Girl in the Window, 1941

Only a pane of glass separates the woman in Girl in the Window and the outside world, which is urban rather than rural or exotic. The buildings in the background indicate a working-class part of Montreal, thus revealing the poverty experienced by many black women in the 1930s and 1940s. This is not an explicitly erotic painting, but by making the choice to reveal the woman’s breasts, Heward presents her as vulnerable and accessible to the viewer’s gaze, and there is an implied power imbalance between the white artist and the black sitter.