Les Salonnières: A History of Women in Conversation

LesSalonnieres

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[The salonnières] w and brilliant, but and brilliancy w bring into stronge of their AMELIA GE THE WOMEN OF THE F

were usually clever t their cleverness were exercised to er relief the talents friends.

R E M A S O N. RENCH SALONS, 1891.

Table Talk L A V I E E N TA L K. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 8

I N T I M AT E A F FA I R S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 2 T H E C O M PA N Y W E K E E P. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 4 C H A R A C T E R S K E TC H . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 0 W H I C H PA RT Y T R I C K A R E YO U ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 B I B L I O G R A P H Y A N D A RT C R E D I T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 F E AT U R I N G D I A L O G U E S , D U O L O G U E S , A N D D I S PAT C H E S O N T H E S TAT E O F T H E S A L O N

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La Vie En Talk A CA SE TO RECONSIDER THE SALON.

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The cleverest men and women of the age were to be met in her drawing room.

THE WOMEN OF THE FRENCH SALONS

L LET’S BEGIN TO REGARD THE SALON as more than a mere matter of chatter.

We’re referring, to be clear, to the conversation parties of centuries past, intellectual affairs that collected guests around discussions of literature, music, politics, and more. Consider the salon a commensurate cultural circle, a space that could function as social gathering, workshop, and flash academy all at once. Evenings might include a poetic recitation or an orchestral oeuvre, a crackling debate or a decadent dinner discourse. The salons were literary circles; they were performance spaces; they were forums for the fast-flying exchange of bons mots and burgeoning ideas. And at the center of them all was the salonnière, the quick and cultured woman who hosted the evening.

Sure, she charmed her guests with wit, wile, and social skill. But the real craft of the salonnière was in how she transformed small talk into high art.

If talk was the medium and a sitting room its exhibition hall, the salonnière was the chief curator and custodian of conversation. And her prized collection lay in the vast and varied acquaintances she could assemble.

The salonnière steered guest lists and encounters, directing the introductions that were to be made in her domain.

She summoned fascinating people for the purposes of fascination: in art, in culture, in each other.

“These women were usually clever and brilliant, but their cleverness and brilliancy were exercised to bring into stronger relief the talents of their friends,” wrote journalist Amelia Gere Mason of the French Enlightenment-era Parisian salons in the late nineteenth century. Seated at her home’s heart, the salonnière shaped the greetings, the meetings, and the discourse, serving as its gracious moderator. She cast a playful pas de deux of the minds; she waxed witticisms and rewarded repartee. And ultimately, she commanded a private and public exchange, one in which she drew the bounds of her domestic sphere outwards and invited the affairs of the wider world in.

In that act, she demonstrated the masterwork of the salon: the discreet revolution it contained. The salonnière harnessed and helmed the form for her own radical purposes. In the making of the salons, the women at their centers offered admission to consciousness-raising. Behind

their pleasing smiles and courtly discourse was the implicit insistence that while a woman may be blocked from possessing power in the public sphere, she could advance her aims from a private domain. She tucked her influence into social pleasures like a napkin rolled around a steak knife.

Centuries after the rise and regular practice of salons, the form’s no longer in casual rotation among social circles. We could consider it a lost art. But the work of the salonnières demands a review — and perhaps a revival. A modest proposal: now heading off a year of isolation, our chapter of the twentyfirst century is in desperate need of salonmakers. And it can begin with us. What circles could you assemble?

What causes would you rouse? Take on the craft and start your salon like a magnum opus. At the very least, you might find pleasure in bringing together a group of people for the pure aims of shared fascination.

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Intimate Affairs H E R E AT H O M E

THINKING ABO UT HOSTING A SALON YO URSELF? CONSIDER THESE TIPS YO UR STA RT I N G P O I N T F O R S E T T I N G O U T A S U C C E S S F U L G AT H E R I N G .

N O. 1

Choose A Room Of Your Own Pick a place in your home where people can best mix and mingle. Even a tight studio or petit urban suite can become a spirited space to gather. Think of it as an homage to the original form: early Euro salons were held in the hostess’s private chamber, with the salonnière propped upon pillows and her coterie collected around the bed.

