Tag: pre-Raphaelite

Fig. 1. Faith, Hope, and Love by Mary Lizzie Macomber (1861–1916), 1894. Signed and dated “M.L. Macomber/ –1894–” at upper right. Oil on canvas, 33 by 24 inches. Private collection; photograph © Roy Miles Fine Paintings/ Bridgeman Images. Collection; Roy Miles Fine Paintings. Boston-based Mary Lizzie Macomber (pronounced MAK-um-ber) was among the late nineteenth-century American artists who closely emulated the figurative work of the English Pre-Raphaelites (Fig. 6). She was especially enamored of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and followed his example by painting decorative allegorical artworks depicting contemplative, ethereal young women in flowing gowns. Instead of the femmes fatales and fallen women in works by Pre-Raphaelite men, meant for the male gaze, Macomber created chaste and reverent embodiments of spiritual ideals.  While her works align with the typical construction of the feminine identity in the United States in the late nineteenth century—exhibiting qualities such as grace, refinement, gentleness, purity, and piety—she also took a symbolist approach. Probing a psychological, deeper realm of female experience, she made reference to and spoke to the women of her time, conveying their inner strengths, intellect, and sorrows. Macomber might have been chastised for impropriety in a more explicit type of art, but allegory provided her with a covert and flexible language, allowing her to circumvent patriarchal standards that demeaned women’s abilities and suppressed their aspirations.  Forgotten after her death in 1916, when European modernism dominated the American art world, Macomber’s intriguing, multidimensional art will receive long-overdue scrutiny in a forthcoming exhibition at the Fall River Historical Society in Massachusetts. The show will exemplify how the perspectives of American women artists—frequently omitted from the hierarchical art historical canon—are essential to a full account of the era’s art and culture. Fig. 2.