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mdstamper.bsky.social
Michael
@mdstamper.bsky.social
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Sharing my research and inspiration featuring #WomenInArt … and for those with time or interest to learn more: detailed #artText in the #AltText including art history & stories with all respect + credit to the original artists & museum curators.
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“Self Portrait” by Georgette Chen (张荔英) (Singaporean, China-born) - Oil on canvas / c. 1946 - National Gallery Singapore #WomenInArt #art #artText #GeorgetteChen #张荔英 #AsianArtist #Asian #NationalGallerySingapore #SelfPortrait #BlueskyArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #AsianArt #NanyangStyle
Painted in Shanghai, China around 1946, this self-portrait came after years of upheaval for Georgette Chen (张荔英), born Chang Li Ying in Zhejiang in 1906 and trained in Paris and New York. She had already exhibited at the Salon d’Automne and lived between China, Europe, and the United States, but war, occupation, and the death of her husband, diplomat Eugene Chen, left deep marks on her life. Here she chooses neither grief nor glamour with tight framing, a subdued sepia palette, and economical brushwork presenting a working artist who knows her craft and her worth. The East Asian artist is seen close-up from the neck up, turning slightly to our left while fixing us with a steady, sideways gaze. Her oval face fills almost the entire small canvas and her light olive skin modeled with blocky, blended strokes and a gentle flush on the cheeks. Dark, almond-shaped eyes sit beneath faint brows, one catching more light than the other. Her lips, painted a cool rose pink, are closed in a calm, determined line. Her black hair is swept back and gathered into a coil near her ear. She wears a dark, high-collared blouse that hints at a cheongsam, its edge just visible at the neck. The background is a soft, mottled field of browns and greys, without props or studio details, keeping all attention on her poised, focused presence. Her level gaze feels both introspective and guarded, as if she is measuring the world that has tested her and deciding how to go on. A few years later, she would move to Malaya (Malaysia) and then Singapore, becoming a key figure in the Nanyang style and teaching generations at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Now in the National Gallery Singapore, this self-portrait often anchors retrospectives of her work, standing as a concise statement of her resilience, cosmopolitan training, and lifelong commitment to painting.
November 29, 2025 at 8:44 AM
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“Self Portrait (The Silk Dress)” by Eleanor Allen Moore (Northern Irish–Scottish) - Oil on canvas / c. 1918–1919 - The Dick Institute (Kilmarnock, Scotland) #WomenInArt #EleanorAllenMoore #DickInstitute #TheDickInstitute #selfportrait #artText #art #EleanorMoore #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
In this self-portrait, a light-skinned woman sits sideways on a patterned armchair, twisting toward us with a sly, precocious smile. Her grey silk dress fans into soft pleats, its cuffs and hem banded with bright, patchwork stripes that echo a tartan-like throw beneath her. A towering black feathered hat wrapped in a deep red band crowns her head, the crimson repeated on her lips and flowers she toys with in her right hand. Loose, blocky brushstrokes dissolve background and furniture into creamy light, sharpening only around her face, hands, and vivid accessories to pull our eye to her poised, playful presence. Painted around 1919, just before artist Eleanor Allen Moore married and left Scotland for 12 years in Shanghai, this was her first work to be publicly exhibited (shown under the title “The Silk Dress”). Created after she had served as a wartime Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in Edinburgh, it announces her determination to return to professional art. Moore had trained at Glasgow School of Art and is now recognized as one of the “Glasgow Girls,” the women painters and designers linked to the school whose work counterbalanced the better-known “Glasgow Boys.” Their bold color, modern fashion and interest in women’s lives reshaped Scottish art at the turn of the 20th century, and Moore’s vividly stylish self-image fits squarely within that story. The jaunty hat, fashionable silk and knowing glance suggest a woman confident in her craft and future, standing on the threshold between provincial manse life and the cosmopolitan adventures that would later shape her sensitive paintings of everyday life along the Yangtze River delta in China. Today, this playful self-portrait is often reproduced as an emblem of the Glasgow Girls’ achievement and as a reminder of a cosmopolitan, ambitious artist whose work bridged Ayrshire interiors, Shanghai streets, and the wider history of modern Scottish women’s painting.
November 28, 2025 at 11:03 PM
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“Self-Portrait” by Anita Magsaysay-Ho (Filipina) - Oil on masonite board / 1944 - National Museum of Fine Arts (Manila, Philippines) #WomenInArt #art #artwork #AnitaMagsaysayHo #MagsaysayHo #NationalMuseumPH #SelfPortrait #artText #NationalMuseumofFineArts #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
Painted in 1944, while Anita Magsaysay-Ho was reportedly back in wartime Manila, this self portrait depicts the young artist insisting on her vocation amid occupation and uncertainty. She appears as a Filipina painter with medium-brown skin and dark, wavy hair pulled back from her face looking calmly toward us from a warm, close studio. She wears a loose, paint-splattered jacket over a patterned blouse, the fabric softly rumpled from work. Her hands, centered in the composition, gently cradle a brush and cloth as if pausing mid-cleaning. In the foreground, a low table is crowded with a broad palette stained with light browns, reds, and greens, along with jars and metal tools that hint at the labor of painting. Behind her, to the right, an easel holds a second, more loosely rendered figure in a hat, suggesting another portrait in progress. Swirling, textured strokes blur wall, air, and light so that the artist’s face and working hands emerge as the clearest points of focus. Trained in Manila under Fernando Amorsolo and Fabian de la Rosa, she would soon refine the modernist language that later defined her images of Filipino market and farm workers through flattened forms, rhythmic patterns, and dignified everyday labor. Here, she aligns herself with those future subjects as a working woman, surrounded by tools, intent on craft rather than social status or decoration. Long the only woman among the “Thirteen Moderns” (a group of painters led by Victorio Edades who broke away from conservative, Amorsolo-style academic painting in the 1930s–40s and helped establish modernism in the Philippines), she later continued her studies abroad and became one of the most celebrated painters in Philippine art history. Recent exhibitions, including showings of this self-portrait, have shared how the work stakes a claim that even in the middle of war, Magsaysay-Ho presents herself not as muse or model, but as a professional artist, fully in command of her image and her career.
