Michael

Thanks for sharing this! 😎

Italian artist Giovanni Boldini painted this work in 1872, shortly after moving to Paris, at a time when the city was undergoing rapid transformation and the era known as the Belle Époque was beginning to take shape. A young white woman sits slightly turned on a green slatted park bench, framed tightly in a vertical view. Her brown hair is swept into a soft chignon, topped with a small hat trimmed with feathers or flowers. She wears a lustrous dark dress that pools into heavy folds, its sheen catching the light against frothy white cuffs and a pale blue ruffle at her throat. Her right hand rises to her lips in a half-thoughtful gesture, while her left arm wraps around a pink bundle like a shawl or bouquet resting in her lap. Beside her, a large straw basket tilts on the bench, its woven ribs echoing the bench’s rhythm. Behind her, dense shrubs, climbing greenery, and a scattering of red blossoms dissolve into quick strokes, while a pale sky glows above, turning the chic Bois de Boulogne into a softly blurred, rustling backdrop for this moment of pause. Boldini paints this woman at rest yet mentally in motion, catching her in that suspended instant when the mind wanders and the body forgets to pose. Her hand at her mouth, the turned-away gaze and slightly tense shoulders hint at shyness or worry, even as her fashionable dress and carefully arranged hair mark her as a participant in modern urban leisure. The public park evoked by the title “Bois” becomes a stage where middle-class women can stroll, sit and be seen. Brushwork quickens in the foliage and gravel path, echoing Impressionist experiments around him, while the figure remains sharply defined, a living portrait anchored in the middle of the scene. The panel fuses genre scene and society portrait, turning this unidentified sitter into one of the many anonymous, stylish women who animated the new Belle Époque city and claimed space and visibility within the rapidly changing city around them.

"Sulla panchina al Bois (On the Bench at the Bois)" by Giovanni Boldini (Italian) – Oil on panel / 1872 – Palazzo Blu (Pisa, Italy) #WomenInArt #GiovanniBoldini #Boldini #PalazzoBlu #BelleEpoque #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaWoman #arte #ItalianArtist #GenrePainting #BelleÉpoque

100% agree 😍

I just heard read (here on Bluesky) that it might not be on display, so, I'm not sure if it is part of traveling exhibition or just not available at this time. She is such a talented and visionary artist that I fully anticipate that more and more museums will be adding her work. 💯😎

Thanks for the heads up. I wonder if it was a temporary exhibition or is just not in the current collection available ...

Oh, that's cool! They are such special dogs 🐶😎

Oh, I hadn’t noticed the heart shape 💙 😎

This artist really has a lot of beautiful and under appreciated paintings. 😍

French artist Madeleine Lemaire titled the work “Les Fées” (or The Fairies) placing these figures somewhere between Belle Époque society portrait and dreamlike allegory. Painted around 1908, late in her career and shortly after she was awarded the Legion of Honor, the canvas shows how she carried her success as the “empress of roses” into more overtly fantastical scenes, trading garden backdrops for the charged atmosphere of an encounter between women. On this large, vertical oil painting, two light-skinned young women stand pressed together in the foreground, set against a dark, softly blurred backdrop. The 60 x 42 in. canvas is almost human scale, so their bodies feel “close” to us. A blonde figure turns three-quarters toward us, shoulders bare above a low, off-the-shoulder gown made of pale, shimmering fabric gathered closely around her bodice. Her hands a crossed loosely in front of her, as if she is pausing between gestures. Just behind her, a brunette companion leans in, draping her arms along the blonde’s shoulders and looking outward with a small, knowing smile. Both women wear delicate ornaments in their hair and gauzy wraps that fall in long, translucent folds down their backs, suggesting fairy wings without depicting them literally. The space around them dissolves into loose strokes and soft glows rather than a detailed room or landscape, so our attention stays on the closeness of their bodies plus the tilt of heads, the touch of hands, and the shared, intimate pose. Lemaire often painted a brunette clinging to a blonde, and here that pattern invites queer and feminist interpretations as the scene can be read as tender friendship, tipsy confidantes at the end of a ball, or a quietly romantic embrace that slips past polite norms by hiding in the guise of fairies. The painting helps expand Lemaire’s legacy beyond floral still lifes to include images that resist simple, cisheteronormative stories about desire, companionship, and women’s presence.

