Women artists
Overview of female gender artists / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The absence of women from the canon of Western art has been a subject of inquiry and reconsideration since the early 1970s. Linda Nochlin's influential 1971 essay, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?", examined the social and institutional barriers that blocked most women from entering artistic professions throughout history, prompted a new focus on women artists, their art and experiences, and contributed inspiration to the Feminist art movement.[1][2][3] Although women artists have been involved in the making of art throughout history, their work, when compared to that of their male counterparts, has been often obfuscated, overlooked and undervalued. The Western canon has historically valued men's work over women's[4] and attached gendered stereotypes to certain media, such as textile or fiber arts, to be primarily associated with women.[5]
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (August 2011) |
Women artists have been challenged by a lack of access to artistic education, professional networks, and exhibition opportunities.[6] Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, feminist artists and art historians involved in the Feminist art movement have addressed the role of women especially in the Western art world, how world art is perceived, evaluated or appropriated according to gender.
There are no records of who the artists of the prehistoric eras were, but studies of many early ethnographers and cultural anthropologists indicate that women often were the principal artisans in Neolithic cultures, in which they created pottery, textiles, baskets, painted surfaces and jewellery. Collaboration on large projects was common if not typical. Extrapolation to the artwork and skills of the Paleolithic era suggests that these cultures followed similar patterns. Cave paintings of this era often have human hand prints, 75% of which are identifiable as women's.[7]
Ceramic art
There is a long history of ceramic art in almost all developed cultures, and often ceramic objects are all the artistic evidence left from vanished cultures, like that of the Nok culture in Africa over 3,000 years ago.[8] Cultures especially noted for ceramics include the Chinese, Cretan, Greek, Persian, Mayan, Japanese, and Korean cultures, as well as the modern Western cultures. There is evidence that pottery was independently invented in several regions of the world, including East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, The Near East, and the Americas. It is unknown who the artisans were.[9][10]
African continent
The geometric Imigongo art originated from Rwanda in East Africa, and is associated with the centuries-old sacred status of the cow. It evolved from mixing cow dung with ash and clay and the use of natural dyes. The palette is limited to the bold colour of the earth. The art is traditionally associated with women artists, as is the elaborate art of basket weaving of the area, with its own regular friezes.[11]
India
"For about three thousand years, the women – and only the women – of Mithila have been making devotional paintings of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon. It is no exaggeration, then, to say that this art is the expression of the most genuine aspect of Indian civilization."[12]
Classical Europe and the Middle East
The earliest records of western cultures rarely mention specific individuals, although women are depicted in all of the art and some are shown laboring as artists. Ancient references by Homer, Cicero, and Virgil mention the prominent roles of women in textiles, poetry, music, and other cultural activities, without discussion of individual artists. Among the earliest European historical records concerning individual artists is that of Pliny the Elder, who wrote about a number of Greek women who were painters, including Helena of Egypt, daughter of Timon of Egypt,[13][14] Some modern critics posit that Alexander Mosaic might not have been the work of Philoxenus, but of Helena of Egypt. One of the few named women painters who might have worked in Ancient Greece,[15][16] she was reputed to have produced a painting of the battle of Issus which hung in the Temple of Peace during the time of Vespasian.[17] Other women include Timarete, Eirene, Kalypso, Aristarete, Iaia, and Olympias. While only some of their work survives, in Ancient Greek pottery there is a caputi hydria in the Torno Collection in Milan.[18] It is attributed to the Leningrad painter from c. 460–450 BCE and shows women working alongside men in a workshop where both painted vases.[19]
Medieval period
- A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, rallying Duke William's troops during the Battle of Hastings in 1066
- Hildegard of Bingen, "Universal Man" illumination from Hildegard's Liber Divinorum Operum, 1165
- Hildegard von Bingen, Motherhood from the Spirit and the Water, 1165, from Liber divinorum operum, Benediktinerinnenabtei Sankt Hildegard, Eibingen (bei Rüdesheim)
Artists from the Medieval period include Claricia, Diemudus, Ende, Guda, Herrade of Landsberg and Hildegard of Bingen. In the early Medieval period, women often worked alongside men. Manuscript illuminations, embroideries, and carved capitals from the period clearly demonstrate examples of women at work in these arts. Documents show that they also were brewers, butchers, wool merchants, and iron mongers. Artists of the time period, including women, were from a small subset of society whose status allowed them freedom from these more strenuous types of work. Women artists often were of two literate classes, either wealthy aristocratic women or nuns. Women in the former category often created embroideries and textiles; those in the later category often produced illuminations.
