Modern Woman: Daughters and Lovers
1850 – 1918: Drawings from the
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
‘Modern Woman: Daughters and Lovers 1850–1918: Drawings from
the Musée d’Orsay, Paris’ was the first time in the French museum’s
history that these rare works from its collection were permitted to
travel to the Southern Hemisphere.
‘Modern Woman’ was curated by
Isabelle Julia, Curator in Charge,
Department of Graphic Arts, Musée
d’Orsay especially for the Queensland
Art Gallery. The exhibition comprised
97 compositions by some of the
greatest French artists of the late
nineteenth century, including Edgar
Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri
de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet,
Camille Pissarro, Pierre Bonnard and
Auguste Rodin.
The artists of the Belle Époque
abandoned idealised representations
of the female figure, and turned
to women from a diverse range
of socioeconomic backgrounds,
depicting them in their family lives
and domestic activities, as well as
in the public realm as spectators,
performers and workers. The
works on paper in this exhibition
demonstrated the new emphasis
on capturing contemporary life and
documented the changing role of
women in burgeoning modernity.
The installation reflected the
curator’s thematic approach to the
image of women in art of this period,
with sections including Women’s
Faces, Reflections of Desire, Nudes
on Paper, Women at Work, and
Entertainment and Recreation.
The art works depicted women in
a diverse range of contexts — in the
private realm, as pillars of family
life, as the artist’s model, a lover or
a prostitute; and in the public realm,
as spectators, performers, citizens
and workers.
‘Modern Woman: Daughters and
Lovers’ was complemented by the
display of ‘Contemporary Australia:
Women’ at the Gallery of Modern
Art (GOMA) from 21 April to 22 July
2012. The two exhibitions provided
a fascinating comparison between
depictions of nineteenth-century
French women and works by twenty
first-century Australian women.
24 MARCH – 24 JUNE 2012
QAG
VISITORS
TOTAL | 31 371
METROPOLITAN BRISBANE 37%
QUEENSLAND (EXCLUDING
METRO BRISBANE) 17%
INTERSTATE 38%
OVERSEAS 8%
28
// REWIND
/ REVIEW 2012
