The Gilded Cage is an oil painting

Oil painting

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...

 by Evelyn De Morgan

Evelyn De Morgan

Evelyn De Morgan was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter.She was born Evelyn Pickering. Her parents were of upper middle class. Her father was Percival Pickering QC, the Recorder of Pontefract...

, her final work before her death in 1919. It is essentially an allegory for female

Female

Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova .- Defining characteristics :The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male...

 captivity.

In this painting, a woman looks out a window with her hand stretched out and up in a gesture of yearning. She is looking at a group of gypsy figures, dancing under the open sky. The principal figure among the gypsy group is a woman who dances while holding her baby close to her, thus suggesting an alternative vision of maternal duty.

Soaring free about the dancing group is a bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

, which contrasts sharply to the captive bird in the gilded cage that hangs beside the woman's older husband. The husband seems oblivious to his wife's state of mind.