraes

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On the 22nd of May 1931, British model, muse and memoirist Audrey Wendy Abbott known as Henrietta Moraes was born in Simla, India, where her father was stationed in the Indian Air Force. He deserted her mother when Henrietta was young, and she had a difficult upbringing raised by an abusive grandmother in England where […]

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May 18

Through the Female Lens: Gertrude Käsebier’s Indians

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On the 18th of May 1852, leading American pictorialist photographer Gertrude Käsebier was born in Des Moines, Iowa. Artistically trained at the Pratt Institute, then in France and Germany, she started off as a magazine photo-illustrator, opening her own portrait studio on Fifth Avenue in New York at the end of the 19th century. Her […]

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May 15

World’s Voyage to Eternity in Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Ship of Fools’

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On the 15th of May 1890, the American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Katherine Anne Porter was born in Indian Creek, Texas. During the next ninety years, she came to experience the most extraordinary social, political and technological transformations, all of which constituted merely a background to her very eventful life. After losing her mother and grandmother at […]

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May 14

Oona O’Neill Chaplin. Behind Every Great Man…

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… There is a Great Woman. One such woman, Oona O’Neill, was born on the 14 of May 1925,  in Warwick Parish, Bermuda, to talented parents, the prize-winning playwright Eugene O’Neill and writer Agnes Boulton. We can only assume that this saying must have been true in Oona’s case, as her true character remained an […]

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May 13

Is God a Woman? The Visions of Julian of Norwich

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Here is a vision shown by the goodness of God to a devout woman, and her name is Julian, who is a recluse at Norwich and still alive, A.D. 1413, in which vision are very many words of comfort, greatly moving for all those who desire to be Christ’s lovers. (Julian of Norwich, Showings) On […]

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May 02

Women’s Magazines and Ideology Shifts

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On the 2nd of May 1885, Good Housekeeping magazine was founded by Clark W. Bryan in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Still owned by the Hearst Corporation, it has ever since featured articles about women’s interests, product testing, recipes, diet, health as well as literary articles. It has become an institution known for its “Good Housekeeping Seal of […]

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April 27

Petty Girl: The Ideal Male Fantasy of a Woman

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On the 27th of April 1894, the American graphic artist George Petty was born in Abbeville, Louisiana. He is mostly remembered for creating the Petty Girl, one of America’s favourite and most popular pinups, which was used frequently in advertisements, calendars, magazine centrefolds, posters, and most importantly, as an element of building soldiers’ morale during […]

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April 26

Simonetta Vespucci and Quattrocento Femininity

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On the 26th of April 1476, Simonetta Cattaneo de Candia Vespucci died from tuberculosis in Florence, Italy, aged just 23. An Italian Renaissance noblewoman from Genoa, at the tender age of fifteen she married Marco Vespucci, son of Piero, close to the Florentine Medici family, as well as a cousin of the Florentine explorer and […]

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