Painted during artist Annette Nancarrow’s Mexico years, the picture reflects her engagement with Mexican visual culture without feeling like a travel image or ethnographic study. Instead, she distills form, color, and mood. One figure appears guarded and watchful. Another seems steadier, more inwardly assured. That subtle contrast creates a quiet emotional dialogue between them. Their closeness suggests companionship, kinship, or shared experience, but the painting leaves the exact relationship open, which gives it lasting intrigue. The duo are shown close together in the foreground, their heads inclined toward one another so that their shawls and shoulders almost form a single, compact mass. Both figures wear dark rebozo coverings in deep black, blue, violet, rust, and brown, arranged in angular folds that frame their faces. The woman at left has a pale, masklike face built from sharp planes of cream, gray, yellow, and blue as large eyes look outward and her face falls into shadow. The woman at right has warmer red, coral, and terracotta tones across her face, with arched brows, dark eyes, circular earrings, and a faint, knowing smile. They wear white patterned embroidered dresses. Behind them rises a compressed townscape of tan and cream buildings, domed towers, and terracotta roofs under a cool, cloudy sky. The paint surface is rough and visibly worked, with bold outlines and broken color that make the women feel both intimate and monumental. The angular faces and emphatic contours place the work within 20th-century modernism as the figures are simplified, but never flattened into symbols alone. Its warmth comes from color. Its force comes from design. And, its mystery comes from how much feeling is carried in the charged space between two faces while Nancarrow preserves individuality through tilt, gaze, and expression. The result is a painting about women with dignity and gravity … like they really are the true main characters of their own world.

“Two Women” by Annette Nancarrow (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1940s - Taubman Museum of Art (Roanoke, Virginia) #WomenInArt #AnnetteNancarrow #Nancarrow #TaubmanMuseumOfArt #TaubmanMuseum #WomanArtist #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist #art #artText #arte #BlueskyArt #1940sArt #WomensArt #WomenArtists

Painted in 1940, when Texas was being remade by oil wealth, roadside commerce, and Depression-era dislocation. American artist Jerry Bywaters, then in his mid-thirties, had already become a central figure in Texas regionalism. Rather than romanticizing the state, he shows its contradictions: opportunity beside exploitation, faith beside commerce, plus heat and smoke beside cosmetics and poise. The sitters’ identities are not known, but their anonymous presence becomes part of the painting’s power. They stand for the human cost and human nerve required to move through a world where modern industry promises escape even as it scorches the land around them. Two women stand at the edge of a West Texas road with a tense, almost theatrical presence. One wears a fitted black dress, black heels, a necklace, and a feathered black hat over blond hair. Her posture is upright and self-possessed, as she looks into the distance. Beside her, a second woman wears a white blouse, yellow skirt, red belt, and tall western boots as she holds a white hat. A suitcase and round hatbox rest near their feet. Their cheeks and lips are brightly painted, their legs elongated, and their clothing sharply outlined. Behind them stretch signs, poles, a garage, scattered tires, roadside advertisements, and oil fires that stain the sky with smoke. The women are often read as sex workers waiting for a ride into the oil fields, yet the picture resists easy judgment. Bywaters called the image a “sympathetic caricature,” and their stylization does not flatten them into mockery, but heightens their force, danger, glamour, fatigue, and will. The road curves forward past Joe’s Garage, a Jax beer sign, “Hattie’s Hut,” and the unsettling contrast between a “666” sign and nearly hidden “Jesus Saves” tag to set up a visual argument about boomtown desire, moral anxiety, and survival in a landscape transformed by the oil industry. The women are not passive victims. They appear monumental, alert, and determined.

“Oil Field Girls” by Jerry Bywaters (American) - Oil on board / 1940 - Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, Texas) #WomenInArt #JerryBywaters #Bywaters #BlantonMuseum #TexasArt #AmericanArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #UTA #BlantonMuseumOfArt #AmericanArtist #1940sArt #OilFields #arte #AmericanRegionalism

Josef Presser's "The Port" (1943) captures the essence of bustling maritime life during the early 1940s. This artwork offers a vivid portrayal of the dynamic interactions and vibrant activities at a harbor, reflecting the era's economic and social currents. #ArtHistory #1940sArt

A young woman fills the frame, shown close and front-facing, her gaze from large almond eyes averted while her right hand tightly clamps a small kitten at the neck with white-knuckled tension. Edges are sharply drawn while surfaces appear as cool, enamel-like paint laid with small, deliberate strokes. The kitten stares directly outward with large green almond eyes as the young light-skinned woman turns away, creating a dissonance between contact and detachment. A flat background and meticulous contours heighten the sense of stillness, restraint, and psychological pressure. Painted in 1947, the model is Kathleen “Kitty” Garman, Freud’s muse and soon-to-be first wife (married in 1948). Daughter of sculptor Jacob Epstein and Kathleen Garman, Kitty was an art student and frequent sitter, appearing in a sequence of Freud’s early portraits. Here the kitten operates as a visual pun on her nickname while also sharpening the picture’s unease: the affectionate symbol is held with a grip that reads as control rather than comfort. This painting belongs to Freud’s early, hyper-precise manner with clean outlines, cool tonality, plus steady, linear brushwork and before the looser impasto of his later decades. At this moment, Freud was in his mid-twenties, gaining recognition in postwar London. The painting’s taut pose and withheld glance suggest the artist’s fascination with inner states over mere likeness, capturing a relationship on the cusp of marriage and a career poised to shift in scale and ambition.