November 28, 2025 at 4:22 PM
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“Self Portrait” by Peggy Fitzgerald (British) - Oil on canvas / 1937 - Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery (Carlisle, England) #WomenInArt #PeggyFitzgerald #TullieHouse #SelfPortrait #SelfPortrait #artText #art #BlueskyArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #bskyart #TullieHouseMuseum #BritishArt
Painted in 1937, on the eve of the Second World War, this self-portrait places Peggy Fitzgerald among the many interwar women artists who used their own image to claim professional visibility. Working within a crisp, representational style typical of 1930s British realism, she presents herself neither as muse nor ornament but as a thoughtful, modern painter, framed by her own art. The young white woman is shown from the chest up, turned slightly left but looking at us head-on. Her dark, tightly curled hair frames a pale, oval face with steady brown eyes and full red lips, set against a flat olive-green wall. She wears a close-fitting taupe top with narrow red-and-blue stripes edging the collar and running in a band down the front. In her right hand, raised to chest height, she holds a thin stem with a few glossy green leaves. A gold ring with a dark rectangular stone glints on her pinky finger. Behind her, cropped by the picture edge, hang two framed works: a color painting on the left and, on the right, a small print with hazy figures and faint lettering. The light falls evenly, modeling her features with careful, almost sculptural precision. The branch she holds can be read as a quiet emblem of growth and persistence, a living accent in an otherwise controlled interior. Almost nothing is known about Fitzgerald beyond brief records that list her as a British artist active in the 1930s and 1940s, with works such as “Sea Thoughts” exhibited or sold in the same period. Today, this canvas is believed to be her only oil painting in a UK public collection, making it a rare witness to a career largely missing from the written record and a reminder of how many women’s artistic lives survive chiefly through a single, resolute self-portrait.
November 28, 2025 at 12:20 AM
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“Self-portrait” by Johnetta Tinker (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1970 - University Museum, Texas Southern University (Houston) #WomenInArt #JohnettaTinker #Tinker #SelfPortrait #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #art #artText #BlackArt #AfricanAmericanArt #BlueskyArt #TexasSouthernUniversity
Painted around 1970 while Johnetta Tinker was an art student at Texas Southern University, this self-portrait reflects an HBCU studio culture that insisted Black life belonged at the center of art. In a program shaped by muralist John Biggers, Tinker studied African and African American aesthetics, spiritual symbolism, and the idea that artists are accountable to their communities. The young Black woman is shown from the chest up, facing us head-on against a hot orange-red background. Her rich brown skin catches light along the forehead, nose, cheeks, and collarbones, so her face almost glows against the darker paint. Large, tightly textured afro hair fills the top of the canvas, ringed by a soft yellow halo that turns the hairstyle into a radiant crown. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes hold a steady, unblinking gaze while full lips close in a calm and confident expression. A golden, patterned cloth is wrapped diagonally across her body, leaving one shoulder bare and falling in heavy folds that are thick with paint. The lower background deepens toward brown and maroon, while the top edge is streaked and smoky, framing the figure like rising heat. Her haloed afro links her image to Black Power style and to sacred icons, suggesting that a young Black woman’s presence is both contemporary and holy, political and intimate at once. The draped gold cloth hints at West African textiles snd the robes of saints, quietly crowning an HBCU student with dignity and quiet authority. As the work entered the University Museum’s collection, it joined a broader visual history of TSU students imagining themselves into the future. Tinker would later become known for layered prints and murals about memory, violence, and Black resilience. Here, we see an early, steady claim to visibility and worth that underlies that later work.
November 27, 2025 at 5:43 PM
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“Self Portrait” by Aya Broughton (Japanese–British) - Oil on canvas / c. 1930s - Torre Abbey Museum (Torquay, England) #WomenInArt #AyaBroughton #AyakoBroughton #Broughton #SelfPortrait #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #arte #JapaneseArtist #TorreAbbeyMuseum #WomenArtists #WomensArt #WomanArtist
Signed in Japanese down the right side with the characters あや子 (Ayako) and then “Aya” in Roman letters just below, this self portrait was painted in the early 1930s, when Ayako “Aya” Broughton was in her twenties, around the time she left Japan. She is reportedly from an affluent family in Kyoto, though surviving records are fragmentary, and here she presents herself as cosmopolitan and self-possessed with a “Japanese-style” straw hat and deliberate jewelry in an upright pose and restrained grey and cream palette. She is a young woman with light golden-brown skin turned in 3/4 view against a soft grey backdrop, meeting us with a steady, sideways glance. Her dark eyes are framed by neat brows and a shadow of black hair tucked beneath a wide woven straw hat whose ridged crown and ribboned brim catch the light. She wears a short-sleeved cream dress that creases at the shoulders and waist, fastened with round gold buttons and cinched by a broad patterned belt. A chunky beaded necklace lies over her collar, echoed by matching earrings, bracelet and a large ring on her left hand. Subtle shifts of grey and beige model her face and arms, giving the painted surface a textured, almost sculpted feel, while her signature in both Japanese and English hints at a life lived between cultures. In 1936, she married the English scholar Bernard Broughton and moved to the seaside town of Torquay, which became her home and primary subject. After World War II, she deepened her studying at art schools in Devon, joining the Free Painters and Sculptors and the Society of Women Artists, and exhibiting from London to the Paris Salon, where she won a silver medal. Later honoured as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and remembered through the Aya Broughton Prize for immigrant artists, she insisted that she belonged to both cultures, remarking that “people are kind everywhere, East and West.” This early work already embodies that confident sense of cross-cultural belonging.
