WHAT WOMEN HAVE ACCOMPLISHED IN ART.
As is familiar to every student of the classic past the Greeks and Romans hailed a female deity, Pallas Athene, or Minerva, as the protectress of their arts and industries. She was believed to have invented spinning, weaving, embroidering, painting, and every other handicraft that has brought mankind comfort and happiness.
Of course this goddess had many eager women disciples. There was hardly any Greek or Roman woman without a thorough command of the above named crafts. Since the days of Homer, who praised Penelope, the beautiful wife of Ulysses, for her skill in tapestry-weaving, all women devoted themselves to useful arts. In Ephesus Pliny admired a picture of Diana, painted by Timarata, the gifted daughter of an able artist. He also praises Laya for her excellent miniature portraits on ivory, which were held in great favor by the rich ladies of Rome. The names of several other female artists are known, but unfortunately none of their works have come down to us.
Enthusiastic authors of the Middle Ages glorify Agnes, Abbess of Quedlinburg, for her great skill in illuminating manuscripts with figures, beautiful initial letters and elaborate border ornaments, which she enriched with all the splendor of color and gilding.
It was only natural, that the magnificent works of art, produced by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Correggio, Tintoretto and other great masters of the Italian Renaissance, inspired the women who came in daily contact with these men; especially their daughters, many of whom inherited their fathers’ enthusiasm for beauty and art. Constantly witnessing the origin and progress of the products of their fathers’ genius, it could not fail that such women likewise devoted themselves to art. As did Lavinia Fontana, the daughter of Prospero Fontana of Bologna, whom Michael Angelo recommended to Pope Julius III., in whose service he remained for many years. Lavinia was born in Rome in 1552. Inspired by her father’s art, she too won great fame. The old patrician palaces of Rome, Bologna, and other Italian cities still contain many portraits of beautiful women and illustrious men, who once were among her sitters. She likewise painted various other works which show great care and delicacy.
Among her most admired works are a Venus, now in the Museum at Berlin; the Virgin lifting a veil from the sleeping infant Christ, now in the Escurial; and the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon. Her masterpiece, however, is her own portrait, which shows her in all her radiant beauty.
Sofonisba Anguisciola, born in 1533 at Cremona, likewise ranks high among the foremost portrait painters of the 16th Century. On recommendation of the Duke of Alba, Philippe II., King of Spain, invited her to his court in Madrid, where she was received with extraordinary honors. Here she painted numerous portraits of the king as well as of the queen, the infantas and the members of the court. A few specimens of her art are still to be seen in the Escurial at Madrid and at Florence. Van Dyck acknowledged himself more benefited by her than by his study of all other masters.
Marietta Tintoretto, born in 1560, a daughter of the great Venetian artist Jacopo Robusti, commonly called Tintoretto, was one of the most appreciated portrait painters in the “Queen City of the Adriatic.” She was so favorably known for the beauty of her work and the exactness of resemblance that she was solicited by Emperor Maximilian as well as by Philippe II., King of Spain, to visit their courts. But her affectionate attachment to her father was so great that she declined these honors, and remained in Venice, where she died in 1590.
The 17th Century likewise produced a number of excellent women artists. Bologna, the birth-place of so many famous men and women, was also the native town of Elizabeth Sirani, who, born in 1638 to Gian Andrea Sirani, a painter of some reputation, attracted attention to her attempts at drawing when scarcely more than an infant. Her rare talents developed as she grew older. Before she had attained her eighteenth year, she had finished several paintings, which were greatly admired and given places of honor in various churches. Her most admired work, a Lord’s Supper, grand in conception, is in the church of the Certosini, and is considered one of the best examples of the Bolognesian School of art. Unfortunately this promising woman died suddenly when only twenty-seven years of age.
Rosalba Carriera, a Venetian, born in 1675, became famous over all Europe for her admirable miniature- and crayon- or pastel-portraits, which, through her, became the fashion of the 18th Century.