N O. 2

Raise The Right Mood Tend to ambience as you plot your talkscape. Tiny details like your lighting can reorient a room’s mood: for one, a switch from harsh overheads to warm sconces or table lamps inspires intimacy and intrigue.

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N O. 3

N O. 7

Select Seating With Care

Make Merry

While arranging introductions for the newlyacquainted, consider comfort a tactile lingua franca. So make your space sumptuous: swathe the room in textiles that toss off an inviting luster, and cluster seating to encourage tittering têteà-tête.

N O. 4

Stack The Table Gathering your guests for a dinner salon? Style your tabletops to complement the company. Will you set out a maximalist clatter of texture and print? Layers of linens laid like neat lines of reason?

Hued glassware that sparkles and stimulates? Mix and match wares like the encounters to come.

N O. 6

Soft-Program The Party Invite guests to participate in structuring your salon discussions. Prior to the party, you can inquire about the art that’s moved them of late and why; once you have answers, organize your responses around recurring themes and encourage talkbacks at the table.

Even high-minded meetings can delight in froth and frivolity. So try a party game like 15 Toasts, where guests are passed a theme — like origins, conflict, or attachment — at the salon’s start. Each guest must deliver an ontopic tribute by the night’s end; the last to step forth is obligated to sing theirs.

N O. 5

...And Watch For Sightlines Towers of flowers and outrageous centerpieces interrupt introductions and block cross-table talk. So when it comes to trimming the table, edit, edit, edit: try paring back clutter and shifting decor down low.

N O. 8

Let Talk Fly Perhaps a music-minded friend will agree to perform an interstitial, or one who works with words will read a piece in progress. But once you’ve set out your talk party, settle in — and enjoy seeing how your guests fill the night ahead.

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les salon

nière

nnières The Company We Keep A closer look at the foundational names and forgotten figures of the salon tradition.

es salo

prominent salonist used her position to demand her nation’s independence from Spanish colonization. And in Washington, D.C., Black women joined together to workshop some of the most stirring texts of the Harlem Renaissance. Salonmaking, indeed, wasn’t just a promotion of intellectualism: it was an implicitly and explicitly political act. And the coterie of its commandeers deserves reconsideration.

HE CHAMBER IS FILLED with figures in repose and regale. From your view of the tableaux, you watch men pert in their periwigs, women talcumpressed like teacakes. The candles are blazing; the tea is shimmering; the air is bright and brutal. In the seventeenth century, recall, bathing remains an infrequent pastime. And the room — the room! — is buzzing.

Quips fly across the crowd, a quasi-council of ideas about art, music, and the wider world beyond. They throw words and witticisms down like winning hands of cards, each strike landing triumphantly to titters at the table. The room delights. The room beckons.

For us, the invocation of the salon inspires images like these, a stream of sights and sounds that pour with the fluidity of oolong from a pot. And associations are French, naturally, because the salon’s origins are typically credited to the high society Parisian women of the Enlightenment years. It’s from them that we take the terms still in use today: the gathering a salon, its hostess a salonnière. But although the Parisiennes dominate our collective consciousness, we shouldn’t be so quick to attribute these halls of high talk entirely to the French. Au contraire, fair reader: the history of salonmaking isn’t all fluffed-up croissants and escargot. With a closer look, you’ll find that it’s filled with a cacophonous cast of cross-cultural characters, a worldwide cohort of women who took up patronage of the art of conversation.

The first salons, in fact, were not French at all, but Arab. Although the practice was rare, women began hosting literary circles in the Middle East in the Umayyad period. It wasn’t until the European Enlightenment that the French began its own salon tradition, a convention borrowed from the Italians, and drove the form forward.

In time, the tradition crossed countries and continents — and a new class of salonnières seized their practice to push back on forces that thrust them to the margins. In Berlin and beyond, Jewish women deployed salons to combat double disenfranchisement on the basis of gender and religion. In Buenos Aires, one 16

So take my hand, mon petit bonbon.

My understanding is that’s French for “esteemed colleague; cherished compatriot.” Let’s make like Pepe Le Pew and dash towards the allure of overlooked histories and intimate affairs, foundational and forgotten figures in the chronicles of salonmaking. Allons-y!

