This thesis is concerned with several aspects of the life and work of the Canadian painter Laura Muntz (1860--1930). It examines in particular Muntz's images of women and children both within the cultural themes and ideologies of the period and from the perspective of contemporary twentieth-century theories of gender. The introduction and literature review outline the broad issues surrounding the artist in her time and present a summary of her critical fortunes in Canadian art historical literature. Chapter one provides a discussion of Muntz's life and artistic production between 1860 and 1898, the year in which she returned to Toronto after a decade of study and work in Europe. The following two chapters are conceived as case studies of single paintings, observed in the context of various discourses that surround them. Chapter two analyses Muntz's Madonna and Child in terms of hereditarian theories, eugenics, maternal feminism and the Canadian social purity movement and considers the broader, psychological implications of gender, specifically in the fin-de-siecle associations of femininity and death. Chapter three examines the imagery in Muntz's Protection with reference to North American Symbolist painters and their relationship to the constructs of the feminine ideal. As a whole, the thesis elucidates the complex layers of meaning that Muntz's images of women and children contributed to the popular conceptions of femininity and motherhood current in her time.

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