November 27, 2025 at 4:33 AM
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"Autoportrait à la voilette (Self-Portrait with a Veil)" by Juliette Roche (French) - Oil on cardboard / c. 1953 - Musée Estrine (Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France) #WomenInArt #JulietteRoche #Roche #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #artText #BlueskyArt #SelfPortrait #MuseeEstrine #MuséeEstrine
Painted around 1953, this is French artist Juliette Roche’s final self-portrait, made as she mourned the death of her husband, the Cubist painter Albert Gleizes. A widow’s veil signals grief, yet an unexpected yellow background and a steady, frontal gaze refuse a purely somber image. They echo the “piquant irony” that critics had noticed in her early Paris years. She presents herself as an older light-skinned woman facing us head-on, shown from the bust up against a flat, luminous yellow backdrop. Her shoulders are squared and still, the figure simply blocked in so that all attention rests on her face and a delicate mourning veil that frames it. The transparent netting softens her forehead and eyes, casting faint shadows across fine wrinkles and a gently slackened jaw. Her grey-brown hair is tucked away, her precisely-painted red lips closed in an almost-smile that hovers between fatigue, composure, and wry amusement. The brushwork is economical yet precise, with small modulations of pinks, greys, and cool shadows modeling the aging skin, while the bold yellow field behind her turns this intimate self-portrait into a quietly radiant, contemporary icon of an older woman looking straight back at us. Trained at the Académie Ranson and shaped by the Nabis, Cubist circles, and Dada experiments in New York with Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, Roche had long used self-portraiture to assert herself not as “the artist at work” but as a thinking, modern woman. Here, in late life at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, after founding the Moly-Sabata artists’ community and helping sustain avant-garde networks, she paints herself one last time ... veiled yet vividly present ... claiming space for an older female artist whose creativity, independence, and quiet humor persist even in mourning.
November 26, 2025 at 10:00 PM
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“Selbstbildnis 68 (Self-portrait #68)” by Mona Hakimi-Schüler (Iranian) - Oil on canvas / 2007 - Städtische Galerie (Rastatt, Germany) #WomenInArt #MonaHakimiSchuler #Hakimi-Schüler #art #artText #arte #SelfPortrait #IranianArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #IranianArtist #MonaHakimi-Schüler
This self portrait is one of 12 large works in Mona Hakimi-Schüler’s 2007 “Selbstbildnisse” series, each of herself in roles she has actually inhabited. Based on her own photos, she preserves intimacy while allowing any Iranian woman to stand in her place, so the series moves between personal diary and collective portrait. In some paintings, she appears in sunglasses or with loose curls visible; here, strict chador and mosque-like tiles evoke one of the most regulated public images demanded of women by Iranian dress codes. The young woman artist faces us head-on, centered against a tightly patterned wall of pale blue, grey, and cream-colored tiles that recall Iranian mosque mosaics. Her light-brown skin and wide dark eyes are carefully modeled, with soft shadows that hint at tiredness more than stylized glamour. All of her hair is concealed beneath a dark chador (full-body cloak that leaves the face visible) that falls in heavy folds over her shoulders and out of the frame, turning her body into a single dark shape. Only her oval face appears within a narrow opening in the cloth. Her lips are closed, expression steady and unsmiling, and she meets our gaze directly. The patterned wall and veil are a quiet frame for her unblinking presence. Born in Tehran in 1977, Hakimi-Schüler grew up through the Islamic Revolution and the Iran–Iraq war before moving to Germany to study art. Her work continually returns to memory, migration, and the politics of representation. Her paintings, drawings, collages, and installations have been shown widely, from Kunstverein Buchholz and the Frauenmuseum Bonn to Haus der Kunst in Munich and the retrospective “Talking about the Revolution” at the Städtische Galerie Rastatt, which focuses on women’s roles, power, and resistance. Her direct poses and unwavering eye contact echo a woman who is both specific and symbolic to quietly insist we confront our own assumptions about veiling, difference, and who is allowed to be seen.
November 26, 2025 at 4:26 PM
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“Self Portrait” by Sara Rossberg (German–British) - Acrylic on canvas / 1987 - Newport Museum and Art Gallery (Wales, UK) #WomenInArt #SaraRossberg #Rossberg #NewportMuseumAndArtGallery #art #artText #artwork #SelfPortrait #Acrylic #BlueskyArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #PortraitofaWoman
Born in Recklinghausen, West Germany, Sara Rossberg moved to England on a scholarship in 1976 to study at Camberwell in London. She painted this self-portrait in 1987, by then living in London and steadily gaining international recognition for psychologically charged figurative work. At roughly 80 by 69.5 centimeters, the canvas is close to life-size, so she feel almost within arm’s reach. The artist depicts herself as a light-skinned woman with cropped auburn hair reclining sideways on a deep violet sofa. Her head tilts sharply, resting on the back of her hand so that her pale green eyes meet ours at intimate range. Fine, meticulous brushwork records the shadows around her eyes and mouth, suggesting real tiredness rather than idealised glamour. She wears a thick grey knitted jumper whose soft, nubbly texture contrasts with the bony elegance of her crossed forearms and long, slightly tense fingers. A vivid red coral necklace pricks the muted purples and greys, circling her neck like a ring of tiny flames. Background cushions and drapery blur into soft folds, keeping attention on her expressive face and hands, conveying quiet thought and feeling. The close cropping and sideways tilt deny any single “correct” orientation, inviting us to test different emotional readings like is this rest, weariness, or wary alertness? The coral necklace pulses as a fragile sign of energy against the drained pose. Rather than present herself as a heroic genius, Rossberg appears as a working woman caught between exhaustion, resilience and concentration. Painted the same year she exhibited in the touring show “Self-Portrait – A Modern View,” the work anticipates her later portraits that probe identity, memory and the long, often invisible labor of caregiving that shaped her life and practice.
