Women’s still life in London, Paris and the spaces between, 1900-1939

Abstract

This thesis is a feminist and queer study of the ways in which gender, subjectivity, domesticity and the cultures of interior space were articulated, interrogated and renegotiated by early twentieth century women artists. Through analysis of the work of artists Gwen John (1876-1939), Ethel Sands (1873-1962) Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), and Gluck (1895-1978), it examines how a broadly defined category of still life generated and reflected their gendered, sexual, and emotional identities in ways that might more broadly illuminate women’s lived experiences in the early twentieth century. I explore a constellation of feelings united by their distance from the affective paradigms of modernity, including attention, tenderness, gratitude, happiness, attraction, comfort, tranquillity and empathy. Through their own aesthetic and emotional strategies and to different extents, this thesis shows how each of these women queered still life, actively remaking the genre through queer affects, attachments and orientations. The spaces between of the thesis’s title refers to a geographical phenomenon – of artists moving across metropolitan and rural spaces – but also to a methodological interstices. This thesis will create scholarship that exists in the spaces between art historical disciplinary norms and the creative-critical experiments of queer and feminist work. Chapter 1 frames John’s representations of rooms as models of interiority. Chapter 2 reveals how Bell’s still life represented and contested the ideologies of motherhood. Chapter 3 explores the queer artistic collaboration between Gluck and society florist Constance Spry. Chapter 4 is the first ever critical study of Ethel Sands, exploring her queering of interior scenes through motifs of illusion, misdirection, and disguise. In the spaces between chapters, encounters with obscure women artists in the archive emerge: I discuss Winifred Gill’s note-making practices, Edna Waugh’s evocative sketches and passionate literary adaptations, paralysis and impossibility in the work of Mary Katherine Constance Lloyd, and the unknown literary ambitions of artist Helen Coombe.