Painting it Forward

                              

         In the past, a woman who wished to be an artist had very little chance of pursuing that goal unless her father was an artist, himself. By the Renaissance, even a non-artist father could help by hiring painting tutors for his daughter, provided he was a Humanist who believed that women were educable.

         In 17^th c. Holland, botanical artist Maria Sibylla Merian learned from her father, an engraver, and her step-father, a Flemish flower painter. Though she was taught via this traditional route, Merian broke the pattern when she taught her daughters (and a maid, by some accounts) to observe and record the natural world. Flower paintings were hugely popular in her time, but Merian’s interest in botany and insects went beyond pretty pictures. After separating from her husband, she and her daughters travelled to the Dutch colony of Surinam in Africa, a dangerous undertaking, to do scientific research that resulted in The New Book of Flowers. For more about Merian and her daughters, here’s an informative blog post:

http://blog.catherinedelors.com/maria-sibylla-merian-and-her-daughters-at-the-crossroads-of-art-and-science/

         A century later in France, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard became one of only two women elected to join the Academy Française. Women during that time had no access to art education, let alone studios or models, so Labille-Guiard took it upon herself to teach promising young women artists in her own studio. It was common for women artists to paint self-portraits showing themselves at their easels, but She recorded this process in her painting, Portrait of the Artist with Two Pupils, Mlle Marie-Gabrielle Capet & Mlle Carraux de Rosemond. Radical as she was in circumventing the Academic system, she was still an 18th c. woman who made sure to show herself and her students to their best advantage. It's doubtful that the artist actually worked dressed in sumptuous silks with diaphanous trim, elaborate hairstyle topped by a feathered hat!  

         Another French artist, Berthe Morisot, took time from exhibiting with the Impressionist painters in the late 19^th c. to teach her daughter Julie and her nieces to draw and paint. Of the group, her niece Paule Gobillard showed the most talent. In these two paintings by Morisot, Paule sits in the same spot in the studio, marked by the classical statue behind her. Two things about that statue: First, it would have stood in for a live model; a nude model was out of the question for women artists. Second, it suggests that Paule, and likely her cousins, had usual spots where they worked in tante Berthe’s studio, which indicates that their art classes were routine.

         It pleased Berthe so much to see her daughter and nieces painting together (no doubt calling up memories of painting with her sister in their youth), that she painted Paule in action. In the unfinished work (lower right), it appears that Berthe hasn’t yet committed to a final position for Paule’s painting arm. The effect is of an arm in motion, caught in the act of painting. (Here’s a video of Paule Gobillard’s paintings throughout her career: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NRMHAL-QaA )

       

           During the 19^th c., segregated art schools for ladies were established, but it wasn’t until well into the 20^th   that women joined men in life-drawing classes in the United States.