Gender Issues and Gender Roles

     In Mary Cassatt's The Loge and Thomas Eakins's the Swimming Hole, issues of gender and gender roles play a significant part in how both artists portray their subjects in the canvas. As a woman of the impressionist movement, Mary Cassatt's work offered a new vision of art through women. The most significant way she illustrates gender roles through this vision is by depicting women as independent public people. In The Loge, Cassatt depicts two vibrant young women, Genevieve Mallarme and Mary Ellison, in evening dresses as they witness a theater performance together. Both women dominate the canvas as they are captured enjoying the moment whereas in the Swimming Hole, Eakins paints his male subjects, including himself, in the nude as they are swimming in the lake.
     He plays with the textures and colors in the canvas as he abandons the use of chiaroscuro. In The Loge, Cassatt abandons the depiction of the theater by limiting the audience to tiny heads in the background. Both female subjects seems self-conscious because one woman is watching the performance and clinching her bouquet while the other is hiding behind her fan. There's no sense of a man accompanying the women as the focus is on them instead of the viewer, who is fully aware of their gaze. In The Swimming Hole, the canvas is a pyramidal composition.
     Each position of the figures are precisely posed so that no private parts are shown which is similar to Cassatt because both artists capture the moment that doesn't objectify their subjects. He paints his canvas of a male experience from that of a male perspective where Cassatt paints her canvas from a woman's perspective. Eakins depicts a sense of freedom as the male subjects are in the nude and are not gazing at the viewer. Instead, their focus is diverted to jumping into the lake. The composition is in a natural setting and is engaging his subjects with nature.
     Similar to The Loge, there's no sense of perspective within the space. The subjects in the canvas are placed in the center of the space whereas in The Loge, the two women are placed in the foreground. Eakins highlights the freedom of the space as he captures the moment and like Cassatt, he focuses on his subjects rather than the viewer. Both artists are depicting their subjects enjoying being in the company of the same gender. Cassatt plays close attention to the composition of her canvas as she individualizes the female subjects whereas in The Swimming Hole, Eakins manipulates the focus of his painting because he has figures carefully positioned while the outer areas are diffused. The placements of their bodies emphasizes their masculinity and physical beauty whereas in The Loge, Cassatt's female subjects look like ordinary women dressed up for a special occasion.
     The presence of gender roles in both paintings show how each artist wanted their subjects to be portrayed. Cassatt's art comes from and gives her conception of women as concrete presences because she wanted her subjects to be seen as someone not as something. She has her women fully  clothed whereas in The Swimming Hole, Eakins puts his male subjects in the nude. He depicts the physicality of their bodies as he has their buttocks facing the viewer. What both artists do accomplish is that they don't let the stereotypical gender roles define the canvas but give their own perspective on how they should be seen. They both show that a man and a woman can be objectified in different ways that either  over sexualizes them or not.

    

  

   
Works Cited:
Images were taken from Google

Here's another link to another painting similar to Thomas Eakins painting:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Eakins,_Thomas_(1844_-_1916)_-_Arcadia_-_ca._1883.jpg