WOMEN  - the Artist's object of desire

Writings about women 

collected  by  Analynn Riley

These  writings and paintings are not chosen because they are personal favorites, but rather because they cause me, a woman, to think about the roles I play out, the  past I remember and the future I set in motion today.  May women become all that they were created to be!  

- A. Riley/04

You may wish to have a cup of tea as this site could take time to load in.

Quick Links to paintings: 

1.   Carl Bloch,  Two Women       

 2.  David De Note, Arranging the Flowers

3.  Delphin Enjortas,  Young Woman Reading by a Window        

4.  Pierre Auguste Cot,  Pause for Thought

5.  Oleg, Luna         6.  Isaac Maimon, Quet Memories         

7.  da Vinci,  Mona Lisa        8.  Portrait of a Lady

9.  Henri Matisse, Romanian Blouse    10.  Gakonga,  Dignified Women        

11.  Gauguin, Woman with Mango        12.  Haukaas, Women with Umbrellas        

13.  Merryl Jaye, Lady in White        14.  Martin, Vase Maker

15.  Hiroshige, Women in the Snow at Fujisawa        

16.  Moise Kisling, The Spanish Woman        

17.  Shashin, Two Women        18.  John Parrish, Cleopatra        

19.  Louis August Brun, Marie Antoinette        

20.  Joos van Cleve, Portrait of Eleanor Queen of France      

21.  Lillian Shao, Chanteuse        22.  John William Godward, Song Without Words        

23.  Achmes, Nefertiti           24.  Degas,  Girl At Ironing Board     

25.  Mary Cassatt, Women Admiring a Child        26.  Picasso        

27.  Renoir, On The Terrace OR Two Sisters      

28.  Bronzino, Eleanore and Son  

        29.  Monet, Cape line Rouge        30.  Degas, Lady with Theatre Glasses

31.  Degas, Woman in Bath        32.  Degas,  Ballerina        

33.  Tito Aqujari, Ladies Volley        34.  Da Vinci, Woman's Head Study

        35.  Paul Gauguin, Women Dancing, 1888        

36. Amadeo Modigliani, Jeanne Hebuterne         37.  Picasso, Women in Mirror

38.   Henri G. Regnault, Salome         39.  William Gottlieb, Ella Fitzgerald

40.  Degas, Absinth        41.   Women at War - Forces Services

42.  Lauren McTaggart, Blossom

43.  Nicholas Maes, Old Woman Praying 

The sort of woman, who, if accidentally locked in alone in the National Gallery, would start rearranging the pictures.

- Anonymous                             

Women never have young minds.  They are born three thousand years old.    

- Shelagh Delaney  [1939 - ] British Dramatist

If you educate a man you educate a person, but if you educate a woman you educate a family.   

- Ruby Manikan [20th Century] Church Leader

So, this gentleman said a girl with brains ought 

to do something else with them besides think. 

- Anita Loos [1891 - 1981]  US novelist. 

  Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Ch. 1

One is not born a woman, one becomes one.   

 - Simone de Beauvoir [1908 - 1986] French writer

Women are most fascinating between the ages of thirty-five and forty, after they have won a few races and know how to pace themselves.  Since few women ever pass forty, maximum fascination can continue indefinitely.

- Christian Dior [1905 - 1957]  French Couturier, Colliers Magazine June 10, 1955

        A man of straw is worth a woman of gold.   

- Proverb

Girls bored me -- they still do.  I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known.

- Walt Disney [1901 - 1966]  US film-maker  

{YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS  W. Wagner}

It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears  who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world.

- Dorothy Dix  [Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer  1861 - 1951]  

US journalist and writer 

The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress.   

- Charles Fourier [1772 - 1837]  French social reformer

I've got woman's ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it. 

- Margaret Thatcher [1925 - ]  British Prime Minister

From a timid, shy girl I had become a woman of resolute character, who could not longer be frightened by the struggle with troubles.

- Anna Dostoevsky [1846 - 1918] Russian diarist

Women have always been the guardians of wisdom and humanity which makes them natural, but usually secret, rulers.

 - Charlotte Wolff  [1904 -  1986] 

German Born British writer

Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.   

- Virginia Woolf  A Room of One's Own

When a woman behaves like a man, why doesn't she behave like a nice man? 

- Edith Evans [1888 - 1976]  British Actress

The great question ... which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is, 'What does a woman want?'  

 - Sigmund Freud  [1856 - 1939}  Austrian psychoanalyst

If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.  

- Aristotle Onassis  [1906 - 1975]  Greek Businessman

There are two kinds of women -- goddesses and doormats.  

- Pablo Picasso [1881 - 1973]  Spanish painter

I am a source of satisfaction to him, a nurse, a piece of furniture, a woman -- nothing more. 

 - Sophie Tolstoy  [1844 - 1919]  Russian writer

A woman's work is never done.       

  - Proverb

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.    - Proverb

Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations.   

- Elizabeth Stanton

The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.  

- John Stuart Mill [1806 - 1873]  British philosopher

Women run to extremes;

  - Jean de la Bruyere [1645 - 1696]  French Satirist

People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.  

- Rebecca West [1892 - 1983] British novelist

Analynn Riley