Objectives:

Students will

• look at portraits of women throughout the Memorial Art Gallery.
• search for signs and symbols that act as visual clues in fashioning identity.
• analytically approach portraits/paintings as a form of primary source document.
• research the roles of women in the American Revolution.

Lesson times:

If you attend the About Face exhibit at the Memorial Art Gallery, this lesson consists of suggested visit and post-visit activities.

Vocabulary:

double portrait - a work of art that represents two specific people.

gender - the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.

identity - the characteristics and qualities of a person, considered collectively and regarded as essential to that person's self-awareness.

symbol - something that stands for, represents, or suggests another thing.

Whig - another name for a Patriot.

Tory - the derogatory name Patriots (Whigs) called Loyalists.

Prior Knowledge:

Students should have begun study of colonial America, with some basic background in pre-Revolutionary Boston. Students should have been introduced to the portraiture of John Singleton Copley by the pre-visit materials on Nathaniel Hurd. Students should have a basic understanding of the concepts of signs, symbols, gender, and identity.

Image #3

John Singleton Copley
American, 1737-1815
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin (Sarah Morris), 1773
Oil on ticking, 60 ½ x 48"

Philadelphia Museum

Image #4

Kees van Dongen
Dutch, 1877-1968
Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1903
Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 27 ¾"

Memorial Art Gallery
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Irving S. Norry, 66.27

Image #5

Ralph Earl
American, 1751-1801
Mary Smith Booth, 1790
Oil on canvas, 38 x 31"

Memorial Art Gallery
Marion Stratton Gould Fund, 57.13

Image #6

Jefferson Gauntt
American
Josephine Dixon

Memorial Art Gallery
Gift of Mrs. George Barlow Penny, 42.45

Image #7

Jacob Jordaens
Flemish, ca. 1640
Portrait of Elizabeth Jordaens

Memorial Art Gallery
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Fred W. Gelb, 74.102

Image #8

M.M. Manchester
American, active ca. 1840s
Judge and Mrs. Arthur Yates, 1840
Oil on canvas, 36 x 58 ¾"

Memorial Art Gallery
Gallery Purchase, 41.30

Image #9

Ammi Phillips
American, 1788-1865
Old Woman with a Bible, ca. 1834
Oil on linen, 33 ½ x 28"

Memorial Art Gallery
Beatrice M. Padelford Trust, 84.22

Lesson:

1. Provide students with a copy of the Women in portraiture worksheet to be completed during their trip to the Gallery.
2. This sheet asks students to find four portraits of women (both alone and in groups) and address the questions on the worksheet in response to the portraits they choose. Make sure the students focus on portraits of women, and not just images of women. Students can identify portraits as those that have as their titles, "Portrait of..", or a woman's proper name. This worksheet asks:

• What is going on in this portrait? What makes you say that?
• What is she holding?
• What is she wearing?
• What is the setting?
• What else do you notice about the woman in this portrait? Is she making any gestures?

3. When they get back to the classroom, have students pair up so they can compare their results and begin looking for any similarities or differences in their findings. Give them five to ten minutes to brainstorm.
4. Discuss the gallery experience with the entire class.

• Did they find portraits of women?
• What were they like?
• Were they all different, or the same?
• What was each woman holding?
• What message did you get from each portrait? Why?

  Allow the students to be creative in their guesses as to what the portraits mean.

5. After the students have offered up their interpretations of the different attributes they saw at the Gallery, introduce them to some of the attributes commonly used in portraits of women. Slides 4-9 are portraits of women that are in the Memorial Art Gallery collection. After the gallery visit, these images should be familiar to the students. You can use these images to illustrate the way different attributes were used in portraits.

Some traditional portraiture attributes and their general symbolic interpretations:

6. After you share these portraits and interpretations with the students, give them time to reflect on how they represent women. Then engage them in a personal response to those attributes:

• Do these symbols make sense to the students?
• What do these symbols tell us about the way gender roles have been understood/expressed in different cultures throughout history?
• Do they help viewer's understand something about the sitter that they didn't understand before?
• Is there anything that these commonly used attributes cannot express about an individual woman's personality, interests, life experiences, and aspirations?

7. Look at image #3 of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin (Sarah Morris) by John Singleton Copley.
8. Based on their experiences observing portraits of women at the Memorial Art Gallery, ask the students to examine this double portrait. You could even compare this Copley portrait with the MAG's other portraits of women (images 4-9).
9. Begin asking the students questions about the Mifflin portrait:

• What is going on here?
• What makes you say that?
• How is this portrait different than what you have seen before?
• How is it similar to what you have seen before? · What do their actions/gestures mean?
• How can we find out more about this portrait?

10. If it is not brought up during discussion of the previous questions, raise the issue of the cultural context of the Mifflin portrait. References to the American Revolution may help them move towards understanding the political significance of this portrait. A loom is not a familiar item to most children in the 21st century. Focus their attention on the loom.

• What is she doing? What is the object she is using?
• Is it a tool, a game, a weapon, a machine? Describe it.
• Does it look like anything the students have ever seen before?
• How does it compare to the other attributes they discussed?

  Once the loom is identified, see if the students can relate that activity to the political actions taken by the colonials against Britain in the years leading up to the American Revolution.

• If the colonials protested Britain's taxes by boycotting British manufactured goods, then where did they get their clothes?
• Why would Sarah Morris Mifflin have wanted to show herself weaving in her portrait? What does that say about her as a colonial, as a woman?

Follow-up:

Discussion of this painting is a good lead into a more in depth discussion of women's roles in the American Revolution.

Have your students do research on the role of women in the American Revolution. In what other ways besides spinning, did women participate in the patriotic cause? How do you think women who were helping in the fight towards American independence felt about their own inability to vote and hold the same rights as their husbands?

Think about it:

Weaving and spinning took an enormous amount of time. How did the political decision to boycott English products affect the lives of women in colonial America?

Suggested Websites:

• http://www.earlyamerica.com/ "Archiving Early America"
  *This site includes newspapers, maps, writings, lives of Early Americans, notable women of Early America, and how to read a 200 year old document.
• http://americanhistory.si.edu/hohr/springer/index.htm "You be the Historian"
  *Looks at primary source documents (both texts and objects), to try to figure out what a late 18th century colonial family was like. Available for printing is 'Questions for Future Historians' worksheet for further analysis and discussion. 'In Conclusion' section has historians giving their opinions on the family based on their study of the primary source documents.

Evaluation:

Students can be assessed on their ability to observe and record the details of portraits of women and their ability to compare their results with another student and synthesize their findings to gain greater understanding of the traditional ways of depicting women in portraiture. Students should also be evaluated on their participation in applying their knowledge about the American Revolution to an unknown portrait, and their research into the roles of women in the Revolution.

Summary:

By recognizing and noting the details of portraits of women from the Memorial Art Gallery collection, students will develop their looking skills. The post-visit collaborative work will afford the students an opportunity to categorize and compare the signs and symbols that serve as visual clues in fashioning an identity. By placing a portrait in the context of the American Revolution, students will have a chance to apply their analytical looking skills to identify the portrait's imagery. Students will also conduct historical research on the roles of women in the American Revolution.