Tag: 19th-century women’s art education

Covers from exhibition catalogues: group exhibitions held at the Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1881 and 1882, including works by Antonie Biel and Marie von Parmentier Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie Photos: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger (CC BY-NC-SA)

Pioneering Women Artists – an Omission in Art History?

Yvette Deseyve

Dr Yvette Deseyve, Deputy Director, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin / Friedrichswerdersche Kirche

This key-note paper from the scientific seminar, ‘Crossing Borders’, is part of the international ‘Pioneering Women Artists’ project that was launched at the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki, in September 2020. The research project is led by the curator Anne-Maria Pennonen, PhD

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The academic interest in women artists is not new – but it is more intensive than ever: today, art historians can look back on several decades of research projects and research findings on women artists and female art production in European art. In addition, this field of research has also become an integral part of art history teaching. Even if the perception of female artists seems to be becoming more and more self-evident, research on women artists in art is still full of surprises, discoveries and misunderstandings. In this paper, I will attempt to bring together the various strands of art-historical research in order to take a closer look at the different factors of visibility, or lack of visibility, of 19th-century women artists: what has been achieved by research so far and where can it go? What do we know, or not know just yet?

In order to draw attention to women in art historiography, I would like to take a look at The Invention of Painting (1832), by Eduard Dage (1805–83), which is in the collection of the Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin. The subject of this painting is the origin of art. According to Eduard Daege’s reading, the art of painting takes on this prominent function of origination, even though the original narrative behind it is somewhat different: the most important ancient treatise on the origin of art is handed down by Plinius Secundus in his Natural History, written in 77AD. After initial remarks on colours and their materiality, Plinius breaks off abruptly with the words: ‘On painting we have now said enough, and more than enough; but it will be only proper to append some accounts of the plastic art.’[1] Here he picks up, and reports on the parting of a young pair of lovers. More precisely, on the daughter of the potter Butades and on her lover, who has to leave his beloved in order to go to war. Pliny writes: ‘Butades, a potter of Sicyon, was the first who invented, at Corinth, the art of modelling portraits in the earth which he used in his trade. It was through his daughter that he made the discovery; who, being deeply in love with a young man about to depart on a long journey, traced the profile of his face, as thrown upon the wall by the light of the lamp. Upon seeing this, her father filled in the outline, by compressing clay upon the surface, and so made a face in relief, which he then hardened by fire along with other articles of pottery.’[2] . If one really follows Pliny’s story, the scene, which was widely illustrated in the 18th and 19th centuries, is not actually the invention of painting, but the invention of relief as an aspect of the artistic genre of sculpture. But apart from the implied dispute about which classical artistic form may be closer to nature, it is interesting to see how art history has dealt with this founding myth. Pliny hints that Butades only came to portraiture with the help of his daughter: ‘It was through his daughter that he made the discovery’. To put it bluntly, a woman as an artist. Or even, a woman as the founder of painting or sculpture, whose help made the father an artist in the first place. The prominence that Pliny gave the daughter of Butades in the founding myth of art should not be underestimated and the question arises: how did art history, especially in the 19th century, relate to this source?

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[1] Plin. Nat. 35.43, Translation http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0978.phi001.perseus-eng1:35.43, The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., a. o., London 1855.

[2] Plin. Nat. 35.43.

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Featured image: Covers from exhibition catalogues: group exhibitions held at the Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1881 and 1882, including works by Antonie Biel and Marie von Parmentier
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie
Photos: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger (CC BY-NC-SA)

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Featured image: Kunstkolonie Worpswede, Fritz Overbeck with his students in Worpswede, 1896. Photographer: Hermine Rothe Photo: Paula Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung

Crossing Borders, Making Links

Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

This autumn an international gathering of art historians, curators and researchers met in Helsinki to share their research into women artists from the long 19th century, as part of the Finnish National Gallery’s research project ‘Pioneering Women Artists’. Gill Crabbe reports from its ‘Crossing Borders’ conference

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The unfolding process of shedding light on women artists who have been hidden from history is one that continues. Since the feminist movement in the 1970s kickstarted research into this neglected area, progress has been gathering pace and is opening windows onto women artists’ lives and works, with new research and significant exhibitions such as Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie show in 2019 ‘Fighting for Visibility: Women artists in the Alte Nationalgalerie before 1919’, as well as the forthcoming monographic exhibition of Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in Spring 2024.

The Finnish National Gallery’s commitment to playing a part in this important work is demonstrated in its latest international research project ‘Pioneering Women Artists’, which held its first conference ‘Crossing Borders: Transnational Networks of Pioneering Women Artists’ in September at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki. Focussing on the long 19th century and in particular, but not exclusively, the artistic centres in Germany of the period, museum curators, art historians and researchers from the Nordic region, the Baltic states, Germany, and Poland gathered to share their knowledge and research interests, to forge information networks and pave the way for collaborating on a research publication and future exhibition project. The two-day conference, organised by Ateneum Art Museum curators Anne-Maria Pennonen and Hanne Selkokari, enjoyed some 14 presentations, which introduced many new names, new works, transnational connections and source materials, with information being eagerly shared among international colleagues and – a first for the FNG – online streaming allowing open access for those not attending in person; around 30 joined. As the conference progressed there was a sense of community developing among the participants, perhaps not so different from the international community that the women artists felt in the 19th century who were the subjects of their research.

The conference marked the initial phase of the project, bringing together research interests, which it is hoped will develop into a research publication, online articles and collaboration for an exhibition on the theme, in Helsinki at the Ateneum Art Museum, and in Düsseldorf at the Kunstpalast, scheduled for 2025. Given that Finland, being located on the eastern borders of Northern Europe and perhaps itself considered a peripheral nation on the European art-historical map, the theme of centres and peripheries is pertinent. By focussing on the Nordic and Baltic regions’ connections in the 19th century with centres of artistic excellence and learning in Germany, rather than Paris (a well-trodden art-historical path), the activities of women artists on the peripheries are given centre stage. Thus the conference heard from researchers from Poland, Romania and Latvia, resulting in an opening up of new information and fresh insights for those from the more well-known artistic hubs in Europe. With comparatively little written material published in languages other than their own, researchers from these countries were able to share through their conference presentations information that had not been encountered before by many beyond their borders. Thus the conference heard from the Netherlands-based Romanian art historian Oana Maria Ciontu, on the travels of Romanian and Transylvanian Saxon women artists, from Latvia’s Rundāle Palace Museum Dr Baiba Vanaga, on Baltic women artists in German artists’ colonies, and from the National Museum in Warsaw Dr Agnieszka Bagińska on the first Polish woman to travel to Munich to study painting. In this way the conference paves the way for further integration of a wider geographical area into European art history.

From the presentations as a whole, key themes emerged and overlapped. At the centre were the travels made by women artists in search of an art life, be that through art education, forging careers as artists, making connections with like-minded artists, finding community. Constellating around and merging with this theme were further themes such as new artists, career/life strategies, finances, social conditions, networking and source materials for research, and historiography.

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Featured image: Kunstkolonie Worpswede, Fritz Overbeck with his students in Worpswede, 1896. Photographer: Hermine Rothe
Photo: Paula Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung
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Read more — Download ‘Crossing Borders, Making Links’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

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