Note that nothing much changed for decades - they were the only female members until after WW1 ended!!!
Johann Zoffany,
The Academicians of the Royal Academy, c1772
Royal Collection, London
Note the two women artists on the right wall
In April 1859 a petition signed by 38 women was widely circulated and debated, asking for admission. But the Royal Academy only accepted female students from 1861 on, and even then, only in small numbers. Laura Herford was the very first.
Even if a woman managed to be accepted by this prestigious school, she faced additional problems. Firstly women were excluded from nude life classes "since only an insignificant properation of the female students become professional artists, it has been thought unnecessary and undesirable that in the Ladies' Life School there should be any study of the undraped model". Undesirable perhaps, but unnecessary? Surely nude life classes were a basic requirement for any artist hoping to paint well. The Academy thought otherwise and didn't allow women into the life classes until the very end of the century (1893).
Secondly the requirements for women students to advance were less rigorous than those for men. For example, the Royal Academy examined a male student's drawings of a whole figure, while the female student was only required to submit a drawing of the model's head.
Thirdly women were not allowed to participate in the most important painting competitions.
Did having a young queen on the British throne inspire women artists and liberate their professional efforts? Probably not. Social mobility and intellectual freedom were encouraged in men, but barely tolerated in women, except for the queen. To become a successful artist required physical and mental independence, but married women would not have had the time or energy to move around the community, drawing and painting. And single women were not allowed to.
The Slade School of Art, which admitted women from the 1870s, was less rigid.
The book Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists spanned the 1840s-1910 era and concluded that there were only 20-30 or so women artists at the top level, including Rebecca Solomon (1832-86). But even that relatively small number of talented women artists was amazing. Pre-Raphaelitism was clearly a broader historical movement than art historians had thought. However the very thick glass ceiling facing women artists in Britain suggests why two of the artists Rebecca most indentified with lived and worked in France - Berthe Morisot (1841-95) and Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). All three women shared very similar career paths.
There is some interesting reading in:
Women in the Victorian Art World by Clarissa Campbell Orr, 1995.
And Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists by Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn, 1998.
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24 comments:
There is so many restrictions on every aspect of ladies in the old time
What gave Slade its insights do you think?
Mary certainly painted some beautiful flower arrangements. Angelica painted beautiful paintings as well.
Thanks for the history of these two women Hels.
Women have had to struggle in so many fields and the reasons put forward were not always very convincing.
roentare
that is so true... across so many countries and so many professions. But I had expected more supportive thinking amongst Britain's scholarly elite.
Deb
The Slade's founders wanted a school where fine art would be studied within a liberal arts university. In offering female students education on equal terms to men, the Slade set out to specifically change the cultural scene, even if it didn't work out perfectly.
Margaret
You are correct.
Mary Moser did paint wonderful floral arrangements, but I wonder if that was half the problem. Had she painted war scenes or religious moments, perhaps they would viewed her less as a woosy woman. Angelica Kauffman didn't have the fluffy floral problem - her works were filled with real people and she was a 'champion of a new ideal of masculinity'.
jabblog
I wonder if that situation ever totally changed, at least in supposedly non-sexist democracies? I am sure some of the artists, male and female, were only average but some of them, male and female, were amazing. To select them by gender rather than talent seems counterproductive, but who would have known?
Just a thought. But John Ruskin falls within the time period (1819 to 1900) of when women were accepted as painters in their own right. He seemed to have corresponded with female artists and as a famous writer and critic I wonder if he had any influence then. Women were also artists of course, mostly in the home. The patriarchal bias over the centuries has a lot to answer to!
Being female has always meant there would be a struggle when they wanted to do something others considered on males to be able to do, women are strong because of how many obstacles we have had to fight our way over and around.
Fascinating, Hels. I knew nothing of this - except, of course, the historic general prejudice and the fight for equality. It's to humanity's shame this has still yet to be won.