There were a number of embroidery workshops in England at the time, particularly at Canterbury and Winchester; Opus Anglicanum or English embroidery was already famous across Europe – a 13th-century papal inventory counted over two hundred pieces. It is presumed that women were almost entirely responsible for this production.
The Bayeux Tapestry
One of the most famous embroideries (it is not a tapestry) of the Medieval period is the Bayeux Tapestry, which was embroidered with wool on nine linen panels and is 230 feet long. Its c. seventy scenes narrate the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England. The Bayeux Tapestry may have been created in either a commercial workshop by a royal or an aristocratic lady and her retinue, or in a workshop in a nunnery. Sylvette Lemagnen, conservator of the tapestry, in her 2005 book La Tapisserie de Bayeux states:
The Bayeux tapestry is one of the supreme achievements of the Norman Romanesque .... Its survival almost intact over nine centuries is little short of miraculous ... Its exceptional length, the harmony and freshness of its colours, its exquisite workmanship, and the genius of its guiding spirit combine to make it endlessly fascinating.[20]
The High Middle Ages
In the 14th century, a royal workshop is documented, based at the Tower of London, and there may have been other earlier arrangements. Manuscript illumination affords us many of the named artists of the Medieval Period including Ende, a 10th-century Spanish nun; Guda, a 12th-century German nun; and Claricia, a 12th-century laywoman in a Bavarian scriptorium. These women, and many more unnamed illuminators, benefited from the nature of convents as the major loci of learning for women in the period and the most tenable option for intellectuals among them.
In many parts of Europe, with the Gregorian Reforms of the 11th century and the rise in feudalism, women faced many strictures that they did not face in the Early Medieval period. With these societal changes, the status of the convent changed. In the British Isles, the Norman Conquest marked the beginning of the gradual decline of the convent as a seat of learning and a place where women could gain power. Convents were made subsidiary to male abbots, rather than being headed by an abbess, as they had been previously. In Pagan Scandinavia (in Sweden) the only historically confirmed female runemaster, Gunnborga, worked in the 11th century.[21]
In Germany, however, under the Ottonian dynasty, convents retained their position as institutions of learning. This might be partially because convents were often headed and populated by unmarried women from royal and aristocratic families. Therefore, the greatest late Medieval period work by women originates in Germany, as exemplified by that of Herrade of Landsberg and Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) is a particularly fine example of a German Medieval intellectual and artist. She wrote The Divine Works of a Simple Man, The Meritorious Life, sixty-five hymns, a miracle play, and a long treatise of nine books on the different natures of trees, plants, animals, birds, fish, minerals, and metals. From an early age, she claimed to have visions. When the Papacy supported these claims by the headmistress, her position as an important intellectual was galvanized. The visions became part of one of her seminal works in 1142, Scivias (Know the Ways of the Lord), which consists of thirty-five visions relating and illustrating the history of salvation. The illustrations in the Scivias, as exemplified in the first illustration, depict Hildegard experiencing visions while seated in the monastery at Bingen. They differ greatly from others created in Germany during the same period, as they are characterized by bright colours, emphasis on line, and simplified forms. While Hildegard likely did not pen the images, their idiosyncratic nature leads one to believe they were created under her close supervision.
The 12th century saw the rise of the city in Europe, along with the rise in trade, travel, and universities. These changes in society also engendered changes in the lives of women. Women were allowed to head their husbands' businesses if they were widowed. The Wife of Bath in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is one such case. During this time, women also were allowed to be part of some artisan guilds. Guild records show that women were particularly active in the textile industries in Flanders and Northern France. Medieval manuscripts have many marginalia depicting women with spindles. In England, women were responsible for creating Opus Anglicanum, or rich embroideries for ecclesiastical or secular use on clothes and various types of hangings. Women also became more active in illumination. A number of women likely worked alongside their husbands or fathers, including the daughter of Maître Honoré and the daughter of Jean le Noir. By the 13th century most illuminated manuscripts were being produced by commercial workshops, and by the end of the Middle Ages, when production of manuscripts had become an important industry in certain centres, women seem to have represented a majority of the artists and scribes employed, especially in Paris. The movement to printing, and book illustration to the printmaking techniques of woodcut and engraving, where women seem to have been little involved, represented a setback to the progress of women artists.
