Early American Women Artists and the Social Context in Which They Worked

Art News an article with the provocative title: Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Although some feminists may have been disappointed by her admission of the absence of female greatness, her explanation was not that women were incapable of the highest artistic achievement, but that the circumstances of art training and social conditioning operated in favor of male rather than female success. According to Nochlin, women, like members of the aristocracy, were kept from professionalism by social expectations which permitted them to dabble in art as an accomplishment, provided that they did not go any further. More seriously, their inability to study from nude models made it virtually impossible for them to attempt the large-scale historical, Biblical, and allegorical subjects which traditional critics considered to represent the highest achievement in painting. Even in France, where by the mid-nineteenth century one third of all artists exhibiting at the Salon were women, they were excluded from the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and overlooked in the awarding of official commissions and Salon medals. When women did overcome their handicaps and achieve excellence it was usually because of special circumstances. Most were the daughters of artist fathers, and most had personalities in which the so-called masculine traits of single-mindedness and tenacious concentration predominated. Although Nochlin included some American artists in her discussion, her argument was essentially based on western European art from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century, with emphasis on outstanding rather than obscure painters. Thus, her conclusions provide a useful framework for discussing the achievement of the majority of American women artists who came to maturity before the 1870s. The extent to which they

Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology · Sociology · Visual arts · Art History and Market Analysis · Gender Studies · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History

• Du génie au talent

  Maria Antonietta Trasforini•Cahiers du Genre•2007

  Add to list

• Shake Hands? Lilly Martin Spencer and the Politics of Art

  Open Access•April F Masten•American Quarterly•2004

  Add to list