“Les Fées (The Fairies)” by Madeleine Lemaire (French) - Oil on canvas / 1908 - Musées de Sens (France) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #MadeleineLemaire #Lemaire #MuseeDeSens #FairyArt #BelleEpoque #BlueskyArt #FrenchArt #art #artText #1900s #arte #FrenchArtist #WomenPaintingWomen

Painted in Maris’s Amsterdam studio around 1906, this portrait once circulated under vague or openly racist titles that treated its sitter as an anonymous type rather than an individual. Later research in the artist’s archive including letters, photographs, and notes revealed that Maris himself repeatedly wrote her name as “Isabella,” prompting the Rijksmuseum to restore that title and center her identity. A young Black girl of about twelve or thirteen sits turned slightly toward us in a deep, cushioned armchair with gilded armrests carved as goat heads. She has warm brown skin, dark eyes, and tight curls that spill from beneath an enormous white bonnet trimmed with soft pink-red flowers and gauzy ribbons. Her blue-green satin dress shimmers with quick, loose strokes, its bodice and sleeves edged in pale lace. She holds open a pale gold folding fan with her right hand as her left fingertips rest on the fan’s tassel. A slim bracelet circles left her wrist and a small ring glints on her finger. Behind her, a tall mirror catches the back of her bonnet and dress so we see her twice at once, while the surrounding studio of dark wood, patterned upholstery, and a glimpse of rug falls into a warm brown haze that makes her face, fan, and costume seem to almost glow. These days, Isabella is read as a carefully observed portrait of a particular Black girl, dressed in theatrical 19th-century European finery that both flatters and distances her. The fan, mirror, and stage-like chair remind us that she is posing in the world of a white Dutch portraitist celebrated for images of fashionable women and children, yet the painting also insists on her dignity and presence. In museum galleries and print reproductions, "Isabella" has become a touchstone in conversations about how Black girls were seen and often unnamed in European art, and how reclaiming a sitter’s name can shift an entire story.

"Isabella (Young Woman with a Fan)" by Simon Maris (Dutch) - Oil on canvas / 1906 - Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, Netherlands) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #SimonMaris #Maris #Rijksmuseum #DutchArt #portrait #DutchArtist #AmsterdamArt #ArtOfTheDay #PortraitofaGirl #arte #GenrePainting

A young, light-skinned woman stands in a narrow Parisian doorway, paused mid-step as she prepares to go out. She wears a dark, gleaming silk day dress with a fitted bodice and sweeping skirt, its surface catching the light in soft velvety folds. Wrapped around her shoulders is a luxuriant cashmere shawl, densely patterned with curving paisley forms in reds, golds, and cool blues that spill down her front like a second garment. Her brown hair is close to her head, framing a composed, thoughtful face turned slightly toward us, her gaze lowered but aware as she looks back over her right shoulder. One hand rests on a bright metal door handle, holding the threshold between interior and street. At her feet, a small white lapdog, Fido, looks up attentively on the polished floor, its pink ribbon collar echoing the refinement of its mistress. Behind them, pale walls, a framed picture, and the edge of an upholstered seat suggest an elegant yet tightly bounded domestic space. Belgian artist Alfred Stevens turns this moment of departure into a quiet meditation on modern femininity under the French Second Empire. Wealth and status are signaled less by jewelry than by textiles, especially the coveted Kashmiri-style shawl that dominates the composition and speaks to the reach of global trade into Parisian interiors. The woman becomes almost a living mannequin for luxury, yet her slight hesitation and inward-looking expression suggest emotions that cannot be read from fashion alone. Painted in 1859, soon after Stevens settled permanently in Paris, the work marks his shift from earlier social-realist subjects to the intimate genre scenes of elegant women. Trained in the realist tradition and inspired by Dutch and Flemish painters, he brought enamel-smooth precision to scenes of contemporary life, using interiors and clothing to reveal social codes. Here, a bourgeois woman’s movements are carefully staged, even as she stands on the brink walking into an unseen modern city.