Sukaynah bint al-Husayn Damascus, Syria 671–735

To consider a minor footnote of her life, she was the great-granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad. But more enduringly, she was the first female Arab literary critic, and a poet and scholar in her own right. Sukaynah bint al-Husayn is credited as the first woman to open her home and establish the salon tradition with her literary circles. A noblelady of the Umayyad period, her presence arrived in a formative timeline for the Islamic arts, literature included. Legend and lore say that every great poet of the day aspired to a coveted invitation to

Sukaynah’s home, which blended literary contests and recitations with concerts and criticism. Not much of her life remains in formal record. But as she’s constructed, Sukaynah cuts a commanding figure in the Arab literary tradition — and fashioned a powerful prototype for salon cultures to come.

princesses and poets, men of letters and women of wit. By its end, her salon’s nearly thirty-year run was relentlessly emulated and rarely recaptured.

rank. The writer was left alienated by friends and comrades. But despite her days of abandonment, she cemented a legacy of a woman at the margins speaking her piece.

Sarra Copia Sulam

Henriette Herz

Catherine de Vivonne, Madame de Rambouillet

She was poetry and polemic. Writer Sarra Copia Sulam planted her torrid salons of literature and politics in Europe’s most powerful publishing capital — until the slanderous aims of one of her guests landed their mark. A Jewish woman in the explosive Counter-Reformation Italy, Sarra was a poet whose literary legacy was shaken when she faced confrontation by a Catholic priest accusing her of heresy. She wrote her torrential response in just two days, publishing a triumphant manifesto on the immortality of the soul for Christians and Jews alike. While her home was once a key forum for cross-religious relations in early modern Venice, the clash ultimately undercut her position in the literary

She used grace and guile to surmount social barriers in eighteenth-century Berlin. More than a century after Sarra Copia Salam sparred in the Venetian ghetto, a new generation of Jewish salonnières deployed the salon tradition to reorient power structures around gender and religion. Buoyant and poised, Henriette Herz was the first. With her husband, a physician and philosopher named Marcus, Henriette’s literary teas attracted Christian aristocrats and reformminded Jews, all while accumulating fame across the city. Guests were drawn to lectures and scientific demonstrations led by Marcus, followed by discussions of Romantic literature held by Henriette. But after her husband’s death, Henriette spun

Paris, France 1588–1665

Godmother and grand matriarch of the great French salonists. In the seventeenth century, Madame de Rambouillet held high court from her chambre bleue. Catherine de Vivonne was born in Rome to a French ambassador and an Italian noblewoman; as a teen, she was plucked off to Paris for marriage to the Marquis de Rambouillet. After spending social hours of her first Parisian years at the raucous court of Henri IV — a swaggery boor with dubious hygiene, if we’re putting it kindly — she clucked her tongue and left to assemble her own circle of literati at her home. That parting with courtly tradition became a considerable culture break: in her act, she established the foundational model of the French salon, along with a legendary etiquette code for conversation. The madame received favored guests in her blue-hued chamber, a sanctum where the intelligentsia dished and discussed.

She hosted generals and fabulists,

Venice, Italy 1592–1641

Berlin, Germany 1764-1847

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out in a fashion most dramatique.

She lost her wealth, transplanted to Rome as a Protestant convert, and burned her letters. And at the end of her years, she handed her memories off to a biographer to preserve her shining social years.

Mariquita Sánchez de Thompson Buenos Aires, Argentina 1786-1868

A Spanish colonial elite turned critic of the crown. Raised in Buenos Aires, Mariquita became a key supporter of Argentine independence from Spain during the May Revolution of 1810. At the same time, she began hosting her political tertulias, evenings of entertainment and spirited discussions for a thriving network of pro-independence Porteños and exiles. By 1813, her salon

became a bona-fide site of Argentine legacy: on one of her evenings, the Argentine national anthem made its debut. Distributing news and political data, Mariquita’s tertulias became a key gathering for keeping up with the affairs of the Rio de la Plata and the world that lay beyond it. It was in this infrastructure of information and society that her feminist advocacy profile grew. In time, she became a propelling figure in the Sociedad de Beneficencia, an organization she helped establish to educate girls. Eventually, Mariquita’s dissents against Buenos Aires’s dictatorial governor Juan Manuel de Rosas landed her in self-imposed exile from her beloved Buenos Aires. She returned only after his downfall, flourishing years of letters advocating for the rights of women and Argentina.

