Portrait of a Female Artist: Cecilia Beaux

Throughout the 1800s, the greater sphere of feminism experienced a dramatic rise in Europe and gradually endowed women with a strong incentive to advocate for individual rights. The emergence of a societal tidal force, like an electric monopole, energized women to follow its course like charged electrons in a current. Toward the turn of the century, a New Women's movement permeated Western Europe as Victorian ideals made way for modern values. Such shifts facilitated women's growing claim over the public and professional spheres. 'New Women' flouted convention and undermined the classical ideals of 'true womanhood,'[i] advocating radical individualism and economic independence. As a result, the surge of novel ideas quickly proliferated in every aspect of society: the art industry saw the rise of brilliant women painters who also identified as radical progressives and championed emerging ideals of modern womanhood. Among these women was painter Cecilia Beaux, an American-born French artist who rallied for critical and professional recognition and challenged the disparaging stereotypes that continued to characterize women and women artists.[ii] Similar to her Renaissance predecessors, Beaux achieved great success by painting distinctly feminine subject matter.

Cecilia Beaux Self Portrait, 1894

However, while Fontana and Anguissola illustrated existing ideals of female virtue, Beaux and her other contemporaries redefined the conventions of femininity in their paintings.

At 29, Beaux made a grand debut in the art industry with her large canvas Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance, a portrait of her sister and nephew. The painting closely depicts the intimacy between mother and child and was highly praised by professors in her art academy. Beaux received numerous prizes and established unanimous critical acclaim throughout Europe and the world, including Paris, New York, and Philadelphia; she became famous for her portraiture and particularly her skill in portraying feminine subject matter.

Cecilia Beaux Les Derniers Jours d'Enfance, 1883-1885

During her time in Paris from 1887 to 1889, Beaux produced more than 30 portraiture commissions, of which only 5 depicted male patrons; her most highly regarded works at the apex of her career, including her famous New England Woman, purchased by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, by majority depicted female subjects. The soft white tones, rich palette, and luscious gowns of Beaux's portraits accentuated the ornamental beauty of the wives and daughters of 19th-century politicians.

Cecilia Beaux New England Woman, 1895

Many art historians have debated whether Beaux's work perpetuated the confining Victorian ideals of femininity or enriched women with independent identities. While Beaux's stylistic devices closely exhibited conservative notions of the 'perfect' domestic woman in her ostensibly idealized depictions of female sitters, they do not take away from the messages conveyed by her subject matter and composition.[iii]

In her painting Dorothea and Francesca (1898), two sisters choreograph their steps, hand in hand, as they venture out towards the greater world and uncover their individual paths; in After the Meeting (1914), the artist's niece Ernesta passionately converses with another individual in a public setting, boldly displaying her intelligence and involvement in the world outside the painting; In Sita and Sarita (1921), a confident woman mysteriously smiles as she strokes a black cat that stares directly at the viewer. While critics of Beaux's time speculated about the sexual implications of a cat and a girl, making allusions to Manet's Olympia and Sargent's scandalous Madame X, Beaux's execution of the subject's fixed gaze and assertive body language emulates the intelligence, firmness and tenacity of a self-sufficient individual; the woman's demeanour challenged the sexual interpretations of her beauty.

Cecilia Beaux Sita and Sarita, 1921

Often overlooked by their aesthetic quality, Beaux's paintings conveyed complex messages that confronted the facile, brainless brand of feminism that perpetuated the superficial gender stereotypes of her time. In her monograph Cecilia Beaux: American Figure Painter, Nina Auerbach argues that while Beaux's stylistic choices "oozed" her figures into soft, exquisite creatures, her portraits "never succumbed to stereotypes of femininity."[iv] Rather, they introduced a new definition of femininity and enriched women with independent identities that enabled them to become true "New Women."

Works Cited

[i] Pamela H. Simpson and Kirsten Swinth, Painting Professionals: Women Artists and the Development of Modern American Art, 1870-1930, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 169. [ii] Hayley D.K. McGuirk, “Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux: An Analytical Comparison of Two New Women and Issues Surrounding Femininity, Modernity, and Nineteenth-Century Feminism,” 2017. [iii] Ibid., 13. [iv] Sylvia Yount, Nina Auerbach, Kevin Sharp, Alison Bechtel Wexler, and Mark Bockrath, Cecilia Beaux (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2007).