American artist Ilse Martha Bischoff titled the work "Mary," and contemporary records also preserve her longer original title, "Mary (Portrait of a Negress)" using language now recognized as harmful, but historically revealing of how Black women were categorized in U.S. visual culture. The painting somewhat counters that flattening with a touch of personhood via a name, a careful likeness, and a pause that lets Mary remain unknowable on her own terms. Mary is depicted as adult Black woman seated in a curved wooden chair, shown in three-quarter profile with her torso angled left and her face turned back toward us. Her deep brown skin is modeled with warm highlights along the cheekbone and brow, while the background dissolves into smoky gray-browns that brighten behind her head, as if a spotlight were drifting through mist. She wears a loose, slate-blue dress painted in broad, soft strokes that suggest weight and drape more than crisp seams. Across her forearm lies a luminous shawl of golden bronze with cool turquoise folds with a satin-like sheen catching the strong light. Her hands rest together at her lap, fingers gently interlaced for a quiet anchor in the pose. A dark blue hat frames her face, trimmed with pink, coral, and orange flowers, green leaves, and pale blue feathers. Small light earrings glint at each ear. Mary’s mouth curves into a restrained, knowing smile, and her eyes turn slightly downward rather than meeting ours, keeping a measure of privacy inside the portrait. The left edge deepens into shadow, and the chair’s pale rail arcs behind her shoulder, emphasizing how Mary occupies space with calm, self-possessed presence. In 1943, with European travel cut off by war, Bischoff worked between Manhattan and a Hartland, Vermont home she purchased in 1942, staying committed to representational portraiture. Here, light becomes both respect and restraint to honor Mary’s style and dignity while pointing to what history withholds about her life.

"Mary" by Ilse Martha Bischoff (American) - Oil on canvas / 1943 - Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire) #WomenInArt #HoodMuseumOfArt #HoodMuseum #IlseMarthaBischoff #Bischoff #BlackPortraiture #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaWoman #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists

In this self-portrait Fan Tchunpi (aka Fang Junbi or 方君璧) presents herself as a modern, cosmopolitan Chinese woman who has moved confidently between France, China, and later the United States. Trained at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts, she absorbed European oil-painting techniques while remaining committed to Chinese aesthetics, later becoming renowned for blending guohua brush-and-ink with Western composition. Here she uses a restrained palette and firm modeling to carve her figure out of space, yet leaves the background almost calligraphically blank, like untouched paper in an ink painting. She is a Chinese woman in her late thirties sitting turned slightly toward us on a low, floral-covered bench against a cool, nearly blank grey wall. She wears a sleek black qipao that falls in a long, dark sweep across the floor, its satin surface catching soft highlights. Her skin is a light warm tone with the bare forearms and hands emerging from the dark dress with gentle volume, one hand resting on the cushion, the other on her thigh, fingers relaxed but precise. Her short, wavy black hair frames a round face with dark almond-shaped eyes, faint dimples, and coral-red lips that suggest a small, knowing smile. A single green jade bangle circles her right wrist, the only bright accent against the black dress and pale ground. The simple stool, wooden base, and flat background keep our focus on her steady, self-possessed gaze. Painted in 1937, amid political upheaval in China, the work reads as an assertion of both personal and cultural resilience. The tailored qipao evokes Republican-era Shanghai modernity, while her jade bracelet and poised posture root her in long-standing Chinese visual traditions. Exhibited decades later in “Between Tradition and Modernity: The Art of Fan Tchunpi” at the Hood Museum, this portrait helps restore her place as a women who shaped 20th-century Chinese modernism and expanded ideas of who could speak for the nation with paint.

自画像 (Self-Portrait) by 方君璧 / Fan Tchunpi (Chinese) – Oil on canvas / 1937 – Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire) #WomenInArt #FanTchunpi #方君璧 #FangJunbi #HoodMuseumOfArt #selfportrait #artText #Art #BlueskyArt #WomensArt #HoodMuseum #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #ChineseArtist

Soundsuit, by Nick Cave. Viewed at Hood Museum of Art, 2024

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“Through a different lens,” our Sept 11 email blast! features “Becci Davis: Bloodstone + Home,” opening tonight at #JamestownArts; “Michel Kameni: Portraits of an Independent Africa” at #Smith#College Museum of Art & “Visual Kinship” at the #HoodMuseum at #Dartmouth: conta.cc/4nsKjzI #NewEnglandArt