Exhibition Review: Portraying Pregnancy: From Holbein to Social Media
[Editor’s Note: Like so many exhibitions this year, Portraying Pregnancy: From Holbein to Social Media at London’s Foundling Museum was forced to close early when the pandemic made in-person attendance impossible. Before its closure in April 2020, contributor Eanna Morrison Barrs was able to visit the museum; reviewer Marley Healy was, like the rest of us, only able to access the show via its catalog. We’ve included both their perspectives in this issue, as the show and its book are so relevant to this special issue and so important to widening the lens on how we view female-identified bodies in art.]
© Foundling Museum / Photograph: Peter Mallet
The Foundling Museum, London, United Kingdom (January 24 – April 26, 2020)
Pregnant women have been considerably underrepresented in the history of art. The Foundling Museum’s most recent exhibition, Portraying Pregnancy: From Holbein to Social Media, aimed to shed light on this issue by identifying and exploring portraits of pregnant women spanning over 500 years. As the title of the exhibition suggests, the earliest portrait featured is Hans Holbein the Younger’s drawing of Cicely Heron from c. 1526-7. The artist depicts Cicely as visibly pregnant, rendering a loosened bodice that has been altered to accommodate her changing body. This early representation of a pregnant woman stands in stark contrast to many other portraits in the exhibition in which any traces of the sitter’s pregnancy have been removed.
Many of the works displayed in the exhibition are evidence of the shifting attitudes toward portraying pregnancy from the 16th century to today. The inclusion of works such as van Dyck’s portrait of Lady Verney shows that in the 17th century pregnancy was conveyed through symbolic gestures, as women’s clothing was so voluminous it was impossible to detect whether the sitter was pregnant or not. In the 18th century, artists erased any indication of a woman’s pregnancy, for it was believed to be an “indelicate” condition. As such, the exhibition is just as much about the portrayal of pregnancy as it is about the taboo of pregnancy and the resulting resistance to represent women this way up until the late 20th century.
Marc Quinn, Alison Lapper (8 Months), 2000, marble and plinth, 83.5h x 40.5w x 65d cm
© The Foundling Museum / Photo: Rachel Cherry
The exhibition notes that in 1958 it was still unacceptable for a baby bump to be shown in portraits. While artists could effortlessly hide a sitter’s pregnancy when working with paint, photography posed a greater challenge. Cecil Beaton’s photograph of the actress Leslie Caron highlights how clothing has played a role in concealing pregnancy in photographs. Caron was seven months pregnant at the time her portrait was taken, but this was masked by the kimono she wears.
Although clothing can conceal the female form, it is also material evidence of the physical changes that occur during pregnancy that cannot so easily be edited out. This is exemplified in the exhibition by George Dawe’s portrait of Princess Charlotte of Wales, which is displayed alongside the dress that she wore for the sitting while she was pregnant. The painting makes no indication to the viewer that Charlotte was pregnant at the time, yet the size of the loose-fitting Russian-style dress suggests that it was suited to her pregnancy. In a similar vein, the exhibition includes pregnancy stays with a matching stomacher from the 17th century that were purposefully designed to adjust to an expanding maternal body. Garments worn during pregnancy are uncommon in museums and exhibitions, yet their inclusion is significant to revealing the lived experience of pregnancy that might not otherwise be represented.
The exhibition’s curator identifies a watershed moment for the representation of pregnant women when Demi Moore appeared naked and heavily pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair in August, 1991. The photograph by Annie Leibovitz was so controversial at the time that the issue was banned by many retailers. The image was a strong declaration of Moore’s pregnancy, which challenged a tradition of portraits that have concealed or removed pregnancy from view. The exhibition asserts that this image marked a cultural shift in the visibility and acceptance of pregnant bodies. Almost 30 years later, Leibovitz’s photo of Serena Williams for Vanity Fair’s August, 2017 issue was met with little criticism, and Awol Erizku’s pregnancy portrait of Beyoncé Knowles became the most liked post on Instagram that year. These photographs that echo the image of Demi Moore from the 1990s illustrate that portraying pregnancy has become normalized in mainstream media today.
Indeed, portraits of pregnant women have become more common in visual culture in recent years, and the exhibition illustrates how celebrity culture has played an important role in breaking the taboo of pregnancy. However, images of pregnant women with disabilities are still underrepresented in public spaces. The exhibition includes Marc Quinn’s sculpture of Alison Lapper, an artist who was born with the condition phocomelia. Quinn’s Alison Lapper (8 Months) is a smaller version of the 3.5-meter sculpture that was placed on the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square in London. When the sculpture was installed in 2005, it sparked controversy around the portrayal of a woman’s body once again. The juxtaposition of this sculpture with the images of celebrities in the exhibition provokes the viewer to question whether portrayals of pregnancy have truly been accepted in all their variations.
Portraying Pregnancy is the first major exhibition to explore representations of the pregnant female body through portraits from the past 500 years. It is an important step toward rethinking the canonical structure of the representation of women in art and museums. Looking at portraits of women through the lens of pregnancy offers a new interpretation of how the history of art reflects and constructs the changing cultural attitudes towards women and their bodies. The exhibition serves as an important reminder of the power of art to challenge norms and the need to represent those who have been underrepresented.