Mayy Ziyādah Cairo, Egypt 1886-1941

A shape-shifting feminist clearing the way for the Egyptian public sphere. Born to a Lebanese father and a Palestinian mother, Mayy Ziyādah’s dual Middle Eastern and Euro identity positioned her to bridge popular European salons with the longstanding Arab literary circle tradition. She wrote poetry in French and prose in Arabic, publishing dispatches in Egyptian newspapers and biographies of pioneering women writers. In a time when her coevals opened their privileged gatherings only to men, Mayy established her salon as a cross-gender forum for modernist, feminist, and political thought. And though she was a woman of prose rather than politics, her salons came to be considered a

In the living room of her S Street house behind the flourishing rose bushes, a freewheeling jumble of the gifted, famous, and odd came together on Saturday nights.

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transformational moment for democratic exchange in the region’s renaissance, and an antecedent to the 21st century’s Arab Spring.

Georgia Douglas Johnson Washington, D.C. 1880-1966

“In the living room of her S Street house behind the flourishing rose bushes,” writes David Levering Lewis in When Harlem Was In Vogue, “a freewheeling jumble of the gifted, famous, and odd came together on Saturday nights.” One of the most recognized poets and playwrights of her time, Georgia Douglas Johnson hosted forty years of weekly salons for artists and intellectuals of the New Negro Movement — known now as the Harlem Renaissance. While friends like Langston Hughes and W.E.B Du Bois arrived at her door, Georgia’s S Street salons placed special emphasis on the work of Black women writers. The Saturday Nighters, as they came to be known, were spaces for women writers to workshop, critique, and counter. As the salon’s hostess poured tea and offered notes, her coterie collected around searing discussion of African American issues, from fractured families to the pain of lynchings. Nearly every noted writer of the Harlem Renaissance passed through her workshops, including Zora Neale Hurston, Angelina Weld Grimke, May Miller, and more. It was in Georgia’s supportive space that Black women asserted a counterpublic from their male contemporaries — and a hostile American culture at large.

A B OV E : G EO RG I A D O U G L A S J O H N S O N O N T H E COV E R O F T H E C R I S I S, T H E O F F I C I A L M AGA Z I N E O F T H E N A AC P. P R E V I O U S : M A R I E T H É R È S E RO D E T G EO F F R I N , A F R E N C H S A LO N I ST W H O FO L LOW E D I N T H E T R A D I T I O N O F M A DA M E D E R A M B O U I L L E T.

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Characte Confreres, confidantes, and co-conspirators. The real appeal of the salon arrives in the personalities you’ll meet while distilling de Beauvoir or passing plates of flambé. Here’s a fractional sampling of just a few subjects encountered at one modern salon — and the lessons they’ll leave you in their parting words.

THE SUNDAY PAINTER

THE LIBERTINE

Who’s who. Connoisseur of casual learnings, she dabs and dabbles. Her perfumes are ephemeral; her dance classes are drop-in; her Duolingo streaks are vivid and brief. She always orders the special.

Who’s who. Spent all night dancing.

Her word to the wise. You’ll find some fun as a master of none.

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With a tug towards new faces, she champions chance meetings made and released. She’s a Burner, of course.

Her word to the wise.

Life is passing; call it a party.

THE DUTCH-OVEN DOYENNE

THE FRONTIERSWOMAN

THE SECONDHAND SPENDTHRIFT

Who’s who. Specialty grocers know her by name. A gourmand with gumption, she can confit dishes you never considered confitable. Her favorite spice is an Aleppo that sparkles.

Who’s who. Earned a degree in

forestry for kicks. She’ll teach you how to hold an elevation map and where to find mindexpanding fungi. You don’t want to touch that one.

Who’s who. Clattering with baubles.

Her word to the wise. Joy can be plated.

Her word to the wise. The most satisfying trail is cleared yourself.

