As may surmise from these subtitles, paintings tell us a great deal about patriarchy!
Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless, “The rich man’s wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty” (Proverbs: 10:15), 1857 (Tate Britain, London)
The above is my favourite painting from the exhibition, highlighting sexist exclusions.
The importance of a loving, supportive husband
Mary Beale (1633-1699) ran a commercial business in London, painting gentry, civil servants and gentry. She painted, while her husband ran the studio, assisted by her sons. Her self-portraits typically featured her husband - her friend and equal partner. In Charles’ notebooks, he expressed pride in her talent and referred to her as ‘Dearest Heart’ (abbreviated to DH).
Mary Beale also penned a defence of gender equality, which she framed as ‘the perfection of friendship’, in which neither had ‘advantage of other’.
But even when women were permitted to paint, they were still restricted by ideals of modesty. Anne Mee’s (1765-1851) husband discouraged her from painting men. It was improper. Instead, she built a clientele of fashionable women.
Feminised markets
Katherine Read (1723-1778) was mostly patronised by women - who wanted portraits of themselves and their children.
This is a good example of women creating markets for female economic activity, which is of course curtailed if women lack financial autonomy.
The Arundell Children with their Dog, Katherine Read
Exhibiting amid patriarchal constraints
In 1760, the first public exhibition of contemporary art opened in London, attracting thousands of visitors. Between 1760 and 1830, over 900 individual women displayed their works - at the Society of Artists, the British Institution and Royal Academy. So they were certainly active. However, women were still triply disadvantaged:
excluded from formal training;
lambasted by sexist critics; and
self-censored to safeguard feminine modesty.
Notwithstanding their commercial interests in developing public profiles and attracting clients, women could only maintain high-standing if they displayed appropriate modesty. Some did not advertise their addresses. Men faced no such strictures.
British patriarchy thus echoes what I call “The Honour-Income Trade-Off”: women may forgo earnings to maintain social esteem - as in the contemporary Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
Defying gender stereotypes
Flowers and other feminine subjects were seen as especially appropriate for women, given their ‘delicate’ nature. Swiss painter Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) instead broached what was then considered to be the highest form of art: ancient history. Female fortitude and heroines often featured in her paintings - appealing to women patrons. One reviewer wrote,
“Though a woman, she is possessed of that bold and masculine spirit which aims at the grand and sublime”.
That line is an absolute classic for patriarchs worldwide. When men are stereotyped as superior, impressive women are often likened to men.
Other criticised her subversive depictions of gender fluidity. Male figures were often shown as not strong but graceful. Satirist John Wolcott declared,
‘were she married to such gentle males
as figure in her painted tales,
I feat she’d find a stupid wedding night’.
In three short lines, Wolcott publicly reduced Kauffman to a sexualised wife, while disparages non-conforming men. Undeterred, she pressed on and actually became rather wealthy. She was one of 2 female founding members of the Royal Academy. In fact, she became such a celebrity that she was known as ‘Angelica’.
“Calling the Roll after an Engagement, Crimea” shown at the Royal Academy in 1874 achieved major acclaim. Crowds flocked to see it, newspapers praised it and royalty vied for ownership - ultimately ceding to Queen Victoria. Critic John Ruskin admitted,
“I never approached a picture with more iniquitous prejudice against it… partly because I have always said that no woman could paint.. But it is Amazon’s work.. with gradations of colour and shade which I have not seen the like of since Turner’s death”
Calling the Roll After an Engagement, Crimea, Elizabeth Butler. 1874
Critiquing Old Boys’ Clubs
“Nameless and Friendless” by Emily Osborn was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1857. It shows a young female artist offering a painting to a dealer. Lacking both reputation and social connections, she is doubly disadvantaged. Two men look on, leering.
Personally, I think this is a remarkable feminist critique, highlighting a major foundation of patriarchy: fraternal capital, men’s social ties and connections.
Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless, “The rich man’s wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty” (Proverbs: 10:15), 1857 (Tate Britain, London)
Florence Claxton was part of the UK’s organised movement for women’s rights, back in the 1850s. In “Woman’s Work: A Medley” she subversively satirises sexist confinement. A central patriarch commands attention and adoration - though, rather subversively, he is seated below a Golden Calf (i.e. a false idol). Try as they might to venture out, doors to the professions are closed. Exhibited at London’s National Institution for Fine Arts in 1861, some commended the comedy, while others disparaged it as ‘vulgar’.
The Royal Academy Schools were extremely prestigious and gave great benefits to male members - providing seven years of free tuition to all those who passed the admissions tests, instruction from leading artists, free entry to exhibitions, and opportunities to win distinguished medals, which would greatly enhance their reputations. As Joel Mokyr details in “The Enlightened Economy”, clubs and societies fuelled innovations by supporting and glorifying their members’ advances.
If you permit my amateurism, I sketched a cartoon of Mokyr’s positive feedback loop. Groups praise innovation, encouraging experimentation, which is rewarded with social esteem and prestige. These tremendous benefits were reserved for men.