So, discrimination of women in art, goes back a long way!
It's interesting how far woman have come, and how long it takes them. And even today, although women artists are accepted, they still get under representation, probably for many reasons. Have a great end of your weekend.
thelma
although I am very ambivalent about John Ruskin, he truly did have some fine values that might have improved society in Britain eg he promoted women's and labourers education; co-started the Guild of St George; co-introduced garden cities, and for energised the foundation of the National Trust. A very progressive man.
But in 1848 the 29-year-old Ruskin married Euphemia Gray, a beautiful teenager. After six miserable years, Effie fell for her husband's protege Millais and set about having her own marriage annulled because of non-consumation because of - his aversion to children, his religious scruples, to preserve Effie's beauty, to keep her from exhaustion, to a revulsion with women's body odour and menstruation.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/29/ruskin-effie-marriage-inconvenience-brownell
Jo-Anne
there were always struggles, yes, and not just in the professional art world. The tragedy here was that Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman had already proved their value and theoretically shouldn't have had to keep struggling for the rest of their careers. It didn't protect their reputations, however :( Nor did it help the other women who applied for membership over the next 150 years.
Mike
do you remember the book by Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Most people my age think it is still fundamental to art appreciation today. Nochlin dismantled the very concept of greatness, unravelling the basic assumptions that created the male-centric genius in art. She laid bare the acceptance of a white male viewpoint in art historical thought as not merely a moral failure, but an intellectual one.
Worth having a second look?
DUTA
nothing new there, hey? But in my niavety, I had expected the Royal Academy School and subsequent high quality institutions to review their admission policies to ensure fairness for all applicants by the second half of the 18th century.
Erika
Has anybody ever looked at that very question? I would love to know if applicants are sometimes selected on gender, race or anything else other than talent?
Despite discrimination, women artists, women poets and writers (some of them were called by male names) made great contributions to world culture.
Poor Kauffman, and Mary Moser. The unfairness and humiliation of being painted on the wall.
What can I say. They were different times with different understandings, different world views and different sensibilities. It's easy to forget just how different societies felt about things. Even in our own times, JK Rowling couldn't use her first name as it was felt boys didn't want to read a female author's book. I don't know how true that is ... afterall, it could just be publishers' own insecurities and over-worrying?
It's worth asking what the word "woman" means in our present zeitgeist. If a ordinary everyday male can "transition" to become a "woman", then where is the space of women in the original sense? My suspicion is that women are being pushed out (as Zoffany's painting).
Irina
I totally understood that 18th and 19th century men believed that women could never achieve equality in strength contests eg tree chopping, rugby players, alligator wrestling or concrete workers.
But how could it have possibly hurt men to acknowledge that women could be great poets, translators, ballet dancers, university scholars, supreme court judges, composers etc.
Liam
of course I understood that changing societies had different world views and different sensibilities. But *the artists' glass ceiling* does not refer to exclusion of women altogether from an important national organisation and profession. Rather it recognises the range of subtle or unconscious biases that can damp down women's career goals. After all, Kauffman and Moser displayed that women had already been admitted because of their artistic talents, not out of charity.
Hi Hels - they've recently had an exhibition of Angelica Kauffman's works at the Royal Academy ... and I wrote about her as part of my talk on the Blue Stockings of the 1700s; then recently I've read Angelica, Paintress of Minds - by Miranda Miller ... an interesting take on her. Life was so different then ... cheers Hilary
Hilary
I would love to have heard you talk about the Blue Stockings.. we have some interests almost in common. I didn't know of Miranda Miller until Amazon sent this summary: *Men can do as they like, but women risk losing everything. In her studio, Angelica relives her journey from a poor background to international fame. She paints her friends (Antonio Canova, Germaine de Stael, Emma Hamilton and Goethe among others) and draws us into her fascinating past. The book tells of a gifted and powerful woman with a kind heart*.
What a great world we live in :)
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