Housewives In Art, Part Two.

I can’t begin to tell you how very much I am enjoying the search for Housewives In Art. That women at home should so often have been sympathetically rendered is blessing enough, but to find elements of celebration of women’s work in so many of the paintings I am discovering is a complete joy to me…
I am kicking off this week with the painting above “ServiceMan’s Wife” by Ivan Olinsky a Russian artist renowned for his idealised portraits of women. I chose this one today not just for the peeling motion we are all so familiar with, but for the careful, subdued palette and the look of longing, emptiness and maybe fear in the subjects eyes…

Next up an image from Christian Krohg, a leading figure in the Norwegian Naturalist movement. Entitled “Trett” or “Tired” this lovely 1885 painting depicts a woman sleeping at her sewing machine and I am rather thrilled by the domestic detail described… the teacup on the chair and the net curtain strung across the sash window… lovely, and more than that blessed with a sense of quiet satisfaction that only comes with work well done.

Isn’t this one fabulous? Not only is it resplendent with the joys of a Spring day, pinnies and tea-towels but it also describes a sense of community lost to so many of us these days in bright, happy detail. Painted by Willibald Alfred Reuter in1899,  this scrumptiously domestic painting is called “Auf dem Wäschetrockenplatz”, or “Laundry Drying”.

And finally for today, an image that speaks to me of the solitude of home-making. Though I love the sombre immaculate interiors that are a feature of all Carl Holsoe’s paintings, the portrait of his wife laying the table strikes me as a  singularly lonely  and kind of hurts my heart… (Though let me state here and now I would sell Finn’s Nana for a gorgeous plate rack like the one sitting above the door-frame…)
More soon art lovers…