Evans, not exhibited at the Royal Academy ;-)
In a letter to her friend (c. 1848-1852), artist Anna Mary Howitt bemoaned this disadvantage and called for rebellion:
“Did I tell you I went one night to hear [Charles] Leslie lecture at the Royal Academy?
Oh! How terribly did I long to be a man so as to paint there. When I saw in the first room all the students’ easels standing about - lots of canvasses and easels against the walls.. a perfect atmosphere of inspiration, and then passed on into the second room hung around with the Academicians’ inaugural pictures, one seemed stepping into a freer, larger and more earnest artistic world - a world, alas! which one’s womanhood debars one from enjoying -
Oh, I felt quite angry at being a woman, it seemed to me such a mistake but as Eliza Fox .. said, ‘nay, rather be angry with men for not admitting women to the enjoyments of this world, and instead of lamenting that we are women let us earnestly strive after a nobler state of things, let us strive to be among those women who shall first open the Academy’s door to their fellow aspirants - that would be a noble mission, would it not?”
As Amanda Clayton wrote in 1876,
the Royal Academy had “studiously ignored the existence of women artists, leaving them to work in the cold shade of utter neglect”. They were “viewed with half contemptuous indulgence”.
Despite all these restrictions, some women did resist. Male members benefited greatly, while women were locked out. But they did not take this lying down. In 1857, a group of women founded the Society of Female Artists. 1859, 38 feminist artists petitioned for access, reasoning they were held back by inadequate training. In 1860 they were finally allowed to enrol in the Royal Academy Schools. Yet they were still refused permission in the School’s life drawing classes. Feminists kept up the pressure. In 1878, they petitioned to be allowed to study from the semi-draped figure,
without such classes, “we cannot hope to rise above mediocrity”.
Rejected. In 1883, they petitioned again. Eventually in 1893, the Academy relented, but stipulated that classes must be gender segregated and models should be shrouded in a voluminous loincloth.
Britain was not only sexually puritanical, but also sexist. Women’s purity had to be protected for their own good. Furthermore, they were often considered amateurs, lacking the intellectual capacity for the highest form of art. Their entry would have polluted men’s higher status.
Until the late 19th century, Britains’s watercolour societies refused to grant women full membership, giving them no say in governance, nor financial premiums, nor rights to exhibit in annual exhibitions.
“Charing Cross Bridge”, 1984, Rose Barton. (Irish)
Amid technological advances, patriarchy persisted. When London’s Camera Club formed in 1885, women were denied entry. The ban’s defenders said that women’s presence would inhibit social occasions.
Excluded but nonetheless eager and entrepreneurial, some women organised private academies and art schools in their own homes. Henrietta Rae learnt to draw the nude at sessions organised by Margaret Isabel Dicksee - the sisterhood in action!
Sexually puritanical restrictions
“A Modern Cinderella” - exhibited in 1875 - shows an artist’s model removing her fine clothes. Louise Jopling had trained in Paris, but was publicly criticised in London. A picture dealer’s wife said “she could never hang such a thing in her house”.
This was too immodest.
Why did painting female nudes matter? Well, this was revered as the highest form of technique. As feminist Florence Fenwick observed in her review of the 1885 Royal Academy exhibition,
“There is only one road for women, as for men, to achieve eminence in Art, and that is the road of full, thorough and untrammelled study of Nature”
Conservatives were aghast, however. The Times published a letter from a concerned reader, who blamed the government art schools for permitting women to attend life drawing classes, causing ‘the degradation of their sex’. Men could of course study as they pleased, since this was ‘ancient custom’.
Henrietta Rea did not want to be restricted. Her painting - “Psyche Before the Throne of Venus” - was a great success at the 1894 Royal Academy Exhibition. The periodical The Englishwoman’s Review praised it as
“The most ambitious and successful woman’s work yet exhibited - one which could not have been executed a few years ago, when we had not the opportunity of studying from the life”.
The sisterhood in action, again!
Psyche Before the Throne of Venus, Henrietta Rae, 1894
Modernity and Sexist Exclusions
20th century modernity was distinctly subversive, with modern artists defying old traditions. Yet patriarchy was resolute. The Camden Town Group called itself ‘progressive’, while openly excluding women.
When Anna Airy received a commission for the Imperial War Museum, she became Britain’s first official woman artist. This enormous artwork (spanning 1.8 metres) was widely praised, but she herself was well aware of prejudice, commenting
Galleries and buyers felt ‘safer with a man’
Shop for Machining 15 inch shells, Glasgow. Anna Airy. 1918
Study for the L Press: Forging the Jacket of an 18 inch Gun. Anna Airy. 1918
British patriarchy was propped up by brotherhood and boys’ clubs which refused entry to women in order to prevent the pollution which might sully their own status.
Only with concerted petitioning did women collectively break down these barriers, and demonstrate their prowess.
Thank you to my co-author, Zhengdong Wang (a DeepMind), who joined me on this artistic tour! And many many thanks to my subscribers - now reaching 10,000! 😊
Dare we think this could end up as a traveling exhibition??