Her word to the wise. Things once-loved are worth loving anew.

She spends her mornings hovering at estate sales and her evenings reupholstering Victorian wingbacks. Her flowers of choice are preserved in resin.

er Sketch THE FREE-PRESS TALEBEARER Who’s who. The mayor sighs when she sees her at the press conference.

She’s a chronicler of her community and a torrential truth-teller.

She won the school spelling bee with “adamantine.”

Her word to the wise.

Every story deserves a witness.

THE ARDENT ACTIVIST Who’s who. Carries a megaphone as casually as a handbag. She’s escorted refugees across the border and taken protests to the state house. She has plans to name her first daughter Evita.

Her word to the wise.

You get one heart; stretch it as big as it can go.

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C H O O S E YO U R E V E N I N G A DV E N T U R E

Which Party Trick Are You? We’re here to have a good time. Find your party style with one wildly subjective survey.

YO U ’ V E B E E N I N V I T E D BY A F R I E N D T O A D I N N E R S A L O N T O N I G H T.

P I C K YO U R P LU S O N E .

A

B

C

D

SUPERHUMAN S PA C E C O M P U T E R

CUT PIECE AVA N T- G A R D E

A COW T O N G U E -T O T I N G

STUDIO 54 D I S C O D E B U TA N T E

Katherine Johnson.

Yoko Ono.

Carrie Fisher.

Bianca Jagger.

YO U A R R I V E TO G E T H E R A N D D EC I D E TO S P L I T U P. Y O U H E A D O F F T O TA K E :

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A

B

C

D

AN INQUISITIVE P E E K A RO U N D

A HAPPY ME ANDER INTO

A QUICK S OJOURN TO

A S LY D R I V E - BY O F

The hostess’s library.

The party ballroom.

The hors d’oeuvres table.

The liquor cabinet.

Y O U O V E R H E A R A S T R A N G E R R E M A R K I N G , “ T R U LY, F E R R A N T E ’ S N O V E L S A R E O V E R R AT E D.” T H I S O P I N I O N I S O B J E C T I V E LY I N C O R R E C T. Y O U T U R N T O : A

Ask for their theory of the case.

B

Suggest a visit to her lesser-known letters, which you consider revelatory.

C

D

Dig in and argue directly for her honor.

Laugh and ask who’d like to loosen up with a dance.

I T ’ S T I M E F O R D I N N E R , A N D Y O U ’ R E S E AT E D N E X T T O S O M E O N E Y O U H AV E N ’ T M E T B E F O R E . W H AT D O Y O U G E T T O TA L K I N G A B O U T ?

— ANSWER KEY — M O S T LY A’ S

A chemical experiment.

Bubble, bubble, toil, and triumph.

You bring a high-minded pop to the party with a professorial streak and an intellect that smolders. You stimulate with conversations on the cosmos and interrogations of Darwinian rule. And you know that the most satisfying compound is good company.

M O S T LY B ’ S

A

B

C

D

The new comet you heard was recently spotted among the Trojan asteroids.

The powerful burned-paper portraits you found at an online Accran gallery not long ago.

The electric essay you just read about learning to swim, and the fears it made you reconsider.

The late-night narrative you tell about your first tattoo. Maybe they’ll be next.

A L A R G E R D I S C U S S I O N I S S TA RT I N G U P AT T H E TA B L E , W I T H E V E RY O N E A S K E D A B O U T W O R K S T H AT H AV E I N T R I G U E D T H E M O F L AT E . Y O U O F F E R :

A

B

C

D

A nature doc chronicling one octopus’s life in a South African kelp forest.

An ASMR operetta you recently discovered on soothestation YouTube.

A deep-dive podcast probing at the edges of human desire.

A wet and wild drag revue happening at the local playhouse.

T H E E V E N I N G ’ S C O M I N G TO A C LO S E , A N D YO U ’ V E M A D E A F E W A C Q U A I N TA N C E S Y O U R E A L LY L I K E . H O W D O Y O U B I D T H E M G O O D B Y E ?

A

B

C

D

Promise to send photos from your gulf trip to see whooping cranes.

It’s great to meet other birders.

Say you really should go together to see that female folk band you both like. You’ll get the tickets.