November 26, 2025 at 3:35 AM
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"Truly Grateful" by Beverly McIver (American) - Oil on canvas / 2011 - North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh) #WomenInArt #BeverlyMcIver #McIver #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #NorthCarolinaMuseumofArt #art #ArtText #BlueskyArt #SelfPortrait #gratitude #BlackArt #ContemporaryArt #BlackArtists
Painted in 2011, this self-portrait comes after years in which American artist Beverly McIver navigated profound loss and new responsibility following her mother’s death and her promise to care for her sister Renee, who has a developmental disability. In earlier works, Beverly often centered her mother and sister, but here she turns the gaze gently onto herself, capturing a moment of hard-won calm. She depicts herself as a mature Black woman from the shoulders up, set low in the frame against a flat orange-gold background. Her short black natural hair forms an uneven halo of dark curls, painted in thick strokes. She bows her head and lowers her eyes, so we see mostly the planes of her forehead, nose, and cheeks, modeled in patches of browns, gold, green, and rose. Her full lips, a deep brick red, press gently together. A light blue scarf wraps around her neck and spills to the right, its rough brushmarks suggesting soft folds of fabric. She wears a dark coat over a pale top. Soft, diffuse light creates gentle shifts of color that register emotion more than strict anatomy. The warm background recalls religious icons with gold tones, suggesting a quiet, almost devotional gratitude. Thick, expressive strokes refuse to smooth away age, fatigue, or complex feeling, aligning with McIver’s belief that “all of my portraits are self-portraits” and should tell the truth about a life. Created when she was an acclaimed North Carolina artist and teacher, "Truly Grateful" honors the resilience of a Black woman who has come through grief and caregiving and can finally pause, eyes closed, to acknowledge that ... despite everything ... life is still good.
November 25, 2025 at 9:13 PM
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“Autorretrato (Self-Portrait)” by Marta Pérez (Puerto Rican) - Acrylic on wood / 1980 - Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (San Juan) #WomenInArt #MartaPerez #MartaPérez #MuseoDeArteDePuertoRico #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #art #artText #arte #SelfPortrait #PuertoRicanArt #PuertoRicanArtist
A Puerto Rican woman with a light beige skin tone sits frontally against a wall of pale gray-and-tan diamond tiles. Her long, straight black hair spreads like a dark halo, framing a high forehead and almost heart-shaped face. She has large, almond-shaped blue eyes ringed with teal shadow and long lashes, slim brows, a small nose, and bright red lips that curve into a gentle smile. Yellow and blush-pink roses with green leaves tuck into her hair and cluster at her shoulders and hands, suggesting fragrance and movement around her body. She wears a deep crimson gown with wide sleeves and a deep square neckline, its bodice densely patterned with lacy pinks, blacks, and metallic touches. A delicate green-bead necklace arcs across her neck. Her hands, with softly tapered fingers and pale pink nails, rest calmly at the bottom edge, anchoring the richly colored figure against a dark blue band below. Puerto Rican artist Marta Pérez paints herself as both a specific woman and a fantasy figure, stylizing her own features into an almost doll-like, angelic presence surrounded by tropical flowers. Created in 1980, when she was turning from teaching to painting full-time in Old San Juan, the work reflects her interest in exuberant color, allegory, and femininity. The lush roses and ornamental dress echo the “celebratory and critical” vision she described as art that moves viewers toward laughter and peace while still questioning social norms. Descended from Basque, Jewish, Greek, and Irish forebears and active in the Asociación de Mujeres Artistas de Puerto Rico, Pérez often fused multicultural references, carnival spirit, and sacred overtones. Here, her self-portrait becomes an icon of Caribbean womanhood that is glamorous, introspective, and firmly centered in her own imagined paradise.
November 25, 2025 at 4:12 PM
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“Self-portrait #1” by Mona al-Kasabi (Saudi Arabian) - Painting on canvas / Late 1980s - Private collection (Saudi Arabia) #WomenInArt #MonaAlKasabi #منى_عبدالله_القصبي #AlKasabi #SaudiArt #SaudiArtist #SelfPortrait #BlueskyArt #ArabWomenArtists #art #artText #WomanArtist #WomensArt #WomenArtists
In this vertical head-and-shoulders self-portrait, a light brown–skinned Mona al-Kasabi (منى القصبي) faces us directly against a hazy background of blended cream, yellow, and pale blue strokes. Her straight chestnut hair falls in a smooth, layered blowout around the face to her shoulders before dissolving into the surrounding paint. Her large almond-shaped dark eyes are framed by heavy black liner and long lashes. They hold a steady, frontal gaze beneath high arched brown brows. Her nose is straight and narrow, and her full lips, painted a muted rose pink, rest in a closed, neutral expression. A low scooped neckline is only lightly indicated in pinks that merge with the textured field. At the lower left, a long-haired gray-and-white cat with pointed ears, a small dark nose, and bright green eyes looks out toward us. Its soft fur is rendered in feathery strokes that echo the loose, swirling background. Al-Kasabi’s self-portrait asserts a woman’s presence in a Saudi art scene that, when this was painted, offered few public images of women by women themselves. The steady gaze, styled hair, and precise makeup echo popular ideals of beauty, yet the dissolving background and barely defined neckline hint at a more fragile, interior self. The cat is more than a pet. Its bright green eyes mirror the artist’s stare, turning it into a double or confidant that shares her alertness. Commentators link this canvas to a small series of self-portraits in which al-Kasabi repeats the cat as an alter ego and a sign of independence, curiosity, and quiet defiance. Beyond the her painting prowess, Al-Kasabi’s founding of the Saudi Center for Fine Arts in Jeddah has nurtured generations of artists, so this image also reads as a claim to artistic authority as an Arab woman picturing herself as both subject and maker of culture.
November 25, 2025 at 5:30 AM
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“Self-Portrait” by Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence (American, born Barbados) - Oil on canvas / 1991 - Seattle Art Museum (Washington) #WomenInArt #GwendolynKnightLawrence #artText #SeattleArtMuseum #SelfPortrait #GwenKnight #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #BlackArt #AmericanArtist #BlackWomenArtists
This self-portrait depicts artist Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence around age 78, after decades spent painting, teaching, and supporting the career of her husband, Jacob Lawrence, while her own work was only beginning to receive wide recognition. The tight cropping and stark background strip away setting and status, leaving us with a Black woman whose life has been devoted to art and community. The painting shows Knight Lawrence as a close-up bust-length figure turned slightly to her left, meeting us with a steady, appraising gaze. Her brown skin is modeled in thin, translucent layers of beige, green, and rose, emphasizing planes of cheekbone, brow, and jaw rather than smoothing them away. A cap of short, pale gray hair is brushed back from her forehead, threaded with faint streaks of blue and yellow. Her dark eyes sit in softened sockets, ringed by shadow that suggests age and intensity rather than fatigue. The lips are closed and unsmiling, edged with a muted red. She wears a high-collared navy top, creating a solid vertical shape anchoring the lower half of the canvas. Behind her, a field of saturated red on the left presses against a cooler violet-brown on the right, so her head seems to emerge from a charged, uncertain space instead of a clearly defined room. The high collar recalls a studio coat, aligning her with working painters rather than with the glamorous sitters in many traditional portraits. Her expression looks quietly resistant … alert, skeptical, and self-possessed … as if she is measuring how history has seen her and how she sees herself. Created when she began receiving major retrospectives and awards, the work insists on the presence of an elder Black woman artist whose vision never dimmed. Via exhibitions such as “Lives Connected: Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight” and “Never Late for Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight,” this portrait anchors her legacy. She is not merely the partner of a famous painter, but a formidable artist in her own right.
