Isobel Gloag and The Woman with the Puppets : A Feminist Reading

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay is to investigate The Woman with the Puppets by Isobel Gloag from a feminist perspective, to find how it challenge the male gaze and patriarchy. I also seek to understand how other female artists past and present compare to Gloag’s painting. The method is Panofsky’s iconology with modifications through Aavitsland’s thoughts of the grammatical structure that the composition holds. To reach social bearings upon the ability to generate this type of historical genre painting Bourdieu’s toolbox of capital, habitus and strategies has been applied. The painting is a feminist expression of the feminist discussions regarding marriage, equality and law that took place at the time of the paintings creation. Through the use of established norm with an ambiguity, female nude and male marionette puppets, the male gaze and patriarchy is challenged. Gloag is the only female artist of her time that has generated a history genre painting in a feminist spirit that challenges multitude of issues in one composition.