Meanwhile, Jefimija (1349–1405) a Serbian, noblewoman, widow and orthodox nun became known not only as a poet who wrote a lament for her dead son, Uglješa, but also as a skilled needlewoman and engraver. Her lament for her beloved son which immortalized the sorrow of all mothers mourning their deceased children, was carved on the back of the diptych, (two-panelled icon representing a Virgin and Child) which Teodosije, Bishop of Serres, had presented as a gift to the infant Uglješa at his baptism. The piece of art, already valuable because of the gold, precious stones, and beautiful carving on its wooden panels, became priceless after Jefemija's lament was engraved on its back.[22]
In 15th-century Venice the daughter of the glass artist, Angelo Barovièr, was known to have been the artist behind a particular glass design from Venetian Murano. She was Marietta Barovier, a Venetian glass artist.[23] Of fourteen specialist glass painters (pictori) documented between 1443 and 1516, she and Elena de Laudo were the only women.[24] Seemingly several centuries had to elapse before women were able to pursue the medium in Glass art.
Renaissance
- St. Catherine of Bologna (Caterina dei Vigri), (Maria und das Jesuskind mit Frucht), c. 1440s. She is the patroness saint of artists.
- Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait, 1554
- Esther Inglis, Portrait, 1595
- Fede Galizia, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1596. The figure of Judith is believed to be a self-portrait.
Artists from the Renaissance era include, Sofonisba Anguissola, Lucia Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Fede Galizia, Diana Scultori Ghisi, Caterina van Hemessen, Esther Inglis, Barbara Longhi, Maria Ormani, Marietta Robusti (daughter of Tintoretto), Properzia de' Rossi, Levina Teerlinc, Mayken Verhulst, and St. Catherine of Bologna (Caterina dei Vigri).[25][26]
This is the first period in Western history in which a number of secular female artists gained international reputations. The rise in women artists during this period may be attributed to major cultural shifts. One such shift came from the Counter-Reformation reacting against Protestantism and giving rise to a move toward humanism, a philosophy affirming the dignity of all people, that became central to Renaissance thinking and helped raise the status of women.[6] In addition, the identity of the individual artist in general was regarded as more important. Significant artists from this period whose identities are unknown virtually cease to exist. Two important texts, On Famous Women and The City of Women, illustrate this cultural change. Boccaccio, a 14th-century humanist, wrote De mulieribus claris (Latin for On Famous Women) (1335–59), a collection of biographies of women. Among the 104 biographies he included was that of Thamar (or Thmyris), an ancient Greek vase painter. Curiously, among the 15th-century manuscript illuminations of On Famous Women, Thamar was depicted painting a self-portrait or perhaps painting a small image of the Virgin and Child. Christine de Pizan, a remarkable late medieval French writer, rhetorician, and critic, wrote Book of the City of Ladies in 1405, a text about an allegorical city in which independent women lived free from the slander of men. In her work she included real women artists, such as Anastasia, who was considered one of the best Parisian illuminators, although none of her work has survived. Other humanist texts led to increased education for Italian women.
The most notable of these was Il Cortegiano or The Courtier by 16th-century Italian humanist Baldassare Castiglione. This enormously popular work stated that men and women should be educated in the social arts. His influence made it acceptable for women to engage in the visual, musical, and literary arts. Thanks to Castiglione, this was the first period of renaissance history in which noblewomen were able to study painting. Sofonisba Anguissola was the most successful of these minor aristocrats who first benefited from humanist education and then went on to recognition as painters.[27] The Cremona-born Anguissola was both a trailblazer and role model for future generations of women artists.[6] Artists who were not noblewomen were affected by the rise in humanism as well. In addition to conventional subject matter, artists such as Lavinia Fontana and Caterina van Hemessen began to depict themselves in self-portraits, not just as painters but also as musicians and scholars, thereby highlighting their well-rounded education. Fontana benefited from the enlightened attitudes in her native city, Bologna where the university had admitted women scholars since the Middle Ages.[6] Along with the rise in humanism, there was a shift from craftsmen to artists. Artists, unlike earlier craftsmen, were now expected to have knowledge of perspective, mathematics, ancient art, and study of the human body. In the late Renaissance the training of artists began to move from the master's workshop to the Academy, and women began a long struggle, not resolved until the late 19th century, to gain full access to this training.[6] Study of the human body required working from male nudes and corpses. This was considered essential background for creating realistic group scenes. Women were generally barred from training from male nudes, and therefore they were precluded from creating such scenes. Such depictions of nudes were required for the large-scale religious compositions, which received the most prestigious commissions.