November 24, 2025 at 5:35 PM
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“Self-Portrait” by Priscilla Warren Roberts (American) - Oil on canvas board / 1937 - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia) #WomenInArt #PriscillaWarrenRoberts #PriscillaRoberts #PAFA #SelfPortrait #artText #art #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #PennsylvaniaAcademyoftheFineArts
Painted in 1937, when American artist Priscilla Warren Roberts was about 21 and beginning serious study in New York, this portrait reads as a clear statement of intent. She presents herself not as a polished society woman but as a working artist with her hair askew, no jewelry, and a practical collared-shirt standing in for a studio smock. It’s a vertical, close-up self-portrait showing the light-skinned young woman centered against a dark forest green background. Her dusty brown hair is pulled back but escapes in loose wisps, especially at the right edge, as if caught mid-motion. Large round amber glasses frame wide green-brown eyes that look directly at us, giving her an alert, almost startled focus. Light hits her forehead, nose, and long neck, leaving soft shadows around the eyes and jaw. Her mouth is parted and painted a brick red, as if she might of just inhaled to speak. She wears a dark navy shirt with bright cobalt stripes and pale piping around an open collar and the shoulders cropped close to the edges. Her tilted gaze and tight mouth suggest uncertainty as well as resolve, catching a moment of self-questioning. Roberts would later be praised for painstaking “magic-realist” still lifes that juxtapose everyday objects with near-photographic precision. In this self-portrait, that exacting attention is turned inward, tracing each flare of light on skin and glasses. In PAFA’s collection, the painting marks an early, uncompromising self-image of a woman determined to build a lifelong, quietly unconventional career in art.
November 24, 2025 at 6:54 AM
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“Autorretrato (Self-Portrait)” by María Izquierdo (Mexican) - Oil on canvas / 1946 - Private collection (Mexico) #WomenInArt #MariaIzquierdo #Izquierdo #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #art #artText #artwork #arte #BlueskyArt #MexicanArt #SelfPortrait #ModernArt #MaríaIzquierdo #MexicanArtist
In this self-portrait, Mexican artist María Izquierdo faces us against a mottled red background that feels like warm plaster. Her medium-brown skin is modeled with careful light and shadow while her strong dark brows arch over deep-set brown eyes that look straight out, steady and appraising. She wears matte red lipstick and a closed-mouth expression that reads as composed rather than welcoming. Her hair is braided and wrapped around her head, bound with a multicolored rebozo in earthy greens, reds, and tans. Squared shoulders in a glossy black dress anchor the composition. The dress has a broad, square neckline edged with embroidered white lace that reveals her neck and upper chest. At her ears hang bell-shaped earrings, and around her neck sits an elaborate silver-toned choker and pendant ensemble of stacked plaques, studs, and dangling tassels that evoke pre-Hispanic jewelry. The symmetrical pose, front lighting, and tight framing turn her body into a calm, monumental presence. Painted in the mid-1940s, this work belongs to a period when Izquierdo, already a leading figure of Mexican modernism and the first Mexican woman to have a solo exhibition in the United States, used self-portraiture to assert artistic and cultural authority. Critics like Octavio Paz described her appearance as that of a “pre-Hispanic goddess,” and here she leans into that, combining modern portraiture with references to Indigenous adornment, Catholic votive imagery, and popular dress. The heavy pectoral and stark black gown suggest ritual armor as much as fashion, while the red backdrop intensifies associations with blood, devotion, and sacrifice. In 1946, Izquierdo was recovering from professional setbacks after male muralists blocked her from a major public commission. This painting is a refusal to be diminished. Instead, she is dignified, self-possessed, and rooted in Mexicanidad on her own terms as a pioneering feminist voice who broke clichés of Mexican womanhood.
November 24, 2025 at 1:29 AM
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“Seated Self Portrait, Shown in a Cheval Dressing Mirror” by Marie-Louise Roosevelt Pierrepont - Oil on canvas / 1952 - Thoresby Courtyard (Thoresby Park, Nottinghamshire, England) #WomenInArt #artText #Pierrepont #ThoresbyCourtyard #SelfPortrait #BlueskyArt #WomenArtists #WomensArt #WomanArtist
In a warmly lit yellow room, an oval cheval mirror with red wood frame dominates the centre of the painting. Within its tall frame, we see the artist’s reflection depicting a mature light-skinned woman with short softly waved fair hair, seated and turned toward us. She wears a blue housecoat over a skirt, a white cloth draped across her lap, a painter’s palette held in one hand and a brush poised in her other hand, as if caught mid-stroke. Behind her reflection is a brass or iron bedstead, glimpsed through the mirror’s narrow vertical. Outside the mirror, to the left, a small wooden table holds a patterned mug and papers; to the right, a green chaise has a small brown dog sitting upright, ears pricked, and facing off canvas to the right. Books crowd a shelf, framed pictures line the walls, and a red floor anchors the intimate, lived-in studio-bedroom. Painted late in a career that stretched more than seventy-five years, this self-portrait shows artist Marie-Louise Roosevelt Pierrepont, aka Countess Manvers, as a working artist rather than as an aristocrat. Trained in Paris, where she exhibited at the Salon and Société Nationale des Beaux Arts before returning to Britain, she became known for portraits and detailed interior views of Cliffe Castle and later Thoresby Hall. Here, the mirror becomes both literal tool and metaphor as it frames a woman who insists on being seen at work, surrounded by books, paintings, and her dog as an alert companion witness. Created in 1952, after her move to Thoresby Park, the painting belongs to the Pierrepont Collection of more than 600 of her works now housed at Thoresby Courtyard, preserving the self-image of an artist who documented her domestic and estate worlds with affectionate precision.