“Departing for the Promenade (Will You Go Out with Me, Fido?)” by Alfred-Émile-Léopold Stevens (Belgian) - Oil on canvas / 1859 - Philadelphia Museum of Art (Pennsylvania) #WomenInArt #DogArt #artText #art #AlfredStevens #BlueskyArt #PhiladelphiaMuseumOfArt #19thCenturyArt #BelgianArtist #FashionArt

A beautiful Black woman turns in profile, eyes softly closed as she kisses an attentive striped savannah cat held against her chest. Her black hair is braided in long, beaded strands that fall down her back, catching points of reflected light. A sheer, golden shawl veils her shoulders and forearms, its threads glinting like sunrays over skin. She wears a yellow dress patterned with green leaves and a pink sash, the fabric creasing where her arms cradle the cat’s ribcage and ringed tail. Behind them, a deep night sky blooms with faint, compass-like constellations and radiating starbursts, suggesting a chart of the unseen. The cat meets her affection with a calm, whisker-to-face touch. Painted in 2022, "The Mystic" threads intimacy and guidance with animal as companion, familiar, and witness to articulate artist Faye Hedera’s recurring themes of resilience, intuition, and women’s inner power. The celestial notations read like a private map around the pair, framing their exchange as a ritual of care. The savannah cat’s hybrid markings echo the woman’s patterned dress, binding human and animal through rhythm and texture. In Hedera’s idiom of contemporary realism glazed with the fantastic, tenderness is a form of knowledge: the kiss becomes a vow to trust instinct, body, and bonds that help us navigate dark skies. Hedera is an American visual artist and advocate based in Conway, Arkansas. Her portrait practice centers womanhood and community connection. Soon after this work, she launched the exhibition "100 Faces of Conway" at the Windgate Museum of Art at Hendrix College, highlighting local “difference makers.” Her public interviews foreground art’s role in healing and inclusion, reflecting her broader work as a disability advocate and organizer with Central Arkansas Collective. Across paintings and projects, Hedera pursues portraits that honor lived experience while inviting us into shared, restorative attention like "The Mystic."

"The Mystic" by Faye Hedera (American) - Acrylic on canvas / 2022 #WomenInArt #WomanArtist #art #artwork #ArtText #BlackPortraiture #WomenWithCats #ArkansasArt #BlueskyArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists #CatArt #AmericanArtist #AmericanArt #ContemporaryArt #arte #ContemporaryRealism #Hedera #FayeHedera

Elizabeth Colomba is such a talented artist and I especially love her vision and the representation she brings to her work. The Princeton Art Museum should be a must visit for anyone in the area! 😎

I agree. The more I view this painting, the more I love everything about it! 😍

I'm close to moving on to my next theme, but have saved dozens more paintings of Women and Dogs (or other animals) in my queue to research and share, so, I'll definitely come back to it.

Bold is beautiful 💪😍

I'd love to hear from the artist about their vision/meaning in this artwork ... cause I find the child's look (and the dog's tbh) so engaging that I can't look away ... 👀😃

Ya, I agree and think this artist deserves more recognition 👍

What was once "neo" classic now just feels classic to me ... and I like that feeling 🤩 sometimes

I feel the same way ... I'm truly fascinated by the skill of Homer and so thankful for the museum curators who share it with us. 💯😎

I've been waiting a few days to research and share this one because it really is stunning ... and I wanted to do the artwork justice in the AltText. It's obviously a representation of a person with privilege and wealth, yet I still love it despite that ... 😍