Although many aristocratic women had access to some training in art, though without the benefit of figure drawing from nude male models, most of those women chose marriage over a career in art. This was true, for example, of two of Sofonisba Anguissola's sisters. The women recognized as artists in this period were either nuns or children of painters. Of the few who emerged as Italian artists in the 15th century, those known today are associated with convents. These artists who were nuns include Caterina dei Virgi, Antonia Uccello, and Suor Barbara Ragnoni. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the vast majority of women who gained any modicum of success as artists were the children of painters. This is likely because they were able to gain training in their fathers' workshops. Examples of women artists who were trained by their fathers include the painter Lavinia Fontana, the miniature portraitist Levina Teerlinc, and the portrait painter Caterina van Hemessen. Italian women artists during this period, even those trained by their family, seem somewhat unusual. However, in certain parts of Europe, particularly northern France and Flanders, it was more common for children of both genders to enter into their father's profession. In fact, in the Low Countries where women had more freedom, there were a number of artists in the Renaissance who were women. For example, the records of the Guild of Saint Luke in Bruges show not only that they admit women as practicing members, but also that by the 1480s twenty-five percent of its members were women (many probably working as manuscript illuminators).
Nelli's Last Supper
A recently rediscovered fragile 22-foot canvas roll in Florence has turned out to be an outstanding treasure. But for the groundbreaking actions of American philanthropist Jane Fortune (died 2018) and Florence-based author Linda Falcone and their organisation, Advancing Women Artists Foundation, the roll might have gathered more dust.[6] Four years of painstaking restoration by a female led team, reveals the brilliance of the 16th-century, self-taught, suor Plautilla Nelli, a nun, and only Renaissance woman known to have painted the Last Supper.[28][29][30] The work went on exhibition at the Santa Maria Novella Museum in Florence in October 2019.[31] As of early 2020, AWA has sponsored the restoration of 67 works by female artists, unearthed in Florentine collections.[6]
Baroque era
- Louise Moillon, The Fruit Seller, 1631, Louvre
- Giovanna Garzoni, Still Life with Bowl of Citrons, 1640, tempera on vellum, Getty Museum, Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California
- Rachel Ruysch, Still-Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums, oil on canvas, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
- Mary Beale, Self-portrait, c. 1675–1680
- Élisabeth Sophie Chéron, self-portrait, 1672
- Josefa de Ayala (Josefa de Óbidos), Still-life, c. 1679, Santarém, Municipal Library
Artists from the Baroque era include: Mary Beale, Élisabeth Sophie Chéron, Maria Theresa van Thielen, Katharina Pepijn, Catharina Peeters, Johanna Vergouwen, Michaelina Wautier, Isabel de Cisneros, Giovanna Garzoni[25] Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster, Maria Sibylla Merian, Louise Moillon, Josefa de Ayala better known as Josefa de Óbidos, Maria van Oosterwijk, Magdalena de Passe, Clara Peeters, Maria Virginia Borghese (daughter of art collector Olimpia Aldobrandini),[32] Luisa Roldán known as La Roldana, Rachel Ruysch, Maria Theresa van Thielen, Anna Maria van Thielen, Françoise-Catherina van Thielen and Elisabetta Sirani. As in the Renaissance Period, many women among the Baroque artists came from artist families. Artemisia Gentileschi is an example of this. She was trained by her father, Orazio Gentileschi, and she worked alongside him on many of his commissions. Luisa Roldán was trained in her father's (Pedro Roldán) sculpture workshop.
