Canadian female artists faced unscrupulous challenges during the early twentieth century in gaining the same respect, recognition, and opportunities as their male counterparts. In the depiction of the female narrative, European-educated artists Helen McNicoll as well as Beaver Hall members Regina Seiden and Prudence Heward finesse femininity through pictorial genre scenes of women. The controversial movement of feminism and women’s suffrage that overwhelmed the political climate candidly influenced the visual narratives produced during this period. Within this atmosphere, McNicoll’s The Chintz Sofa (c. 1913, Fig. 1), Under the Shadow of the Tent (c. 1914, Fig. 2), and In the Shadow of the Tree (c. 1914, Fig. 3) portray the female body in positions that stray from classic, romanticized poses, as the nature of the subjects and accompanying elements do not completely align with the preservation of gender roles. Post-war attitudes condemned wartime issued female independence and activities. Specifically, Seiden’s Girl Washing Dishes on a Farm (c. 1923) exemplifies the reappearance of traditional female domesticity and distinction between rural farm life and that of the bourgeois (Fig. 4). In the same decade, Heward contrasts this absence of female freedom as she delineates female empowerment in her painting, At the Theater (c. 1928, Fig. 5). As McNicoll’s The Chintz Sofa, Under the Shadow of the Tent, and In the Shadow of the Tree envelop the decadence of pre-war affluence and the reverberation of first-wave feminism, Seiden’s Girl Washing Dishes on a Farm delivers an acceptance to the end of the Progressive Era, and Heward’s At the Theater highlights the surge of female empowerment, all five pieces render fluctuating views of femininity and contribute variegated versions of the Canadian female experience.
Impressionist painter McNicoll paints what is discernibly a woman of domesticity in The Chintz Sofa (Fig. 1). Garbed in a white dress, the woman concentrates deeply on her sewing. It is heavily implied that the model in McNicoll’s painting is her beloved friend and fellow impressionist, Dorothea Sharp. Initially, one may assume the theme of this painting is consistent with margins of female subservience and abiding docility, however, Canadian women’s art historian Natalie Luckyj offers a palpably feminist perspective toward The Chintz Sofa. Luckyj notes the scene is structured with symbolic components that suggest the painting is not an homage to maintained social-order1. Perhaps the textile the woman is stitching is not a craft of home and family, but a personal political project. Identifying the sofa in the scene as furniture in Sharp’s and McNicoll’s English studio, and not as a commonplace seat for domestic activity, Luckyj further implicates Sharp’s dedicated involvement and elected position of the Society of Women Artists to an emblematic status of women’s suffrage. Luckyj goes on to theorize the model’s white dress is not synonymous with the concept of feminine virtue and purity, rather, it is the fashion of the suffragette1.
Under the Shadow of the Tent is a beach scene featuring two bourgeois women (Fig. 2). The woman in the white dress kneels on the blanket as she reads a book while the woman in the violet dress and loose cardigan is busy mixing paints. The scene itself is perhaps nearly as silent as the painting that captures it; the subjects do not engage in conversation as they softly concentrate on their gentle activities. No children or men encumber the scene, nor do any domestic obligations. Undisturbed by maternal duty and obligatory tasks, the women find enjoyment in their personal pursuits, similar to the subject depicted in In the Shadow of the Tree (Fig. 3). Tucked in a golden blanket, the baby rests in a carriage beside the young woman, whose only physically and otherwise emotional connection to the child is presented by her fingers gripping the carriage. The woman’s body language is committed to her personal activity beneath the canopy of her large umbrella, which is chiefly positioned over her head. The scene does not clearly denote motherhood, and McNicoll does not explicitly indicate the relationship between the baby and the woman1. Despite the baby’s presence in In the Shadow of the Tree, the woman’s main concern is toward her own interests, as depicted with the female subjects in Under the Shadow of the Tent. Both works delineate the female subjects’ in noiseless leisure. McNicoll’s oeuvre offers little to no resistance in her depiction of women and girls as caregivers and home keepers, however, interpretation suggests otherwise; that elements in some pieces symbolize progressive undertones of feminist behavior1.
Seiden’s Girl Washing Dishes on a Farm reignites the attitudes that encompass the Pre-Progressive Era albeit with Post-Impressionistic style, capturing the isolation and bleak monotony of farm life (Fig. 4). The girl in the painting wears a tattered dress, her back turned to the viewer as she stands over the bowl; her arms elbow-deep in her chore. The table she is working on is large and splintered, pushed against a crumbling wall with a large window. Seiden relents a sense of longing for exploits beyond the girl’s provincial life as she draws the light in three points; from the window, to the hat on the sill, finally to the girl’s face2. Seiden emphasizes the necessary and forced domesticity in rural Quebec farm life, amidst the fusty, unindustrialized land.
Unparalleled to restrictive farm life idleness elucidated in Seiden’s Girl Washing Dishes on a Farm, Heward paints femininity as a strong, independent, and social arc. Like Girl Washing Dishes, Heward’s At the Theater displays the subject(s) with their back(s) to the viewer. However, in At the Theater, the two subjects are lavishly dressed women seated inside an ornate building awaiting the start of a performance3 (Fig. 5). The bold colors of the theater chairs, the light beaming on the exposed backs and sculpted hair of the two women, and the lively silhouettes in the rows closer to the stage all combine to intensify the vivacity of urban life. Heward situates the women within a historically male dominated public environment in the absence of men, further advocating the developing independence of metropolitan women in the late 1920s.
Of the Canadian art history documented and recorded, Canadian female artists and their contributions involving the exploration of femininity at the beginning of the twentieth century have been marginally recognized and published. Despite this reality, Canadian female artists Helen Galloway McNicoll, Regina Seiden, and Prudence Heward established themselves as pioneers of female painters in the male-dominated society. Studying abroad, all three painters honed their talent; rendering authenticity in their portrayal of femininity and capturing emotion and empowerment distinctive from their male-counterparts. Drawing from personal experience, and as spectators of women’s lives, each artist was influenced by her surrounding political, social, and environmental atmosphere. Each artist paints to celebrate women, expressing the shifting views of women’s entelechy in the early decades of the 1900s.