A towering full-length portrait shows Countess Anna “Annina” Morosini standing with her pale face turned toward us beneath a vast dark hat crowned with blue-gray plumes. Italian artist Lino Selvatico’s cool light grazes her long black gown, fur stole, and tan gloves, catching reflections on satin, jewels, and feathers so viewers can almost feel each texture. Her posture is poised yet relaxed, one arm bent with assured ease while, at her side, a slender light beige greyhound presses close, ribs and muzzle delicately modeled. The muted background and faint architectural suggestion keep focus on the dialogue between woman and dog like two elongated, elegant silhouettes emerging from a soft atmospheric haze. Here, every choice becomes biography. Born Anna Sara Nicoletta Maria Rombo, Annina married into the ancient Morosini family and transformed Ca’ d’Oro and later Palazzo da Mula into legendary salons. By 1908, Annina Morosini, long separated from her husband, was a celebrated Venetian salonnière on the Grand Canal (even making Caffè Florian her “salon”). She was widely dubbed the “last dogaressa” as she entertained writers, royals, and avant-garde artists as the “uncrowned Queen of Venice.” Selvatico, son of poet and mayor Riccardo Selvatico and a leading Belle Époque portraitist, excelled at capturing cosmopolitan women who shaped public taste. In 1908, the Padua-born artist who trained with Cesare Laurenti, was already a Venice Biennale exhibitor and near the height of his society-portrait career in Venice, painting aristocrats and haute bourgeois sitters such as Countess Morosini. In this canvas, he fuses spectacle with psychological insight: Annina appears not as ornament but as strategist of her own image, her direct gaze and commanding black silhouette asserting modern femininity, while the elegant greyhound signals pedigree, loyalty, and the choreographed theater of privilege that both sitter and painter understood so well.

“La contessa Anna Morosini” (Countess Anna Maria Rombo Morosini) by Lino Selvatico (Italian) - Oil on canvas / 1908 - Ca’ Pesaro, Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna (Venice, Italy) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #BelleEpoque #DogArt #LinoSelvatico #Selvatico #BlueskyArt #ItalianArt #MUVE

In 1878, American artist Winslow Homer was perfecting watercolor as a primary medium, using transparent washes blotted together and touches of opaque white to model light and atmosphere. “Fresh Air” belongs to an early series painted outdoors at Houghton Farm, a patron’s country estate in upstate New York, where he staged “modern shepherdesses”—contemporary girls in fanciful rustic dress against expansive skies. The subject is less a portrait than a type: poised between girlhood and work, self-contained amid grazing sheep and restless weather. A light-skinned young shepherdess stands on a breezy hillside, profile turned left, hands loosely clasped before her. She wears a straw hat trimmed with a fluttering sky blue ribbon, a pale bodice with ruffled sleeves, and a long, wind-lifted skirt as heavy black shoes with large metal buckles anchor her against the slanting grass. Sheep nose through the turf at her feet, while a branch with small leaves edges the sky in the upper right. Behind her, a high, sun-washed bank of cloud fills the canvas. Light catches her cheek, hat brim, and the creases of her skirt, emphasizing the stillness of her stance against the blowing wind across the grassy hilltop. This painting hints at the era’s taste for pastoral retreat while showcasing Homer’s technical confidence with layered sky, scraped highlights, and selective glazing on a modest wove paper sheet that makes it feel monumental. To achieve the subtle coloration in the sky, he applied overlapping washes of grays, pinks, and blues and then blotted them together. Homer, who rose to national prominence in the 1860s for his magazine illustrations and oil paintings of modern American life, took up watercolor in the 1870s. "Fresh Air" foreshadows his lifelong interest in figures set against nature’s forces, from quiet wind to storm-tossed sea, and marks the moment watercolor became central to his American vision.

