Comparing constructs of masculinity and femininity through depictions of humans and animals in 18th and 19th century art.
How to ‘visit’ ‘The Lion’s Share’
This exhibition has been constructed using a free online platform called ArtSteps, which allows you to move through the digital space as if you were in the room. Click the green icon above to access the exhibition, or click here.
This exhibition is available on desktop and on mobile, but you will get the best experience on a bigger screen. Please use the instructions below if you are struggling to navigate the platform.
The Lion’s Share is virtual exhibition, curated by a group of MA students in the School of Fine Art, History of Art, and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. It examines a variety of representations of human and animal relationships depicted in the Yale Centre for British Art‘s collection of 18th and 19th century art.
By exploring encoded gender roles through depictions of human and animal relationships, this exhibition highlights the engrained tendency of art to celebrate white male dominance, that is, colonial dominance, both over the natural world, and over women.
The Lion’s Share encourages its visitors to consider and interrogate gender roles and broader global power structures as they existed at the time these art works were produced. These discussions raise important contemporary questions about the enforcement of gender roles, and binary gender as a whole, today.
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Click here to read more about the design process for this exhibition.
Disclaimer: All artwork used in this exhibition is owned by the Yale Center for British Art and available through the Public Domain.
Images used: (Left to right) Print made by Henry Hoppner Meyer, ca. 1782–1847, British, Lady Hamilton as Nature, between 1800 and 1820, Mezzotint, colored, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection; Francis Wheatley, 1747–1801, British, Portrait of a Sportsman with His Son, 1779, Oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection; Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, 1802–1873, British, Portrait of Mr. Van Amburgh, As He Appeared with His Animals at the London Theatres, Summer 1846 to March 1847, Oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.