November 23, 2025 at 5:51 PM
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“Vivian (Self-portrait)” by Vivian Browne (American) - Oil on canvas / 1965 - The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC) #WomenInArt #VivianBrowne #Browne #ThePhillipsCollection #SelfPortrait #art #artText #BlueskyArt #BlackArt #BlackArtists #AfricanAmericanArtist #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
Painted in mid-1960s New York, this self-portrait comes from a period when American artist Vivian Browne, newly trained at Hunter College, was concentrating on figuration and the relationships around her before turning to the more overtly satirical “Little Men” series and later her Africa and tree paintings. Here, she claims space as a working Black woman artist and not a model or symbol, but a painter surrounded by her tools, an art study in the background, and everyday objects. This vertical canvas shows Browne from the waist up, turned three-quarters toward us in a softly lit studio. Her medium-brown skin is modeled with greens, tans, and mauves that pool around her high cheekbones and strong jaw, giving her face a sculpted, shifting presence. Short dark hair with brown highlights frames an intent gaze with her eyes slightly widened, eyebrows arched, and full lips gently closed as if holding back speech. She wears a loose, rose-violet robe or coat that falls in broad planes rather than detailed folds. Behind her, a second canvas with a female figure in warm tones hangs on a pale wall, and a shallow wooden bowl rests on a ledge, anchoring the space. The background is built from creamy yellows and cool grays, so that the artist’s alert expression becomes the image’s brightest focal point. Her chromatic risks of green shadows on brown skin, mauve flesh against a yellow backdrop signal the experimental color that would define her later abstract works. The steady, complicated stare echoes her oft-quoted belief that “Black art is political,” yet the politics live in self-definition rather than slogan. Reintroduced in the traveling retrospective “Vivian Browne: My Kind of Protest,” this self-portrait anchors the story of an artist whose portraiture, activism, and teaching insisted that Black women’s inner lives belonged at the center of American art.
November 23, 2025 at 6:12 AM
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“窗前自画像 (Self-portrait by the Window)” by 潘玉良 / Pan Yuliang (Chinese) - Oil on canvas / 1945 - Anhui Provincial Museum (Hefei, China) #WomenInArt #PanYuliang #潘玉良 #SelfPortrait #ChineseArt #artText #art #1940s #artwork #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #AnhuiProvincialMuseum #安徽博物院 #ChineseArtist
At the center of this oil painting, Chinese artist Pan Yuliang (潘玉良) stands beside a table, her body angled toward the open window while her head tilts toward us. Her light-brown skin is modeled with rough, textured strokes that echo the chalky walls behind her. She wears a short-sleeved brick-red dress with a sharp yellow collar and a string of warm beads around her neck. Her black hair is swept into sculpted rolls and straight bangs. One hand rests on the tabletop beside a tall vase filled with full, blush-pink blossoms and blue-green leaves. Behind her, pale buildings and russet roofs glow in hazy daylight, framed by dark window latches and panes, so that the city outside feels distant from her calm, slightly guarded gaze. Painted in war-scarred France, Pan presents herself as a modern Chinese woman artist living abroad. The Western day dress, victory-roll hairstyle, and urban window view locate her in her adopted Paris, yet her composed stillness and unmistakably Chinese features insist on an identity that refuses to dissolve into the European scene. The sturdy vase of flowers was a motif she repeated across self-portraits and it softens the interior but also nods to the still-life subjects to which women painters were long relegated. Here that vase is pushed to the side while the artist’s own body occupies the center. Born in poverty in Yangzhou of China’s Jiangsu province on June 14, 1895 (birth name 陈秀清 / Chen Xiuqing), sold to a brothel, and later educated in Shanghai, Rome, and Paris, Pan had, by the mid-1940s, already faced public scandal in China for her unapologetic female nudes and had chosen a difficult, often lonely life of artistic independence in France. In this quiet image, she does not advertise success or glamour. Instead, the rough surfaces, muted colors, and slightly melancholy gaze record the persistence of a woman who has crossed cultures and class boundaries, claiming painting and the act of looking back at us as her enduring legacy.
November 22, 2025 at 8:27 PM
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Selbstbildnis vor der Staffelei (Self-Portrait in Front of an Easel) by Gabriele Münter (German) - Oil on canvas / c 1908–09 - Princeton University Art Museum (New Jersey) #WomenInArt #GabrieleMünter #Münter #PrincetonUniversityArtMuseum #artText #GabrieleMunter #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
Currently on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, this self-portrait was painted soon after German artist Gabriele Münter with her romantic partner and artistic mentor/collaborator Wassily Kandinsky discovered the Bavarian village of Murnau. It proclaims her identity as a modern professional artist. The light-skinned woman in her early thirties faces us head-on, cropped at the torso. She wears a wide straw hat banded in green and crowned with white daisies, its brim casting shadow over blue-grey eyes and flushed cheeks. Dark hair peeks out in loose waves, framing a serious, slightly tired gaze and thin gentle mouth. A cream dress and beige wrap fall in broad planes of color, broken only by a gold chain with a vivid red pendant on her chest. At the lower edge, a brown palette with loaded brushes tilts toward us while more brushes rise in a vase to the left. To the right, the slanted edge of a canvas and easel slices the frame. Thick, visible strokes of rosy pink, orange, and green churn across the background to make her still, upright figure read unmistakably as that of a working painter at her station. Münter, already a leader in the Munich avant-garde and later a founding member of the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, pushed against limits placed on women’s training and careers. Here, she quietly overturns those rules as the big flowered hat signals bourgeois femininity, yet the palette and easel claim the traditionally masculine space of the studio. Her steady, unsmiling gaze suggests both fatigue and resolve, as if meeting the reflection she paints while also confronting any who might doubt her seriousness. The compressed space, tilted tools, and non-naturalistic pinks and greens foreshadow the bold color and simplified forms that would define German Expressionism. The painting stands as a declaration that Münter is not merely Kandinsky’s companion but an artist whose vision shapes modern art in her own right.