“Fresh Air” by Winslow Homer (American) - Watercolor over charcoal on wove paper / 1878 - Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #homer #BrooklynMuseum #AmericanArt #AmericanWatercolor #19thCenturyArt #PleinAir #BlueskyArt #portraitofaWoman #AmericanArtist #WinslowHomer

A young woman turns her bare shoulder toward us, her light skin softly illuminated against a dark, indistinct background. Her auburn curls are loosely gathered with a dark blue ribbon with stars, framing a face that hovers between innocence and allure. She cradles a white dove tightly against her breast, her fingers gently enclosing its body as its head nestles into the curve of her skin while looking up at the young woman. Her lips are parted, her gaze heavy-lidded and turned slightly away, suggesting an absorbed, private reverie. The tight framing, lack of narrative setting, and skyward gaze draw us into an intimate encounter with a singular figure who is both posed and palpably alive, inviting contemplation of her interior state as much as her exposed beauty. French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze titles this figure not as a named sitter but as an allegory of “Voluptuousness” to make desire itself the subject. The painting belongs to his late career, when changing taste, the rise of Neoclassicism, and the upheavals of the French Revolution had eroded the acclaim he enjoyed in the 1760s for moralizing domestic dramas. Once championed by French philosopher and art critic Denis Diderot as a painter of virtue and feeling, Greuze increasingly relied on smaller, sensual heads and bust-length figures for private collectors. Here, the lingering softness of Rococo sentiment fuses with a more pointed erotic charge: the exposed shoulder, moist eyes, and ambiguous half-smile stage the tension between modesty and seduction that had always haunted his work. Painted around 1789–1790, as the old regime collapsed and his own fortunes declined, this image can be read as both a consummation and an endpoint of an artist turning inward to a perfected type he knew well, presenting sensual pleasure as fragile, intimate, and curiously isolated at the threshold of a new political and artistic age.

“Voluptuousness (Сладострастие)” by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French) - Oil on canvas / 1789–1790 - Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia) #WomenInArt #Greuze #18thCenturyArt #Rococo #Neoclassicism #PushkinMuseum #Jean-BaptisteGreuze #artText #arte #EuropeanArt #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaWoman

This acrylic painting shows a Telangana (in south-central India) woman in profile, her dark, luminous skin framed by a richly patterned deep blue sari and heavy ornaments that curve in strong, graphic lines around her face and shoulders. A bright green parrot perches just behind her head, its beak angled toward her cheek as if mid-conversation, echoing the tilt of her eyes and the gentle tension in her lips. Flat, saturated reds, yellows, blues, and greens replace modelling with bold contour, while delicate dots and borders decorate her sari and jewelry. Against a plain, pale backdrop, every curve of her bangles, nose ring, and hairline is sharply defined, centering a powerful village woman whose presence fills the frame. Drawing on the sensuous “alasa kanyas” (aka lazy, relaxed, or indolent maidens”) motifs of medieval temple sculpture and on memories of the women of rural Telangana, Indian artist Thota Vaikuntam turns a familiar image of a woman with her parrot into a celebration of caste-marked, regionally specific beauty and interior life. The parrot, long a South Asian symbol of desire, gossip, devotion, and companionship, becomes here a trusted witness to the sitter’s private world. Born in Boorugupalli in 1942 and trained in Hyderabad and at MS University Baroda under K.G. Subramanyan, Vaikuntam fused folk, cinematic poster art, and temple iconography into his now-iconic language of flattened planes and monumental village figures. In “Woman with Parrot,” he honors the women who shaped him like toddy-shop workers, market sellers, mothers, and wives by casting them not as decorative muses but as protagonists whose gaze, gesture, and vivid presence define contemporary Indian art.

