Vrouw voor spiegel steekt haar op 1895

Ferdinand Luigini made this print, "Vrouw voor spiegel steekt haar op", using crayon and lithography. The print depicts a woman in front of a mirror, fixing her hair. Luigini's print participates in a wider visual culture of domestic scenes. He captures an intimate moment of a woman at her toilette. In nineteenth-century Europe, such a scene would have been loaded with implications of class and gender. Upper-class women, who were afforded the leisure to devote time to their appearance, were often depicted in art. Images of women at their toilette can be found across French art institutions. Researching exhibition records and salon catalogs can tell us more about the popularity and cultural significance of such imagery during the period. By engaging with the history of its making and exhibition, we come closer to understanding the print’s cultural meaning.