November 22, 2025 at 5:21 PM
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“Identity 2 (Self-Portrait)” by Hend Al-Mansour (Saudi-American) - Acrylic on paper / 1999 - Artist’s collection (St. Paul, Minnesota) #WomenInArt #HendAlMansour #هند_المنصور #AlMansour #SelfPortrait #art #arte #artText #BlueskyArt #ContemporaryArt #Identity #ArabAmericanArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists
In this intimate self-portrait, Hend Al-Mansour depicts two versions of her face. On the left, a frontal, softly modeled head-and-shoulders view meets our gaze, eyes steady and unblinking as if painting her own face with a paintbrush. On the right, her profile turns inward toward the other image, as if studying or questioning herself. Loose, expressionist brushwork leaves visible strokes and thin washes so that handwritten Arabic and English text drifts across skin, hair, and background. Some words remain crisp while others dissolve into texture, so the layered script reads as thoughts, prayers, or questions. The result is a portrait where likeness, gesture, and overlapping texts fuse together. By combining Arabic and English handwritten texts, she charges her composition with symbolism. The English text reads: “What am I … I am my window … the wind … I am the vision … I am the beholder … and I am the seen … I am everything I know … and everything I reach … I am my void” The Arabic text consists of scattered words: - perspective - vision - viewer - myself - I am one Both texts revolve around ideas of identity, individualism, and self-recognition. Painted soon after Al-Mansour left Saudi Arabia for Minnesota in the United States and turned from medicine to art, “Identity 2” wrestles with what it means to see and be seen. One face looks outward while the other looks inward, mirroring the tension between public image and inner life for a Saudi woman who dares to unveil herself in paint. By mixing Western modernist brushwork with calligraphic script rooted in Islamic visual culture, Al-Mansour bridges the languages of home and diaspora. This self-portrait becomes an act of defiance and spiritual reflection, claiming space for Arab Muslim women’s voices and self-representations in contemporary art.
November 22, 2025 at 7:50 AM
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"Önarckép lámpával (Self-Portrait with Lamp)" by Éber Anna (Hungarian) - Oil on canvas / c. 1930s - Hungarian National Gallery (Budapest) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists #AnnaEber #ÉberAnna #Eber #AnnaÉber #ArtBsky #art #artText #artwork #HungarianNationalGallery #HNG #SelfPortrait #WomanArtist
In this half-length self-portrait, artist Anna Éber (Éber Anna) depicts herself as a young white Hungarian woman standinding slightly left of center, turned three-quarters toward us. Her dark hair is swept back, exposing a smooth forehead and sharply lit cheekbones. A warm yellow lamp with a veil shade hangs to our right, its harsh light cutting across the darkness and catching her face, neck, and loose white blouse in acidic greens, golds, and blues. Her ruffled collar and full sleeves are rendered with fast, textured strokes that emphasize movement rather than polish. She stares at us with a direct, almost challenging gaze, red lips slightly pursed. Below, her right hand holds a paintbrush, fingers tense at the edge, while the background dissolves into near-black, making the artist and lamp feel suspended in a pool of light. The lamp turns this into a drama of self-scrutiny. Éber paints herself not as a passive muse but as a working artist, interupted in the act of thinking, reading, or preparing to work. The intense side-lighting recalls baroque chiaroscuro, yet the flickering brushwork and electric glow belong to a modern, mid-20th-century Budapest. Born in Baja in 1905, Éber trained at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts under Gyula Rudnay and began exhibiting self-portraits in the National Salon while still a student. Later, she taught evening art courses, created film-studio decorations, and continued to paint portraits and landscapes marked by luminous color and emotional depth. The battered lampshade and stark bulb evoke both vulnerability and resilience as the artist stands alone in the dark, yet she also controls the light that defines her features. This self-portrait with lamp can be read as a quiet manifesto of a woman asserting her presence, intellect, and professional identity within a male-dominated art world, lit by a beam of her own making.
November 21, 2025 at 10:19 PM
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"Self-Portrait in Blue Sari" by Amrita Sher-Gil (Hungarian-Indian) - Oil on canvas / c 1937 - Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India #WomenInArt #AmritaSherGil #SherGil #KNMA #KiranNadarMuseumOfArt #SelfPortrait #Sher-Gil #artText #IndianArt #AmritaSher-Gil #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists
Painted around 1937, after artist Amrita Sher-Gil had returned from Paris and immersed herself in India, this self-portrait belongs to the years she moved between Shimla in the Himalayan foothills, her family estate in rural Uttar Pradesh, and long journeys through South India. Trained in European modernism yet hungry for an idiom rooted in the subcontinent, she studied Ajanta murals, Mughal and Pahari painting, and village life, insisting that “India belongs only to me” as a painterly destiny. Here she casts herself as a modern Indian woman, wrapped in a sari yet bare-armed, with the directness of a city intellectual rather than a conventional bride. The young woman with medium-brown skin sits turned slightly to our left, her large dark eyes steadily peer out with a look of knowledge. Her beautiful face is framed by long black hair and a sheer, midnight-blue veil that drops over her shoulders, a tiny bindi centering her brow. She wears a sleeveless indigo blue sari that pools into broad, textured strokes around her lap. One bare arm angles across her body, the other forearm rests along her knee, her hands rendered as soft, sketchy planes. Against a pale, almost unfinished background, the saturated blues and her luminous full pink mouth pull us toward her interior life rather than surface detail. The loose, unfinished hands and swathes of blue resist salon polish, asserting process and doubt, while her unsmiling gaze confronts both us and the male-dominated art world she was determined to enter. Within just a few years she would paint her great village scenes and die suddenly at twenty-eight (in 1941), yet works like this helped secure her place as a pioneer of modern Indian art and a touchstone for later women artists who use self-portraiture to claim complex, fearless identities.