“Woman with Parrot” by Thota Vaikuntam (Indian) - Acrylic on canvas / c. 2001 - Sarmaya Arts Foundation (Mumbai, India) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #ThotaVaikuntam #IndianArt #Telangana #SouthAsianArt #ModernIndianArt #ContemporaryArt #FigurativeArt #Parrot #BirdArt #Sarmaya #WomenWithAnimals

A girl lies wakeful at the edge of a narrow bed pushed toward the picture plane, her head tipped sideways on a white pillow, one arm tucked beneath her chin, the other peeking out from a rumpled blue blanket that spills over striped red and white bedding. She meets our gaze with wide, serious eyes, more alert than sleepy. Around her, a green chequerboard floor reads simultaneously as linoleum and lawn as tufts of grass erupt through the squares, encircling the base of a tall floor lamp and softening the legs of a low table where a worn teddy bear sits propped. To her left, a sleek dark greyhound stands sentinel as it leans toward us. A small rabbit pauses mid-hop nearby. On the warm pink-brown walls rise a flat hanging teddy shape, a row of blue paper-chain children whose shadows deepen into darker doubles, and a high window ledge with a plant and faint ghostly image. Branches press in from the right, so that room and outside world mingle at the edges. “Child Fantasy” visualizes the threshold between safety and unease that often shapes children’s inner lives. Familiar props of a nursery like a bed, toys, and paper figures are all present, yet British artist Duncan McLaren skews scale, perspective, and surface so they feel uncanny. The bed is shallow. The floor is both solid and porous. The paper children are edging toward the gap in the wall as if escaping. The greyhound’s calm, but penetrating stare and the rabbit’s vulnerability suggest guardianship, wildness, and fragility coexisting within the child’s imagination. Grass invading the interior and foliage creeping in through the corner hint at stories pushing beyond adult control, where dreams, fears, companionship and independence grow more powerful than the ordered room itself. In the collection at Scolton Manor, the painting quietly honors children’s rich psychological landscapes, insisting that their fantasies are not trivial diversions, but complex spaces of observation, resistance, comfort, and self-making.

“Child Fantasy” by Duncan McLaren (British) - Oil on canvas / c.1978 - Scolton Manor Museum (Haverfordwest, Wales) #WomenInArt #DogArt #GirlArt #DuncanMcLaren #ScoltonManorMuseum #PembrokeshireArt #ModernBritishArt #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #ContemporaryArt #McLaren #OilPainting #1970sArt

Two smiling Black women stand side by side against a pale background, their bodies cropped at the knees so they command the seven-by-nine-foot canvas. On the left, a taller woman with hair pulled back, dressed in a white long-sleeved top and dark skirt cradles a small brown-and-white dog whose bright red collar gives the painting its name. The top of her head grazes the canvas edge as she leans toward her companion, laughing as she looks down at the dog. To the right, her friend, in a vertical striped dress of red, blue, black, and white, turns inward with one hand tucked casually into her pocket, her gentle smile and tilted head meeting the dog’s gaze. Boafo’s characteristic finger-painted, marbled skin contrasts with the smoother brushwork of clothes, dog, and background, heightening the sense of touch, warmth, and closeness shared among all three. Painted in 2021 while artist Amoako Boafo was working in Los Angeles and depicting close friends from his Ghanaian circle, "Red Collar" embodies the ethos of the exhibition "Soul of Black Folks" with Black subjects centered, relaxed, and gloriously themselves. The red collar quietly shifts focus from fashion spectacle to care, loyalty, and the everyday intimacies that structure Black life. Boafo reserves direct finger painting for skin and hair, marking Black bodies as sites of connection rather than consumption, while the monumental scale of the canvas elevates a simple moment of shared joy to the level of history painting. Traveling from gallery to museum, including its presentation in "Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks" and in the Hornik Collection exhibition "Some Dogs Go to Dallas," the work anchors Boafo’s larger project of documenting Black friendship, glamour, and self-possession across continents, insisting that these relationships belong at the heart of contemporary art’s global narrative.

