‘A female painter’s excellent argument in favour of women’s rights’. The; repre- sentation of the femme moderne in Amélie Beaury-Saurel’s work (1848-1924)

Abstract

In the last decades of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth century, the Spanish artist Amélie Beaury-Saurel (1848-1924) made a huge contribution, through her work, to modernising the iconographic discourses reigning in artistic representations of women, challenging the prevailing traditional and sexist stereotypes. In doing so, Beaury-Saurel reflected, as few artists managed to do at the time, the personality of the so-called ‘femme moderne’, promoting the image of emancipated, professional, intellectual, well-travelled or sporty women, which did not always go down well with artcritics. This article provides unpublished information about the artist’s still unknown creative career and analyses her most relevant works which clearly reflect the influence of the feminist movements and her firm commitment to the promotion, through her paintings, of gender equality and to giving visibility to women in traditionally masculinised areas.