Ghislaine’s painting Pregnant Self Portrait July 1984 will be one of the exhibits in Portraying Pregnancy, the first major exhibition to explore representations of the pregnant female body through portraits from the past 500 years, Portraying Pregnancy, the exhibition which opens on January 24th 2020 includes works by Holbein, Reynolds, Augustus John and Awol Erizku’s iconic portrait of Beyonce.
Portraying Pregnancy: from Holbein to Social Media:
A major exhibition exploring representations of the pregnant female body through portraits over 500 years.
Until the twentieth century, many women spent most of their adult years pregnant. Despite this, pregnancies are seldom apparent in surviving portraits. This exhibition brings together images of women – mainly British – who were depicted at a time when they were pregnant (whether visibly so or not). Through paintings, prints, photographs, objects and clothing from the fifteenth century to the present day, discover the different ways in which pregnancy was, or was not, represented; how shifting social attitudes have impacted on depictions of pregnant women; how the possibility of death in childbirth brought additional tension to such representations; and how more recent images, which often reflect increased female agency and empowerment, still remain highly charged.
Portraying Pregnancy, is curated by Karen Hearn and brings together, for the first time, rare examples of these portraits providing an exceptional opportunity to situate contemporary issues of women’s identity, emotion, empowerment and autonomy in a 500-year context.
The exhibition includes Holbein’s beautiful portrait of Thomas More’s daughter, Cicely Heron, which was sketched from life; the maternity dress that Princess Charlotte’s wore for her portrait painted by George Dawe in 1817, the year that she died in childbirth, both on loan by Her Majesty The Queen from the Royal Collection; and the Foundling Museum’s celebrated painting by William Hogarth, The March of the Guards to Finchley, 1750, which features a heavily pregnant woman at its centre.
For further information visit http://foundlingmuseum.org.uk
