The familiar

In European folklore the ‘familiar’ is a supernatural being that would act as a witch’s assistant, providing a young witch with protection as she came into her powers. They often took the form of an animal - most commonly small animals, such as cats, rats, birds, toads, and hares. The familiar could be compared to an alter-ego, not resembling the witch, and sometimes even invisible. The motif has found its way into fairy tales such as Puss-in-Boots and the Frog Prince. Women and animals are also often shown together in art, recalling the close ties of the witch and her familiar.

John Collier, Lilith, 1887

John Collier painted Lilith –the Jewish mythological figure and first wife of Adam in the bible -  in the style of the pre-Raphaelites. Over the years Lilith has gained a reputation as a femme fatale, having been cast out from Eden for her disobedience. Here she is shown entwined with a serpent, maybe representative of that which tempted eve to eat the forbidden fruit. The close embrace suggests that the serpent is also symbolic of a part of her nature, like a spirit animal. In Michelangelo’s ‘Fall of Man’, he took this one step further, representing Lilith as a snake/human hybrid.

Balthus, Nude with cat, 1949.

 A nude girl reclines over the back of a chair with her eyes closed, playing with a grinning cat. The relationship appears natural – both creatures are completely comfortable in the presence of the other. The interior is sparsely furnished, like a stage set for the interaction to play out.  Animals are often featured in art for symbolic meaning – relating to the inner qualities of the person beside whom they are depicted. In Balthus’s work, cats are contrasted with supposed feminine innocence, possibly standing in for the artist himself. As an animal they are associated with self-absorbtion and trickery. There is a traditional symbolism tied to many other animals as follows:

Dogs – fidelity   
Snakes – the fall of man
Toad/frogs – shape shifting, fertility
Crows- adultery/betrayal  
 Doves – innocence/peace 
Lions – power, wisdom, dignity 
Fish - death, destruction, cunning, sinfulness 
Foxes - Cunning, intelligence, feminine magic, wildness 

Sometimes the link between human and animal in art is so strong that the two merge to become one hybrid creature – as found in mythology. The woman-animal combination is often associated with the femme fatale, suggesting that animalistic features were seen as the antithesis of the appropriate behaviour expected of a woman, and a threat to order.

John William Waterhouse, A Mermaid, 1900.

John William Waterhouse was interested in the darker mythology of the mermaid – a siren who was said to lure sailors to their death through their singing. This mythology corresponds to the  symbolism of the fish. His mermaid’s tail ids painted with shimmering silver scales suggesting observation from a real fish. Having a tail in the place of human legs means mermaids would be incapable of living amongst men. Waterhouse’s imagining of the mermaid focuses more on this aspect of tragic loneliness and isolation. She sits on a rock gazing off into the distance whilst combing out her long hair.

Gustave Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1864.

Gustave Moreau’s Oedipus and the Sphinx features the hybrid creature from Greek mythology with the head of a nude woman, lion’s body and vulture’s wings.  She grips onto Oedipus with lion’s claws yet looks into his eyes with those of a woman. These features characterise the sphinx according to its merciless reputation. It may be seen as a form of femme fatale – combining the power and wisdom of a lion with the greed, corruption and ruthlessness of the vulture.       

Daily domesticity in figurative art

Life drawing sessions usually result in a beautiful drawing of a nude in an indeterminate space, but the setting can feel contrived - almost removed from life itself. The opportunity to sketch a model in the context of their daily life is, therefore, a rare and valuable one. 

Under the old Academy system, this would have been out of the question. Depiction of the nude was only acceptable within the most prestigious of genres, History Painting, traditionally under the guise of a mythological of allegorical figure to be on the safe side. However if you dared to descend the hierarchy of genres you would find ‘genre painting’. Developed in 17th century Dutch art, these are paintings depicting ordinary people going about their everyday lives – but strictly with their clothes on! 

Vermeer is one such artist who painted many domestic interior scenes. Almost all his paintings are set in two small rooms in his house in Delft, featuring the same furniture in different arrangements. Vermeer lends equal importance to setting and figure, resulting in a sense of context and narrative. ‘The Milkmaid’ portrays a kitchen-maid going about her daily work preparing food (in this case bread pudding!). Representing her modesty and hard work elevates this from a simple painting of ordinary life to an image of domestic virtue, one of the highest values in 17th-century Netherlands.

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, 1657.