November 21, 2025 at 7:21 PM
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“Self-Portrait” by Frances Cranmer Greenman (American) - Oil on canvas / 1923 - Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minnesota) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #FrancesCranmerGreenman #Greenman #MinneapolisInstituteofArt #SelfPortrait #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #FrancesGreenman
Painted when Frances Cranmer Greenman was a rising modern portraitist in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this image is part self-branding and part self-revelation. She depicts herself as a young white woman with pale greenish skin and short auburn hair standing front and center against a turbulent teal sky, her body facing us and her head slightly tilted as she meets our gaze. She wears a vivid orange coat with a wide, fuzzy gray-brown fur collar and deep violet lapels that open to a chartreuse dress at her chest. A rounded blue cloche hat covers most of her hair, casting a soft shadow over her watchful, yet tired eyes. Her gloved hands meet at her waist, the light green leather creased as her fingers tug the coat closed. Behind her, a sketchy city riverfront unfurls: pale water and paths edged with small trees on the right, and tan and brick-red buildings that rise loosely on either side. The orange coat, snug cloche, and sketchy city riverfront present her as a confident 1920s professional who belongs in the modern street as much as the studio. Brash oranges, sharp greens, and deep purples signal her interest in Expressionist color that some patrons found too radical, so she experiments on her own likeness. Born in South Dakota to suffragist Emma Cranmer, Greenman studied in Washington, New York, and Paris before settling in Minneapolis, where she painted socialites and taught portraiture near the museum. Around 1923, she was winning prizes in Twin Cities exhibitions and beginning to court East Coast and Hollywood patrons, yet local critics sometimes dismissed her style as too bold or unfeminine. By placing herself in this chilly, windswept cityscape, she links her own body to an urban, post-suffrage world where women claimed public space, paychecks, and reputations as professionals. The painting becomes a manifesto declaring that Greenman is not simply recording a face but announcing, with color and stance, that she intends to be seen.
November 21, 2025 at 8:05 AM
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"Munni" by Rudolf Swoboda (Austrian) - Oil on panel / 1886–1888 - Royal Collection, Osborne House (Isle of Wight, UK) #WomenInArt #RudolfSwoboda #RudolfSwobodaderJüngere #Swoboda #art #artText #BlueskyArt #RoyalCollectionTrust #OsborneHouse #PortraitofaGirl #SouthAsianArt #IndianArt #AustrianArtist
Royal Collection records identify Munni as a 16-year-old sweeper, or mehtrani, from Lahore in the Punjab region of British India (today in Pakistan), a worker from one of the lowest-ranked caste communities whose essential cleaning labor was often treated as socially “unclean” and disregarded. In 1886, Queen Victoria commissioned Austrian painter Rudolf Swoboda, born in Vienna in 1859, to travel through India and paint the peoples of her empire; over forty of these portraits, including Munni’s, were later hung together in the Durbar Corridor at Osborne House. The vertical panel shows a young South Asian girl in quiet profile, her body turned to the left (our right). A warm red tunic, edged with a narrow band of gold, wraps her torso and rises toward her neck, its rich color glowing against a plain, softly textured background. Large hoop earrings threaded with tiny glass beads catch the light, while her dark hair, partly covered, falls back in loose strands under a thin beige covering that extends across her body. Swoboda models her medium-brown skin with careful, naturalistic highlights along cheek, nose and lips, so that her features feel observed rather than idealized. The panel pulls us into an intimate distance, as if we’ve paused beside her in a brief, thoughtful stillness during her day. Swoboda had impressed the Queen with his portraits of “live” Indian artisans at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London and painted "Munni" on site from close observation, using oil on a small wooden panel to preserve fine details of clothing, jewelery and expression. Seen today, the work sits uneasily between imperial cataloguing and individual presence: commissioned to exemplify a “type,” Munni nevertheless appears as a specific teenager with a name, history and life. Her steady, gaze to the side invites us to recognize both the power inequalities that shaped her portrayal and the quiet dignity she maintains within them.
November 20, 2025 at 8:45 PM
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"Lady With a Mirror" by Rukmini Varma (Indian) - Oil on canvas / 2018 - Sandeep & Gitanjali Maini Foundation (Bangalore, India) #WomenInArt #RukminiVarma #Varma #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #art #ArtText #BlueskyArt #SandeepGitanjaliMainiFoundation #IndianArt #SouthAsianArt #IndianArtist
Indian artist Rukmini Varma paints a “lady of noble lineage, possibly a princess,” echoing her legendary great-great-grandfather Raja Ravi Varma’s 1894 "Nair Lady With a Mirror." The mirror theme is a way to explore how royal and elite women of Travancore fashioned themselves in private: arranging hair, choosing jewelry and quietly judging the image they present to the world. A young South Asian woman with brown skin fills the canvas from chest up, turned slightly while checking herself out in a oval hand-mirror with an ornate gold frame with a focused sidelong gaze. Dark, wavy hair spills over her shoulders as she lifts a gold forehead ornament into place along her hairline. Her large kohl-lined eyes, arched brows and soft red lips are rendered with precision. Dense gold jewelry including a broad gem-set necklaces, pearl strands, armlets, bangles and rings encircles her neck, chest and arms over a bodice edged in pearls. A dark, softly blended background throws her illuminated skin, hair, ornaments and mirror into focus, turning a routine moment of grooming into an intimate close-up. Painted in Bengaluru in 2018, when Varma was in her late seventies, the work belongs to a mature period in which she balanced studio time with leading the Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation, researching, documenting and exhibiting her ancestor’s art. Born in 1940 as Princess Bharani Thirunal Rukmini Bayi, granddaughter of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, she grew up between palace traditions and post-independence Bengaluru, absorbing stories of court life and how images of gods and royals shaped public ideas of beauty and power. The young woman's composure, heavy jewelry and gaze into the mirror allude to the splendor and constraint of royal womanhood, while the act of adjusting her own adornment suggests agency and self-fashioning. Varma preserves a familiar ideal of South Indian femininity yet infuses it with familial history and a belief that women are authors of their own image.
November 20, 2025 at 5:31 PM