Existing comment:
"My father, that enthusiastic apostle of humanity, many times reiterated to me that woman's mission was to elevate the human race, that she was the Messiah of future centuries. It is to his doctrines that I owe the great, noble ambition I have conceived for the sex which I proudly affirm to be mine, and whose independence I will support to my dying day..."
-- Rosa Bonheur
The nineteenth century ushered in radical social changes, affecting the lives of women on both sides of the Atlantic. The Industrial Revolution initiated explosive urbanization, a burgeoning middle class, advancements in medicine, growing support for women's suffrage, and new educational opportunities. Although women gained marginal admittance to professional academies in the 1860s, they were prohibited from studying the nude figure, a quintessential element for success in the most exalted art subjects -- history and mythology.
Femininity centered on the idea of a woman's sphere, concentrated on motherhood and domesticity. For the well educated woman, such as Jane Seymour Fortescue Coleridge, the art of drawing and watercolor were important skills to acquired, deemed necessary for one's family and social life. Women therefore painted subjects accessible through their immediate experience: genre scene, still life, and portraiture.
Some women were not content with these restrictive boundaries and consciously subverted traditional female roles. Rose Bonheur became the most celebrated animal painter of her time for her depictions of wild or working animals. Bonheur even wore men's clothing in order to sketch at horse fairs, slaughterhouses, and farms. In Paris, Louise Abbema achieves notoriety for her masculine military costume and flamboyant lifestyle in the circle of actress Sarah Bernhardt. But such transgressive acts were rare. Even after Elizabeth Adela Armstrong Forbes and her husband co-founded the innovation Newlyn Art School in 1899, she continuously struggled against the expectation that she would not work outside unchaperoned. As a result, Forbes turned her attention primarily to the socially accepted subject of children. |