As we follow artistic developments into the 20th century and beyond, the nude is released from the confines of the mythological and enters into the modern and not so moralising equivalent of genre scenes…

The Bathroom

Bonnard, In the bath, 1925.

With historical precedent in Titian, Michelangelo and Rembrandt, the subject of the bather was a seamless way to integrate the nude figure into a painting of domestic life. Bonnard is the master of domestic bathroom scenes. Depicting the bather allowed him to express a new unromanticised view of the human body.

The paintings depict his wife, Marthe. She spent many hours in the bath, believed to be a form of therapy for suspected tuberculosis, or the result of an obsessive neurosis. But Bonnard made the most of a situation which provided him with a regular model!

Bonnard’s bathrooms date from the time of the exciting introduction of the fitted bath, adding a geometric structure to his later compositions. His nudes are often semi-obscured by a towel or the bath itself, denying the viewer complete intimacy, as the figure dissolves into the blue bathwater.

The Bedroom

Lucian Freud, Man with leg up, 1992.

It is likely that the opportunistic sketchers among us will have drawn a sleeping friend or a stranger nodding off on a train once or twice, only to have them inconsiderately change position or wake up before we are done. Domestic Life drawing will offer us the luxury of drawing a model half in, half out of bed, delicious crumpled sheets and all. 

Whilst the draped nude is a delight to draw in itself, it is the surrounding features of the bedroom that give mood and character to the work. We need only look to Tracy Emin’s infamous ‘My Bed’ to see how many intimate details a person’s bed can reveal about their lifestyle. Working with paint in a similar vein is Lucian Freud, favouring dishevelled nudes over sleeing beauties. ‘Man with leg up’ shows his friend the performance artist Bowery, one leg up on the bed, the other folded underneath him as if he has just slipped off, bringing the sheets with him. He rests on the mound of sumptuous off-white drapery. Freud uses setting and pose to indicate vulnerability, whilst his muted colours and subtle shading evoke the peacefulness of the bedroom.

The living room

Balthus, The Room, 1952.

As we move into the living room, a more public part of the home, the nude figure becomes less commonplace. However, this has failed to discourage artists from painting it.

Balthus is known for his dream-like paintings featuring female figures in domestic interiors. In ‘The Room’, a girl lies sprawled on a couch, wearing only her socks. The awkward pose and starkly furnished interior are both characteristic of his work. A heavy curtain is drawn back by a second figure, showering her in daylight. The chiaroscuro (contrasting light and shadow) pulls the focus back to the figure and creates a sense of mystery as to what may lie in the shadows. 

In opposition to Freud’s restful bedroom scenes, the absurd placement of this nude in a domestic setting suggests there is a story behind the work, at which the viewer can only speculate. We are made to feel the voyeur of a private moment. 

The kitchen

In the 1950s, a group of artists earned themselves the glamorous title ‘The kitchen sink painters’. In their interpretation of genre painting for a new era, otherwise called social realism, they painted the most everyday subjects including -  you guessed it, the kitchen sink. (You can find more info about them via TATE here.)

The kitchen and the nude are two subjects that we may not instinctively put together. Whilst the idea of the naked chef might be playful and humorous, in recent feminist art, the kitchen and the female body have been brought together with a social/political message. For the most well-known example of this see ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’, a performance piece released in 1975 by Martha Rosler. She parodies television cooking demonstrations, fuelled by the frustration of oppressive women’s roles. 

In this performance Rosler takes on the role of an apron-clad housewife and parodies the television cooking demonstrations popularized by Julia Child in the 1960s. Standing in a kitchen, surrounded by refrigerator, table, and stove, she moves through the alphabet from A to Z, assigning a letter to the various tools found in this domestic space.

Linder is another feminist artist from the same period, who combined the female nude and the kitchen through collage. Untitled, 1976 shows the figure of a naked woman tied in string, emerging from a saucepan with a blender for a head, in an otherwise seemingly normal kitchen. The work touches upon associations between the female body and the traditionally female role of cook, a far cry from the celebration of domestic virtue in Vermeer’s ‘The Milkmaid’.

Linder, Untitled, 1976.

Whilst not all art requires an underlying message, such examples of the ways other artists have used the figure in a domestic setting can hopefully get us thinking about the myriad of opportunities we all have to sketch the figure - not only in the life drawing room, but as we go about our daily lives.