"Girl with a Kitten" by Lucian Freud (German-born British) - Oil on canvas / 1947 - Tate (London, UK) #WomenInArt #LucianFreud #Freud #KittyGarman #Tate #TateMuseum #BritishArt #PostwarArt #Portraiture #1940sArt #OilOnCanvas #BlueskyArt #painting #PortraitofaGirl #arte #art #ArtText #cats #Symbolism

Painted in 1941, this work belongs to the years just after New Zealand artist Adele Younghusband’s intensive period in Australia (1937–40), where she studied with modernist teacher George Bell in Melbourne and experimented increasingly with abstraction and surreal inflection. Back in Aotearoa during World War II, she continued to make portraits and allegorical pictures alongside landscapes and scenes of daily life. Here, modernist economy and clarity meet a tender, observational realism: simplified shapes, clean contours, and a calm, planar background frame the human-animal bond as subject, not accessory. A young woman in a fitted black dress sits on a bench inside a window bay, her head gently tilted and her gaze angled to meet ours with a knowing half-smile. A structured black hat crowns her hair while gold earrings and a round brooch at her chest catch the light. Her tan skin is softly modeled as curves of her shoulder, hip, and knee appear through the dark fabric without being sexualized. At her side, a small black cat with a white bib perches by an open book, amber eyes alert as if it is reading. A red sphere rests by her other hip as her hands steady herself. Beyond the window, an invented streetscape recedes with rows of clipped trees to one side and gabled houses to the other so its creamy taupes and simplified forms create a calm, stage-like world for sitter and cat. The absence of social markers opens room for identification while the cat’s presence suggests care, autonomy, and companionship which are qualities often coded as feminine yet universally resonant. The painting also reflects Younghusband’s lifelong attention to community arts: a founder and organizer of regional art societies in Whangārei and Waikato, she helped knit together networks that sustained artists through the 1930s and 1940s. In this portrait of stillness and touch, she offers wartime intimacy without sentimentality, balancing modern form with humane presence.

"Young Woman and a Cat" by Adele Younghusband (New Zealand) – Oil on board / 1941 – Whangārei Art Museum Collection (New Zealand) #WomenInArt #AdeleYounghusband #Younghusband #NewZealandArt #AotearoaArt #WhangāreiArtMuseum #Modernism #WomenArtists #1940sArt #art #artText #artwork #cats #WomanArtist

By the late 1930s and early 1940s, Welsh artist Augustus Edwin John was Britain’s most famous portraitist, yet he remained drawn to people at society’s margins like Romani families, working-class models, and visitors from the British empire. In London and Wales, he encountered Black Caribbean sitters whose presence in wartime Britain was growing through service, study, and migration. This painting records one such meeting. A young woman of West Indian heritage is shown half-length, turned slightly to her right but raising her chin and gaze above ours, so we see her as alert, intelligent, and self-possessed. Her skin is a warm copper-brown, modeled with broad, broken strokes that catch light across her forehead, nose, and cheekbones. Dark, springy curls spread around her shoulders, painted in looping, quick marks over a grey-ochre ground. Her eyes are dark and reflective as strong brows give the face structure. She wears a simple, earth-toned garment with a pale strap on the left, suggestive of everyday clothing rather than costume. The background is roughly scumbled, without setting, pushing our attention to the woman’s face and the agency of her look. John avoids caricature: the palette is restrained, the pose dignified, and the looseness of the paint lets the sitter stay individual rather than “type.” Like his related works “The Two Jamaican Girls” (1937) and other portraits of women of color, it both reflects the imperial world that brought artist and sitter together and quietly insists on her beauty, intellect, and modernity within it. Augustus John trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he was hailed as the most brilliant student of his generation, admired for the freedom of his line and his bohemian independence. After early success, he became sought after for portraits of writers, aristocrats, and political figures, but he repeatedly turned away from elite commissions to paint people he found visually and culturally compelling.

“A West Indian Girl” by Augustus Edwin John (Welsh) – Oil on canvas / c. 1940 – National Museum Wales (Cardiff) #WomenInArt #AugustusJohn #CaribbeanPortraiture #BlackPortraiture #art #artText #artwork #WelshArtist #AugustusEdwinJohn #arte #BlueskyArt #1940sArt #PortraitofaWoman #NationalMuseumWales

Surreal painting of a couple dozen white tubular stalks, like those of an anemone, with minimalist human faces. The background is like a night sky with full moon

Casi plantas (Almost Plants)
Xul Solar, Argentina, 1948

"Let us admit, in any case, that among us now – if mostly still hidden – are many or all of the seeds of our future art, and not in museums overseas .... Because the wars of independence for our America […]

[Original post on hear-me.social]

James Gunn was a popular and prolific portraitist. He painted many notable people – political and military figures, dignitaries, judges, and academics – none were more beautifully rendered than his portraits of his lovely, stylish wife, Pauline. This is my favorite portrait of Pauline.

Herbert James Gunn (British/Scottish, 1893 - 1964) • Pauline Waiting • 1939 (see ALT text) #art #ArtHistory #painting #portrait #1940sArt #BritishArt #20thCenturyArt #realism #HerbertJamesGunn #WomenInArtworks #ArtAppreciation #Art&Beauty #BlueSkyArtLovers #LoveforArt #artist #oilpainting

Francis Picabia (French, 1879 - 1953) • Portrait of Yvette • 1943 • Private collection, Paris
#francispicabia #portrait #20thCenturyEuropeanArt #artistry #fineart #art #painting #frenchartist #oilpainting #classicalart #1940sArt