Impressionism and Gender by Ada Pinkston
Auguste Renoir: Blue Nude, 1880. Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo New York.

Throughout history art has played an important role in society. The impressionist paintings of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are not an exception: they each tell a story. The story in impressionism, this modern art, is that of the change in the roles that all people (men and women, rich and poor, young and old) had in society. Depictions of male and female relations in the society is reflected directly or indirectly through the art. The ideology that women are passive and submissive while men are active and dominant was the "natural"1 logic of modern European society. Natural is in quotation marks because while placing women inferior to men may seem unjust to today's society, it was a given for the order of things in modern Europe. It was part of the "cult of domesticity" that was present in most modern regions throughout Europe. Although male dominance was a factor that had long been rooted in the social order before the nineteenth century, there was a change in the type of male dominance that was present in modern times.

Because this ideology was so widespread, gender difference and power differences were interchangeable. The paintings that the impressionists created were not immune to the imbalances of their society. In fact, female inferiority and male dominance are demonstrated in both the ways in which women are visually depicted and the actual plots of a painting. "The patriarchal discourse of power over women masks itself in the veil of the natural-indeed, of the logical."2 Therefore, it is not that the impressionists were themselves sexist but that female passiveness was so embedded into the artist's thought that allowed for their paintings to reflect these ideals. However, the fact that domestic drudgery is present in the thoughts of the artist does not make the art or the artist a Conservative.

Male dominance and female submissiveness that came about as a result of the cult of domesticity was just one alteration in the placement of people in the modern metropolis. It was an environment where "all that is solid melts into air"3, where the middle class "flaneurs" roamed the streets with the lower class proletariats and artists. Thereby, in the modern city, social distinctions became less clear and the possibilities for social mobility increased. Women were not excluded from this newfound freedom and even though gender roles were set, they were more able to push the boundaries of society.

Although modern Parisian society still held females below men, it was also one that initiated a lot of the social mobility that we see today in the postmodern era. Therefore, modernity can be seen in all the impressionist paintings (even though the primary focus of this site will be the works of Renoir and Monet) and all of the contradictions in the placement of females that goes along with it.

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The Impressionists

Impressionism

Domesticity and Mobility

The Power Gained in Modern Society

Bibliography

1Linda Nochlin, Women, Art, and Power, and Other Essays (New York: Harper Row, Publishers, 1988) p. 2

2 ibid. p. 3

3 Karl Marx,