Women in the City: Seeing and Being Seen in Fin-de-Siècle Paris

Karen J. Leader, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Art History, Florida Atlantic University

Saturday, October 26, 2019, 2PM

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril, 1899, color lithograph, photograph by John Faier, © 2015, courtesy of the Richard H. Driehaus Museum

Visibility in the growing urban populations of the late nineteenth century was shaped by both art and popular culture. Scenes of leisure, popular entertainment, strolling, shopping and art viewing were all the subject of artists and illustrators, and were consumed by the masses in posters, broadsides, caricatures, photographs, and paintings. Painters like Mary Cassatt and Gustave Caillebotte included women and spectatorship in their paintings of modern life. Caricaturists like Bertall used humor to ridicule the posturing of the new bourgeoisie. And in his instantly recognizable posters, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec combined bold graphics with provocative poses to sell the new sites of leisure activity. This lecture will introduce the various “types” of women pictured in these representations and explore how such visibility both hindered and helped women in their demand for increased civil rights. After the lecture, visitors are encouraged to visit the museum’s exhibition L’Affichomania: The Passion for French Posters.

This is a free event. Space is limited, pre-registration is encouraged.