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Social awareness

Although in the 19th century, it was a common practice for daughters of bourgeois families to receive art education, art skill was thought to be a kind of accomplishment more than a true professional option. Nevertheless, something was changing in the society with some female movements that advocated for women´s rights, and new generations of female professionals and artists that gradually transformed the traditionally male-driven social structure. These changes became more evident during the 20th century.

The first problem for women was access to academies and formal art training, once they had obtained the approval from their fathers or husbands. For instance, as they were excluded from the state-sponsored École des Beaux-Arts in Paris until 1897, they had to seek instruction in the studios of artists or in private academies, like the reputed Académie Julian.

Another disadvantage for women artists was the difficult access to nude models, a very necessary condition to success in many painting and sculpture genres.

male atelier with nude models

A. Bouguereau, Atelier at Académie Julian, 1891

               M. Bashkirtseff, The Studio, 1881       female training at Académie Julian

                           

Think About It

Have a look at the images above where two famous artists depicted a male and a female painting class with models.

  • Draw two conclusions about men and women training in arts at that time.

Reading Activity

Considering the characters of your daughters, my teaching will not endow them with minor drawing room accomplishments, they will become painters. Do you realize what this means? In the upper-class milieu to which you belong, this will be revolutionary, I might say almost catastrophic

Quoted at Myers, Nicole. “Women Artists in Nineteenth-Century France.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/19wa/hd_19wa.htm (September 2008)

What I long for is the freedom of going about alone, of coming and going, of sitting in the seats of the Tuileries, and especially in the Luxembourg, of stopping and looking at the artistic shops, of entering churches and museums, of walking about the old streets at night; that’s what I long for; and that’s the freedom without which one cannot become a real artist.

Quoted at Myers, Nicole. “Women Artists in Nineteenth-Century France.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/19wa/hd_19wa.htm (September 2008)

 

The first text is part of a letter written by an art  instructor to the mother of Edma and Berthe Morisot, the famous impressionist artist.

 The second one is a complaint written by the painter Marie Bashkirtseff in her journal.

  • Explain in your words the meaning of "to endow them with minor drawing room accomplishments"
  • Why do you think that for girls to become painters would be considered revolutionary or even catastrophic?
  • What does Bashkirtseff´s complaint consist of?

 Not only did women artists have many difficulties in training, but also in the public recognition of their work.

 Art historians have insisted for a long time in a male point of view to narrate the evolution of art, underestimating the   talent and the artistic contribution of many female artists.

 These are some of the factors of this obscurity:

  • Women artists were often associated with successful male artists as their pupils, models, daughters or wives, overshadowing their own talent and work.
  • Some times this was the cause of an incorrect attribution of works.
  • They had problems to develop an independent professional career.
  • The scarcity of a biographical information for historical account.