John Singleton Copley: Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin

Comment

Comment by David Madden on January 14, 2011 at 9:35am

This picture very clearly shows the female as the dominant focus in this relationship. Not only are the male and female at the same height in the picture, but the female has the land behind her. She is also closer to us and the male almost seems like all his focus is on her. However, I do notice they still portray the man as more educational since he holds a book in his hand.

Comment by Jonathan Micheal Bryk on January 14, 2011 at 9:28am

I think the picture show that the woman is clearly domininant to the male. The land is painted behind her and she is the most dominant figure in the picture. This tells me that she most likely had more wealth than him and he married into the money.

Comment by Bobby Mihov on January 12, 2011 at 10:38pm

This is quite an interesting painting that breaks the mold. Yes, the woman is in the front but the land and trees are also on her side which makes me think if the man is simply marrying into a rich family in which the lady owns the land and the husband is mostly mooching and has no right to own it.

Comment by Shazia Rangwala on January 12, 2011 at 10:22am

Even though i find this painting a little freaky.... it says a lot about the family and time period. it does look like the Sarah is in charge of running the house, family and seems to have a little authority over her husband.

Comment by Meghan Byrne on October 12, 2010 at 8:51pm

When this picture was showed in class, I thought " wow. That is really unusual in that time period." i never knew that there were couples who treated each other as their equal. This surprised me to no end. It did make me happy though that at least SOME men thought of women differently than most. It shows that woman were starting to get some power, even if it was just a little bit at that time.

Comment by megan bryk on September 28, 2010 at 9:03pm

I think this was an interesting picture because at this time period men were normally made the dominate gender in pictures. Here, the woman is dominate because she is in the front, has land behind her, and the man is looking at her and she is looking at us. Out of all the pictures we looked at in class, this is the only one where the woman has the power.

Comment by Shannon Elizabeth Segin on September 23, 2010 at 6:12pm

This is such an intriguing photo because of the fact that it is the reverse of what is usually depicted in early colonial art. It displays the land behind the woman, symbolizing power, and another key factor is that the man and woman are roughly the same level. This symbolizes equality, which was extremely rare to come about at this time. It is also important to note that the woman is looking at the audience, and the man is looking at her. It was usually vice-versa to show that the man was "above" the woman.

Comment by Justyna Chlopecka on January 10, 2010 at 5:32pm

One of the few paintings that show women with power .It's interesting to see the inverse of what we would usually see .

Comment by Sara Isaacs on October 25, 2009 at 12:55pm

This painting shows how women were beginning to have some equality to men. There is land behind the woman in this painting, which was very unusual for this time period. It showed a level of importance of the person.

Comment by Matt Benson on October 24, 2009 at 9:03pm

I think it is interesting in this painting how Mrs. Mifflin is the one with the land in her back round and how most women of this time did not own land or inherit it. I also like how detailed the artisit was in the painting.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page