Tell them how much you enjoyed hearing about their years of rebellion.

More over coffee soon?

Plant a few rogue cheekkisses and add that everyone’s welcome at yours next. Mwah!

A serenade at the baby grand.

You lean into artistic appreciation with a do, re, mi. But your real skill is emotional virtuosity. You guide a group’s tenor with a gentle hand: you can raise the crowd with ragtime as easily as you drop tears with Puccini. Madame Butterfly, sei tu?

M O S T LY C ’ S

A bracing digestif.

Frank and no-nonsense, you don’t hide from the hard questions: you can knock a neighbor back with the surprise of a well-landed inquiry. But your new friends feel oddly comforted as they open up about their childhood trauma. Your directness has the force of grappa, but the sweet soothe of sherry.

M O S T LY D ’ S

An invitation to the afterparty.

Your energy throws off light even as the clock tocks towards the early hours.

You’re radiant, baby, and ready to rally.

More importantly: you have a gift for gathering hesitant spirits and making them feel included. You take them all to karaoke.

baby, le B I B L I O G R A P H Y A N D A RT C R E D I TS

Browner, Jesse. “Conversation Starter.” Bookforum, 30 Nov. 2007, www.bookforum.com/print/1403/out-of-the-dregs-ofseventeenth-century-french-culture-the-bride-of-a-mediocremarquis-invented-the-unlikely-prototype-of-the-literarysalon-832. Accessed 2021.

Eichler, Jeremy. “Women Who Conquered Europe With Their Wit.” The New York Times, 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/03/04/ arts/design/women-who-conquered-europe-with-their-wit.html.

Accessed 2021.

“Georgia Douglas Johnson: Rereading The Harlem Renaissance.”

GeorgiaDouglasJohnson.com. Accessed 2021.

Goodman, Dena. “Enlightenment Salons: The Convergence of Female and Philosophic Ambitions.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1989, pp. 329–350. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/ stable/2738891. Accessed 2021.

Khaldi, Boutheina. Arab Women Going Public: Mayy Ziyadah and Her Literary Salon in a Comparative Context. 2008.

Khaldi, Boutheina. Egypt Awakening in the Early Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Mason, Amelia Gere. The Women of the French Salons.

The Century Company, 1891.

McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies. Duke University Press, 2002.

Shumway, Jeffrey M. A Woman, A Man, A Nation: Mariquita Sánchez, Juan Manuel De Rosas, And The Beginnings Of Argentina.

University of New Mexico Press, 2019.

“The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons (McMullen Museum Of Art)”. Boston College, 2021, www.bc.edu/ sites/artmuseum/exhibitions/salons. Accessed 2021.

Westwater, Lynn Lara. Sarra Copia Sulam: A Jewish Salonnière and the Press in Counter-Reformation Venice. University Of Toronto Press, 2019.

t’s tal

et’s talk B I B L I O G R A P H Y A N D A RT C R E D I TS

Yalman, Suzan. Based on original work by Linda Komaroff.

“The Art of the Umayyad Period (661–750).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/umay/hd_umay.html.

Yalom, Marilyn, and Theresa Donovan Brown. The Social Sex: A History Of Female Friendship. Harper Perennial, 2015.

C O V E R + PA G E 2 1

Van Der Zee, James. Florence Mills, Singer and Comedienne.

1927, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. PA G E 0 8

Sargent, John Singer. The Wyndham Sisters: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane, and Mrs. Tennant. 1899, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Bayramov, Durdy. Gifts of August. 2004, Durdy Bayramov Art Foundation, Toronto, ON. Figari, Pedro. A Gathering (Tertulia). 1900, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Kalmsteiner, Hans. New Years Card: Cheers 1911. 1911, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. PA G E S 1 3 - 1 5

Van Vechten, Carl. Portrait of Bessie Smith, American Blues Singer. 3 Feb. 1936.

Loir, Marianne. Presumed Portrait of Madame Geoffrin. Mid-18th century, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.

PA G E S 1 2 - 1 3

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Léger, Fernand Henri. Head of a Woman. 1949.

Douglas, Aaron. Georgia Douglas Johnson. March 1919.

aby, l