Sheet of Sketches; Frieze of Dancing Women, Dancing Women at the Foot of an Obelisk, and Two Seated Female Figures in a Pendentive c. 1798

Hubert Robert, a prominent figure in 18th-century France, rendered this sheet of sketches in pen and brown ink with gray wash. Robert lived in a society where women's roles were often confined, yet here, they take center stage, dancing freely in a circle. The swirling figures might evoke the bacchanalia, ancient Roman festivals of ecstatic freedom, but there's also a distinctly Enlightenment sensibility at play. We might consider how Robert, as a male artist, viewed and portrayed women. Were these images a celebration, or did they reflect the male gaze of the era? The seated women appear contemplative, perhaps symbolic of the intellectual roles women could occupy. There is a tension between the desire for liberation and the constraints of societal expectations of the time. These women’s gestures of freedom seem almost like a form of silent protest. Robert invites us to reflect on the complex interplay between freedom and constraint, visibility and invisibility, for women of his era.