Date Thesis Awarded
5-2024
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Modern Languages and Literatures
Advisor
Brett Brehm
Committee Members
Charles Palermo
Deborah Lee-Ferrand
Abstract
This thesis strives to examine how the French artists of the Pont-Aven Art School used images of women in it’s paintings to reinforce the vision of Brittany, France as a place of the past. I will begin by discussing the role of women in Pont-Aven in the late XIXcentury, that of inn-owners and female artists, before moving into discourse on the relationship between women and religion in the paintings, then women and their clothing. I develop a contrast between the works of female artists against that of the male artists creating the Pont-Aven Art School, mostly in their portrayals of time and women in Brittany, France. Then, I argue that the connections made between women and religion, as well as the portrayal of women’s clothing, work to craft a fantasy of Brittany, France, that the artists hold and export to a Parisian public. Essentially, the Pont-Aven Art School was able to visually demonstrate their idea of Brittany as an eternal landscape, one without a specific place in time and as an escape from the modernity of Paris, through the use of female subjects in their artworks.
Recommended Citation
Milliman, Isabella, "En cherchant l'éternel: représentations des femmes bretonnes dans l'école d'art de Pont-Aven" (2024). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 2206.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/2206
