Using French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch works on paper, the exhibition Get to Work! The Work and Toil of Women looks behind the allegorical scenes to shed light on women’s work in the eighteenth century, including toiling in the fields, caring for children and performing manual labour.
The small thematic exhibition presents 25 French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch prints from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries preserved in the Kupferstichkabinett’s (Museum of Prints and Drawings) rich holdings. Works have been selected that show women in everyday activities, working as peasants, farmhands, teachers, maids, midwives and courtesans. One focus provide insight into the professions practised by women, including attending to births as midwives; another shows those areas of society where men and women went about their daily tasks side by side (as equals?). Beneath the allegorical layers of meaning, the viewer often discovers self-confident women going about their lives, yet the hardship of everyday travail is evident. To this day, so-called care work for children and the elderly receives little recognition; efforts are being made to reconcile work and family life and to achieve equality between women and men, including in financial matters, but these goals have yet to be fully attained.
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606–1669), The Beggars at the Front Door, 1648, © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz
At the same time, many of the depictions displayed were created by men – Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, and Rembrandt – to name just a few. Their (male) view of women characterised societal perspectives for centuries. Also represented, however, are two women artists, Louise Magdeleine Horthemels (1686–1767) and Marguerite Ponce (1745–1800).
The concise exhibition is the Kupferstichkabinett’s contribution to Women’s Month in March, as well as to Equal Pay Day (7 March) and Labour Day (1 May in Europe).
Curators
The exhibition is curated by Dagmar Korbacher, director, Mailena Mallach, curator of German art before 1800, and Christien Melzer, curator of Dutch and English art before 1800, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.