This ancient Greek water jar, called a hydria, is decorated with a scene of three women engaged in their daily activities. On the left, a woman holds an alabastron, a small bottle, in her left hand and passes a similar bottle to the woman at the far right. In the center a third woman bends over a wicker wool basket and either places in it or removes from it a bundle of wool. A charming element is the long-legged heron. Because the heron was often kept as a pet in ancient Athens, its presence indicates that this scene is set in a home.
Able to hold almost one gallon of water, this medium-sized vase is decorated with patterned bands on the lip and below the figures. The domestic scene occupies the center of the vase’s body and extends onto the shoulder. The artist uses line to describe faces, hair, and drapery, paying special attention to small details of hair styles – wispy curls and bangs – and of the fabric and folds of the dresses.
Greek vases like this one were thrown on the potter’s wheel. Handles were formed by hand and attached to the body of the vase. The clay contains significant amounts of iron, and so turned pink when it was fired. This style of painting is called “red-figure,” because the figures retain the color of the clay. A mixture that turns black during firing was painted on the remaining areas of the vase and for the details of clothing and facial expression.¹
Often Greek vases were a collaboration between a potter and a painter. Although some vases are signed, the names of most Greek vase painters are unknown. Over the decades, scholars grouped together vases with similar styles, and named the artist of each group. This vase is one of twenty-eight attributed to “the Painter of the Yale Oinochoe” after a wine pitcher in the collection of Yale University.
Attica, a region of Greece that includes Athens, was the leading ceramics center for the entire Mediterranean. The Greeks had many overseas colonies and extensive foreign trade. Thus Attic pottery has been found throughout southern Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor.
This vase provides a glimpse into the daily lives of women in ancient Greece. Although in the fifth century B.C. Athens was a major political, artistic, and intellectual center, “the treatment of women was more repressive and unenlightened than at almost any other time in the history of the West.”² Scenes of women became popular on vases during this period, perhaps because the vessels were used by women and the decoration thus reflected their lives.
Curators are always researching the museum’s collection. In the process, titles of works of art can change. This work used to be called Hydria: Women Sorting Wool and is now titled Hydria: Women Engaged in Domestic Activities.
1. Susan Matheson Burke and Jerome J. Pollitt, Greek Vases at Yale (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1975), pp. xv-xvii.
2. Peter J. Holliday, “Red-figure Hydria: A Theme in Greek Vase Painting,” Bulletin (Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Winter 1984), p. 3.