Women artists in this period began to change the way women were depicted in art. Many of the women working as artists in the Baroque era were not able to train from nude models, who were always male, but they were very familiar with the female body. Women such as Elisabetta Sirani created images of women as conscious beings rather than detached muses. One of the best examples of this novel expression is in Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith beheading Holofernes, in which Judith is depicted as a strong woman determining and avenging her own destiny. Letizia Treves, curator at London's National Gallery 2020 Gentileschi show has commented: "you can't see it without thinking of Tassi raping Gentileschi."[33] The elements of the picture are "balanced with such skill they speak of a painter who prioritised virtuosity over passion."[6] While other artists, including Botticelli and the more traditional woman, Fede Galizia, depicted the same scene with a passive Judith, in her novel treatment, Gentileschi's Judith appears to be an able actor in the task at hand. Action is the essence of it and another painting by her of Judith leaving the scene. Still life emerged as an important genre around 1600, particularly in the Netherlands. Women were at the forefront of this painting trend. This genre was particularly suited to women, as they could access the materials for still life readily. In the North, these practitioners included Clara Peeters, a painter of banketje or breakfast pieces, and scenes of arranged luxury goods; Maria van Oosterwijk, the internationally renowned flower painter; and Rachel Ruysch, a painter of visually charged flower arrangements. In other regions, still life was less common, but there were important women artists in the genre including Giovanna Garzoni, who created realistic vegetable arrangements on parchment, and Louise Moillon, whose fruit still life paintings were noted for their brilliant colours.
Influencers within era
Judith Leyster was the daughter of weavers and the eighth of nine children.[34] She was not born into a traditional artistic family, but her determination to become a painter was supported by her family, and she studied painting between the ages of 11 and 16.[34] During her teens a connection was established between the Leysters and historical painter Frans Peters de Grebber, who came into contact with her parents for the love of their embroidered designed fabrics. Leyster worked as his apprentice for years before opening her own studio.[34] She eventually became the first woman to join the Harleem Guild.[35] Her work showed vigorous and exuberant techniques not seen in many female artists at the time, and was seen as masculine, like that of Artemisia Gentileschi.[36] After her death, Leyster's work was overlooked by many for more than two centuries before she was introduced into historical studies.[34]
18th century
- Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun (1755–1842), Self-portrait, c. 1780s, one of many she painted for sale
- Rosalba Carriera (1675–1757), Self-portrait, 1715
- Ulrika Pasch, Self portrait, c. 1770
- Anne Vallayer-Coster, Attributes of Music, 1770
- Anna Dorothea Therbusch, Self-portrait, 1777
- Angelica Kauffman, Literature and Painting, 1782, Kenwood House
- Marie-Gabrielle Capet, Self-portrait, 1783
- Anna Rajecka, Portrait of Ignacy Potocki, 1784
- Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Self-portrait with two pupils, Marie-Gabrielle Capet and Marie-Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond 1785, Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Marguerite Gérard, First steps, oil on canvas, 45.5 x 55 cm, c. 1788
Artists from this period include, Rosalba Carriera, Maria Cosway, Marguerite Gérard, Angelica Kauffman, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Giulia Lama, Mary Moser, Ulrika Pasch, Adèle Romany, Anna Dorothea Therbusch, Anne Vallayer-Coster, Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, Marie-Guillemine Benoist and Anna Rajecka, also known as Madame Gault de Saint-Germain.
