Artists belonging to the Symbolist movement (1885–1920) reflected a view of women that was extremely polarized by the end of the nineteenth century. In 1854 Pope Pius IX declared that the birth of Mary, mother of Jesus, was also a “virgin” birth, thereby setting unattainable standards for female moral purity. At the same time, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer declared in his 1854 essay “On Women” that women were inferior to men, an assertion bolstered by “scientific” evidence, anthropological as well as medical. These attitudes were expressed in the work of well-known artists such as Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch, as well as by less familiar artists like Jacek Malczewski in Poland and Fernand Khnopff in Belgium. The widespread anxieties and fears troubling late nineteenth-century European culture was nowhere more evident than in discussions about and portrayals of women.

Michelle Facos is a professor of art history at Indiana University who specializes in nineteenth-century European painting and sculpture.

Image: Maurice Denis (1870-1943), French, Mais c'est le coeur qui bat trop vite, lithograph on wove paper, purchased with funds from Friends of the Art Museum, UMFA1973.082.004.004.