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Temperamental!: Prints in the Collection of Bryn Mawr College

Gender

Prints, such as the enlarged reproduction of a woodcut from the Swiss physician and alchemist Leonhard Thurneysser’s book Quinta Essentia (1574) seen here, could function as teaching tools, diagraming the four temperaments as gendered attributes of bodies. The temperaments developed masculine and feminine associations that reinforced the idea that melancholic and phlegmatic temperaments were more appropriate for women, and the choleric and sanguine temperaments were better suited to men.

Read in a contemporary light, this illustration also suggests that the potential for all temperaments (and genders) resides within a single body. Prints in this section nuance the four humors as not strictly masculine or feminine. Like gender, the temperaments are fluid. These prints further suggest that issues of labor, class, race, and sexuality are inherently tied to gender performativity and thus temperamental interpretation.

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Jacques Philippe Le Bas (French, 1707-1873), after Carel van Falens (Flemish, 1683-1733); Departure for the Hunt (1742). Etching & engraving; VP.259. Gift of Abbey A. K. Turner Van Pelt Grimscom, Class of 1952, Katherine Drexel Van Pelt Beaver, & Charles B. P. Van Pelt. Both the lustful, sanguine temperament and the hunt, the privileged act of hunting for sport, are traditionally aligned with masculinity. In Departure for the Hunt, however, aristocratic women are at the forefront of this idealizing scene, atop their horses alongside the men they seem prepared to accompany into the hunt.
Richard Linder (German-American, 1901-1978), Der Rosencavalier (The Knight of the Rose) (1977), Color lithograph, edition 193/250, signed in pencil, 2012.27.413.
Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528), The Men's Bath House (late 16th century?) restrike of 1496-1497 original block. Woodcut on laid paper; monogram in plate; Gift of Howard L. Gray, Professor of History, 1915-1940; 1946.26
Shirley Goldfarb (American, 1925-1980), Rouge et Jaune (Red and Yellow) (1961), Lithograph, A. P., signed in pencil, Gift of Gregory Mausrovsky to the William and Uytendale Scott Memorial Study Collection of Works by Women Artists, 2006.1.104. In the nearby print Best Friends, Nancy Spero illustrates a sexual scene liberated from a gender binary. Genitals are hidden, suggesting sex identification belongs to the subjects rather than the viewer. Moving away from figural representation, Goldfarb’s brief gestural lines of red and yellow spill over one other, blurring occasionally into orange. Like the subversion of a traditional wo/man binary in Best Friends, there is a blending of colors in Rouge et Jaune, bringing something neither red, nor yellow, but in-between, to the surface.
Albert Alexander Paul Rouffio (French, 1855-1911), Hérodias (c. 1878), after 1875 painting. Etching; signed in plate; Gift of Abby A. K. Turner Van Pelt Grimscom, Class of 1952, Katherine Drexel Van Pelt Beaver, and Charles B. P. Van Pelt; VP.346 While Symbolist artists of this period tend to focus on Salomé’s role in the death of John the Baptist, it was her mother Hérodias who ordered his beheading after he criticized her marriage to Herod. These artists, including Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, and Aubrey Beardsley, prefer to romanticize the dangerous but feminine allure of Salomé’s dance, rather than her mother’s more masculine, murderous rage as characteristic of the femme fatale. Rouffio, however, like Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) in his novella Hérodias (1877), shifts attention from the youthful daughter to Hérodias herself. His Hérodias reclines seductively, clutching her marital pillow and stroking the hair of the beheaded victim—an unnervingly calm, yet vengeful choleric. He discovers room for Hérodias to retain her femininity and depicts her as the femme fatale of this story.
Jost Amman (German, 1539-1591), Adam and Eve in Paradise (1580). Woodcut; monogram in block; New Hollstein 168.5; Gift of Howard L. Gray, Professor of History, 1915-1940; 1946.27.
Luigi Schiavonetti (Italian, 1765-1810), after Henry Tresham (Irish, c. 1756-1814); Adam and Eve (1773-1795). Stipple engraving; Gift of Abby A. K. Turner Van Pelt Grimscom, Class of 1952, Katherine Drexel Van Pelt Beaver, and Charles B. Van Pelt; VP.473.
Juanita McNeely (American, b. 1936), The Gift (1969-1970). Aquatint, signed in pencil below, Gift of Bill Scott to The William and Uytendale Scott Memorial Study Collection of Works by Women Artists, 2006.1.202. The representation of a sanguine temperament coincides with the male gaze in many lustful, even violent depictions of nude women. The Gift offers a subversion of this, but a complicated one. In it, a nude, lanky woman, perhaps a stand-in for the artist, is splayed across the center of the page; the figure looks uncomfortable, even trapped in an intolerable situation. A black subject turns away from her, even as his physical presence still seems to overpower her in ways that reinforce racialized stereotypes. If intended for a male viewer, this image becomes sanguine when it allows him to fantasize his rescue of the “damsel in distress.” But perhaps this shadowy figure is an abstraction of the terminal cancer diagnosis the artist received after graduating high school—a traumatic experience that informs her practice. Since then, she uses her art to explore “things that perhaps most people even feel uncomfortable about looking at, much less talking about.”
Nancy Spero (American, 1962-2009), Best Friends (2001). Handprinting on handmade paper, signed in pencil, Purchased with Delphine Fitz-Darby Fund, 2002.16.2.
Federico Castellón (Spanish-American, 1914-1971), Adam and Even (1941). Etching; trial proof of 1st state; signed in pencil below; Gift of Jacqueline Koldin Levine, Class of 1946, and Howard H. Levine; 2012.27.149.
Dürer_Walker
Goldfarb
Le Bas_Rouffio
McNeely
George A. Walker (Canadian, b. 1960), Portrait of Neil Gaiman with Candle (1999). Wood engraving on homemade paper, edition 23/46, signed in pencil, on loan from Mitchell Cohn (HC, Class of 1980).