“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” is the most famous quote from Simone de Beauvoir’s essay “The Second Sex” first published in 1949. Today, as controversy rages over transsexuality and the curious concept of the “tradwife” in the US, might be a good time to reconsider how the image of women in art evolved in Western art from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the end of the previous century. Notions governing the appearance, attitudes, social status and sexual nature of women underwent tremendous change in the last 250 years and art very much reveals these changes.

By examining key images in painting and photography that focus particularly on dress, attitude, gesture and expression by both men and women artists, we will see how the definition of femininity evolved in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will also see how new notions of female identity were combatted by reactionary forces in certain periods like the 1930s and 1950s. Ingres, Degas, Manet, Tissot, Millais, Morisot, Cassatt, Schiele, Valadon, Lempicka, Rockwell, Neel, Arbus and Sherman are a few of the artists whose work we will be using.