"Red Collar" by Amoako Boafo (Ghanaian) - Oil on canvas / 2021 - Denver Art Museum (Colorado) #WomenInArt #DogArt #AmoakoBoafo #DenverArtMuseum #SeattleArtMuseum #GreenFamilyArtFoundation #HornikCollection #BlackArt #BlackWomen #GhanaianArt #ContemporaryArt #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #Boafo

The reflections really are remarkable 😍

Painted during American artist John Mix Stanley’s 1848–49 stay in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, this portrait gently stages an encounter between Indigenous presence and Western academic portraiture. The young woman, unrecorded by name but rendered with individualized features, carefully observed dress, and ceremonial lei, embodies Native Hawaiian dignity amid rapid cultural change. The young girl sits frontally before a pale masonry wall, her warm brown skin and dark eyes illuminated by even, gentle light. She wears a soft yellow holokū with a high yoke and long sleeves, accented by a green ribbon at her throat, a thick orange lei draped around her neck, and a vivid pinkish shawl folded over her lap. A fresh flower crown circles her neatly parted black hair. Resting securely in her arms is a small white dog whose alert face and bright eyes turn toward us, its body nestled into her lap. Sparse grasses and a shadowed plant at the left edge subtly anchor the young woman in the Hawaiian landscape while keeping the focus on her steady, composed gaze and the quiet intimacy between girl and animal. Her confident posture and direct gaze reject the exoticizing stereotypes common in Euro-American images of the Pacific. Instead, she appears as a poised young woman of status, possibly connected to elite or mission-educated circles, claiming space with her companion animal. The dog, a cherished pet rather than a specimen, underscores affection, domestic security, and a shared life rooted in this place rather than on a distant frontier. For Stanley, already known for painting Native nations in North America, Hawaiʻi offered another chance to document people he believed were at risk of being misunderstood or erased. During nearly a year in Hawaiʻi, he painted King Kamehameha III, Queen Kalama, and members of the aliʻi. "Hawaiian Girl with Dog" centers a Native Hawaiian subject with unusual tenderness, reinforcing her individuality instead of relegating her to background ethnography.

"Hawaiian Girl with Dog" by John Mix Stanley (American) - Oil on canvas / 1849 - Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum (Honolulu, Hawaiʻi) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #HawaiianArt #IndigenousArt #PacificArt #BishopMuseum #DogArt #GirlAndDog #BlueskyArt #JohnMixStanley #PortraitofaGirl #AmericanArtist

Ooooh, you're right. Now I see that 👀🤩

A plus-size woman leans over the edge of a pink bathtub, her dark hair twisted into a loose topknot, bare arms folded as she gazes down with soft concentration. One finger touches the water’s surface, sending out a crisp ring of ripples that anchors the scene. Beside her, a gray-and-white dog perches on the tub’s rim, paws resting over a striped towel, watchful and calm. Behind them, a grid of warm orange tiles hums with gentle light. Below, the bathwater becomes a second painting: her reflected body and the dog’s form stretch across mauve and lavender tiles, veiled by foam and translucent swirls, blurring where skin, water, and light meet into a quiet portrait of rest, intimacy, and companionship. In “Oh, To Be Loved,” artist Shona McAndrew (born in Paris and based in the United States) turns the bathroom, often a site of scrutiny, into a sanctuary for radical gentleness. Working from her own body and relationships, she paints fat, tender, queer-adjacent domestic life at heroic scale, insisting that care and desire belong to bodies long excluded from art history’s ideals. The woman’s relaxed posture, the everyday setting, and the dog’s unwavering presence insist that love is found in ordinary rituals and in steam, tile, towels, and the slow tracing of a fingertip across water. Created for her 2023 solo exhibition “Rose-Tinted Glasses” at CHART in New York, the painting forms part of a self-reflective series in which McAndrew recasts classical motifs of the nude and the muse through her own image, her partner, and her dog. Later shown in “Some Dogs Go to Dallas” at the Green Family Art Foundation, it resonates within a wider context of portraits where animals witness and affirm human vulnerability like an ode to being seen, held, and loved without condition.

“Oh, To Be Loved” by Shona McAndrew (French) - Acrylic on canvas / 2023 - Green Family Art Foundation (Dallas, Texas) #WomenInArt #art #artText #artwork #WomanArtist #ShonaMcAndrew #McAndrew #BodyPositivity #arte #ContemporaryArt #BlueskyArt #WomenArtists #DogArt #WomensArt #GreenFamilyArtFoundation