In many countries of Europe, the Academies were the arbiters of style. The Academies also were responsible for training artists, exhibiting artwork, and, inadvertently or not, promoting the sale of art. Most Academies were not open to women. In France, for example, the powerful Academy in Paris had 450 members between the 17th century and the French Revolution, and only fifteen were women. Of those, most were daughters or wives of members. In the late 18th century, the French Academy resolved not to admit any women at all. The pinnacle of painting during the period was history painting, especially large scale compositions with groups of figures depicting historical or mythical situations. In preparation to create such paintings, artists studied casts of antique sculptures and drew from male nudes. Women had limited, or no access to this Academic learning, and as such there are no extant large-scale history paintings by women from this period. Some women made their name in other genres such as portraiture. Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun used her experience in portraiture to create an allegorical scene, Peace Bringing Back Plenty, which she classified as a history painting and used as her grounds for admittance into the Academy. After the display of her work, it was demanded that she attend formal classes, or lose her license to paint. She became a court favourite, and a celebrity, who painted over forty self-portraits, which she was able to sell.[27]
In England, two women, Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, were founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768. Kauffmann helped Maria Cosway enter the Academy. Although Cosway went on to gain success as a painter of mythological scenes, both women remained in a somewhat ambivalent position at the Royal Academy, as evidenced by the group portrait of The Academicians of the Royal Academy by Johan Zoffany now in The Royal Collection. In it, only the men of the Academy are assembled in a large artist studio, together with nude male models. For reasons of decorum given the nude models, the two women are not shown as present, but as portraits on the wall instead.[37] The emphasis in Academic art on studies of the nude during training remained a considerable barrier for women studying art until the 20th century, both in terms of actual access to the classes and in terms of family and social attitudes to middle-class women becoming artists. After these three, no woman became a full member of the Academy until Laura Knight in 1936, and women were not admitted to the Academy's schools until 1861. By the late 18th century, there were important steps forward for artists who were women. In Paris, the Salon, the exhibition of work founded by the Academy, became open to non-Academic painters in 1791, allowing women to showcase their work in the prestigious annual exhibition. Additionally, women were more frequently being accepted as students by famous artists such as Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Baptiste Greuze.
Painters
Women artists of the early part of the 19th century include Marie-Denise Villers, who specialized in portraiture; Constance Mayer, who painted portraits and allegories; Marie Ellenrieder, who was noted mainly for her religious paintings in the Nazarene style; Louise-Adéone Drölling, who followed in the footsteps of her father and her older brother as a painter and draughtswoman.
In the second half of the century, Emma Sandys, Marie Spartali Stillman, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, and Maria Zambaco[38] were women artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Also influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites were Evelyn De Morgan and the activist and painter Barbara Bodichon.
Impressionist painters Berthe Morisot, Marie Bracquemond, and the Americans, Mary Cassatt and Lucy Bacon, became involved in the French Impressionist movement of the 1860s and 1870s. American Impressionist Lilla Cabot Perry was influenced by her studies with Monet and by Japanese art in the late 19th century. Cecilia Beaux was an American portrait painter who also studied in France. Apart from Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowicz, Olga Boznańska is considered the best-known of all Polish women artists, and was stylistically associated with Impressionism.
Rosa Bonheur was the best-known female artist of her time, internationally renowned for her paintings of animals.[39] Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler), perhaps inspired by her life-classes of armoured figures at the Government School, was one of the first women to become famous for large history paintings, specializing in scenes of military action, usually with many horses, most famously Scotland Forever!, showing a cavalry charge at Waterloo.
Kitty Lange Kielland was a Norwegian landscape painter.
Elizabeth Jane Gardner was an American academic painter who was the first American woman to exhibit at the Paris Salon. In 1872 she became the first woman to ever win a gold medal at the Salon.
In 1894, Suzanne Valadon was the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in France. Anna Boch was a post-impressionist painter, as was Laura Muntz Lyall, who exhibited at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, and then in 1894 as part of the Société des artistes français in Paris.
- Marie Ellenrieder, Self-portrait as a Painter, 1819
- Mary Cassatt, Tea, 1880, oil on canvas, 25½ × 36¼ in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Maria Bashkirtseva, In the Studio, 1881, oil on canvas, 74 × 60.6 in, Dnipro State Art Museum
- Suzanne Valadon, Self-portrait, 1883
- Berthe Morisot, L'Enfant au Tablier Rouge, 1886, American Art Museum
- Jeanna Bauck, The Danish Artist Bertha Wegmann Painting a Portrait, late 19th century
Sculpture
Before the 19th century began, an exceptional independent business woman emerged in Georgian England who discovered her own artistic talent in mid-life. She was Eleanor Coade (1733 – 1821). She became known for manufacturing Neoclassical statues, architectural decorations and garden ornaments made of Lithodipyra or Coade stone for over 50 years from 1769 until her death.[40] Lithodipyra ("stone fired twice") was a high-quality, durable moulded weather-resistant, ceramic stoneware. Statues and decorative features from this ceramic still look almost new today. Coade did not invent 'artificial stone', but she likely perfected both the clay recipe and the firing process. She combined high-quality manufacturing and artistic taste, together with entrepreneurial, business and marketing skills, to create the overwhelmingly successful stone products of her age. She produced stoneware for St George's Chapel, Windsor, The Royal Pavilion, Brighton, Carlton House, London and the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.[40]
Eleanor Coade developed her own talent as a modeller, exhibiting around 30 sculptures on classical themes at the Society of Artists between 1773 and 1780 as listed in their exhibitors catalogue of the time.[41] After her death, her Coade stoneware was used for refurbishments to Buckingham Palace and by noted sculptors in their monumental work, such as William Frederick Woodington's South Bank Lion (1837) on Westminster Bridge, London. The statue was made in separate parts and sealed together on an iron frame.
