Page 32 - Contemporary Art and Old Masters

DELUXE MANNEQUINS
RECONSTRUCTING THE TRADITIONAL WOMAN
A member of a family that spawned generations of
In contrast to the image of the liberated modern woman
artists, Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta pursued his
that started to move to the fore in the first decades of the
career in Paris, where he became a highly reputed
twentieth century, some artistic circles came out in defence
genre painter and portraitist. Raimundo was adept
of tradition. In 1909, for instance, the Sociedad Española
at meeting the demands for superfluous images of
de Amigos del Arte (Spanish Society of Friends of Art) was
female beauties that came from an international
founded by members of Madrid’s high society to act as a
art market as refined as it was conservative. In his
channel for taste and foster the traditional arts and crafts.
atelier, Aline Masson, his favourite model, embodied
Besides education and protection, its goals also included
various feminine prototypes ranging from the full-
the political vindication of the status and refinement of that
blooded Spaniard to the cosmopolitan Parisian
social élite. The exhibitions it organised extolled the virtues
dressed as a Pierrette or a coquette. Always passive
of the domestic items and female adornments that had been
and accessory, these figures also proliferated in the
preserved in aristocratic homes.
illustrated magazines and leapt over to the cinema.
The same formula for success was transferred to the
Another of the institution’s favourite subjects was the image
society portrait, contaminated in turn by a fashion
of the Spanish woman since the eighteenth century. In the
that harked back to the lost elegance and decorum of
midst of the suffragette era, such an image provided visual
the eighteenth century. In their efforts to gain social
support for a conservative ideological trend that looked back
respectability, the women of international high society
to its great-grandmothers as models of perfection. It became
thus posed for Madrazo in the guise of aristocrats
popular to paint portraits of women wearing items that had
at the court of Versailles. This elitist new feminine
belonged to their forebears, and a modern language was
ideal turned them into vacuous and inexpressive
used to construct a nonetheless anachronistic image of the
mannequins, their identities swamped beneath
traditional woman as an ensign of national identity.
sumptuous silk and satin dresses.
Queen Joanna the Mad imprisoned in Tordesillas with her daughter, the
Infanta Catherine Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz (1848-1921), Oil on canvas, 1906.
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado. Photo © Museo Nacional del Prado

32 WORLD of ART