WOMEN IN ART TALK 3: THE OLDER WOMAN

Sat 20 Mar 2027, 11am–12pm

This talk is in-person in the Headley Lecture Theatre and online via Zoom.

Tickets are £10. Booking is essential.

Please note tickets are coming soon.

With Juliet Heslewood, art historian

This is the third in our series of three talks about women in art and explores the subject of the older woman.

Women and girls are often portrayed in art with the first flush of youth enhancing their faces and bodies, as in representations of goddesses. In reality, women age, their flesh weakens and they confront their later lives.

Camille Pissarro's tender oil portrait of his wife, Julie, sewing beside a window. She bows her head in concentration

Julie Pissarro Sewing beside a Window, Camille Pissarro, c. 1877

Pissarro captured his wife in a quiet moment of concentration, sewing, in this tender, naturalistic portrait. Dürer recorded his elderly mother's appearance in order to have a memento of her. Velasquez was fascinated with the contrast between age and youth. The affection of grandmothers towards their grandchildren is reflected in very different styles by the artists Edouard Vuillard and Otto Dix.

This talk explores these different representations which capture a limitless range of expression and thought in women, once their youth has faded.

Other Women in art talks