The century produced its women sculptors in the East, Seiyodo Bunshojo (1764–1838) a Japanese netsuke carver and Haiku writer.[42][43] She was Seiyodo Tomiharu's daughter.[43] Her work can be seen at the Walters Art Museum.[44] While in the West, there were: Julie Charpentier, Elisabet Ney, Helene Bertaux, Fenia Chertkoff, Sarah Fisher Ames, Helena Unierzyska (daughter of Jan Matejko), Blanche Moria, Angelina Beloff, Anna Golubkina, Margaret Giles (also a Medalist), Camille Claudel, Enid Yandell and Edmonia Lewis. Lewis, an African-Ojibwe-Haitian American artist from New York began her art studies at Oberlin College. Her sculpting career began in 1863. She established a studio in Rome, Italy and exhibited her marble sculptures through Europe and the United States.[45]
Photography
Constance Fox Talbot may be the first woman ever to have taken a photograph.[46] Later, Julia Margaret Cameron and Gertrude Kasebier became well known in the new medium of photography, where there were no traditional restrictions, and no established training, to hold them back. Sophia Hoare, another British photographer, worked in Tahiti and other parts of Oceania.
In France, the birthplace of the medium, there was only Geneviève Élisabeth Disdéri (c.1817–1878). In 1843, she married the pioneering photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, partnering with him in their Brest daguerrotype studio from the late 1840s.[47] After her husband left for Paris in 1852, Geneviève continued to run the atelier alone. She is remembered for her 28 views of Brest, mainly architectural, which were published as Brest et ses Environs in 1856.[48] In 1872, she moved to Paris, opening a studio in the Rue du Bac where she was possibly assisted by her son Jules. Trade listings indicate she continued to operate her studio until her death in a Paris hospital in 1878.[49] She was one of the first female professional photographers in the world, active only shortly after the German Bertha Beckmann and the Swedes Brita Sofia Hesselius and Marie Kinnberg.
Female education in the 19th century
During the century, access to academies and formal art training expanded more for women in Europe and North America. The British Government School of Design, which later became the Royal College of Art, admitted women from its founding in 1837, but only into a "Female School" which was treated somewhat differently, with "life"- classes consisting for several years of drawing a man wearing a suit of armour.
The Royal Academy Schools finally admitted women beginning in 1861, but students drew initially only draped models. However, other schools in London, including the Slade School of Art from the 1870s, were more liberal. By the end of the century women were able to study the naked, or very nearly naked, figure in many Western European and North American cities. The Society of Female Artists (now called The Society of Women Artists) was established in 1855 in London and has staged annual exhibitions since 1857, when 358 works were shown by 149 women, some using a pseudonym.[50] However, one woman who was denied higher or specialist education and who still "broke through", was the natural scientist, writer and illustrator, Beatrix Potter (1866–1943).[51]
English women painters from the early 19th century who exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art
- Sophie Gengembre Anderson
- Mary Baker
- Ann Charlotte Bartholomew
- Maria Bell
- Barbara Bodichon
- Joanna Mary Boyce
- Margaret Sarah Carpenter
- Fanny Corbaux
- Rosa Corder
- Mary Ellen Edwards
- Harriet Gouldsmith
- Mary Harrison
- Jane Benham Hay
- Anna Mary Howitt
- Mary Moser
- Martha Darley Mutrie
- Ann Mary Newton
- Emily Mary Osborn
- Kate Perugini
- Louise Rayner
- Ellen Sharples
- Rolinda Sharples
- Rebecca Solomon
- Elizabeth Emma Soyer
- Isabelle de Steiger
- Henrietta Ward