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Performing the Female Artistic Self: Layers of Identity in Cecilia Beaux’s Portraits
Franciosi, Caterina
Franciosi, Caterina
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Abstract
As a successful woman painter in fin-de-siècle America, Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) representeda notable exception, an unexplored creature belonging to a shifting social and cultural scenariothat continuously redefined assumptions on personal identities and public roles. American artistsstrove to construct their public façade as well as their art in compliance with dominant modes ofthought, vision, and behavior. Working in alliance with the critics, they sought to respond topublic expectations on the nature of artistic identity as much as on their adherence to culturallyapproved notions of masculinity, femininity, and Americanness. This thesis will explore howBeaux navigated the late-nineteenth-century re-definition of artistic identity by way of aconsistent and visible performance of femininity. The critical reception of her work will be reconsideredwith respect to the gendered language used to code it as “feminine,” and to thetendency of assessing it by way of comparison with the “masculine” work of John SingerSargent (1856-1925). The critical construction of Beaux’s paintings as “feminine” will beunderstood as an intended response to the artist’s conscious enactment of a feminine-evokingpictorial mode. I will analyze how Beaux forged a prominent public façade by incorporating inher outward appearance and behavior a set of traits that latched on to shared notions ofexemplary womanhood. More specifically, I will argue that Beaux manipulated the protocols offashionable portraiture both formally and thematically. Mother and Daughter (1898) andPortrait of Mrs. Roosevelt and Daughter Ethel (1902) provide particularly interesting cases towitness Beaux’s enactment of a feminine pictorial sensitivity. In the portraits, Beaux detectedand recorded the sitters’ specific psychological and social circumstances, extrapolating fromtheir individualities larger narratives of female experiences that are embedded in, and alsoaugmented by the distinct operations of self-aggrandizement entailed in each commission.
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Thesis (B.A. in Art History)--John Cabot University, Fall 2017.
Date
2017
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Keywords
Cecilia Beaux, 1855-1942, Portrait painters, Women painters
Citation
Franciosi, Caterina. "Performing the Female Artistic Self: Layers of Identity in Cecilia Beaux’s Portraits". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2017.