Among the Dutch artists of the 17th Century Maria van Osterwyck and Rachel Ruisch excelled in painting flowers and fruits. Elisabeth Cheron, a French woman, born in Paris in 1648, was famous for her miniatures and historical subjects.
England too had some fine women artists: Mary Beale, born 1632 in Suffolk, and Anne Killigrew, born in London. Both are known for excellent portraits of notable persons. The National Portrait Gallery in London contains for instance Mary Beale’s portraits of King Charles II., of the Duke of Norfolk, and of Cowley.
MARIE S. LeBRUN WITH HER DAUGHTER.
After her own painting.
The 18th Century produced two women artists, who were among the leaders of their time: Angelica Kauffmann and Marie LeBrun. Angelica Kauffmann, the daughter of an artist, was born in 1740 at Coire in Switzerland, from where she went later on to Italy, to study the great masters. In 1765 she came to London. Here she painted many excellent portraits as well as numerous classic and allegorical subjects. In 1781 she returned to Italy. Here she was always much feted and admired for her talents as well as for her personal charm. Goethe, who met Angelica Kauffmann in Rome, admired her works very much. “No living painter,” so he wrote in a letter, “excels her in dignity or in the delicate taste with which she handles the pencil.” And Raphael Mengs, one of the most brilliant artists of the Rococo, praised her in the following words: “As an artist Angelica Kauffmann is the pride of the female sex in all times and all nations. Nothing is wanting; composition, coloring, fancy, all are here.” When she died in November, 1807, she was honored by a splendid funeral under the direction of Canova. The entire Academy of St. Luke at Rome with numerous ecclesiastics and virtuosi followed her funeral train and, as at the burial of Raphael, two of her latest paintings were carried behind her coffin in the procession.
Of Madame LeBrun, who was born in 1755 in France, it has been said that “a more ideal artist never lived.” The well-known portrait of herself and her daughter has been termed “the tenderest of all pictures.” She also painted several portraits of the unfortunate Queen Marie Antoinette. The Louvre has one of her best paintings: “Peace bringing back Abundance.”
Madame LeBrun was one of the most prolific artists of all times. In her autobiography, entitled “Souvenirs,” she states that she finished six hundred and sixty-two portraits, fifteen large compositions, and two hundred landscapes, the latter sketched during her travels in Switzerland and England.
During the 18th Century Germany was the scene of the greatest activity of women artists. France held the second place and Italy the third, thus reversing the conditions of preceding centuries. Flanders and Antwerp too were famous for women artists, some of whom went to other countries where they were recognized for their talent and attainments.
The most famous woman artist of the 19th Century was Rosa Bonheur, born in 1832 at Bordeaux, the daughter of Raymond Bonheur, an artist of merit. From him she received her first instructions. In 1841 she began exhibiting in the Paris Salon, with several small animal paintings, indicating the direction in which she was to attain her future eminence. Her great success in painting animals was due to her conscientious study of living subjects. One of her masterpieces, “Plowing with Oxen,” ranks among the gems of the Luxembourg. Another excellent painting, “The Horse Fair,” was the chief attraction of the Paris Salon in 1853, and later on became the property of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Of all animal paintings ever executed, this one is perhaps the most animated, and the best in composition as well as in color. Another canvass, “Horses Threshing Corn,” shows the same merits. Containing ten horses in full life size, it is the largest animal picture ever produced.
THE HORSE FAIR.
After the painting by Rosa Bonheur in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Another painting, “The Monarch of the Glen,” received much praise at the World’s Columbian Exposition.
In just appreciation of her genius Rosa Bonheur was proposed in 1853 for the Cross of the Legion of Honor, but because of her sex the decoration was withheld until 1865.—
One of the four daughters of an early German pioneer of California, who distinguished themselves in different lines of activity, Anne Elizabeth Klumpke followed in the footsteps of Rosa Bonheur, of whom she became a close friend, and who, in appreciation of her great talent, bequeathed to her her beautiful chateau as well as her entire fortune.
The second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th Century produced a surprising abundance of women artists, some of whom gained the most coveted prizes and medals offered by the great annual exhibitions in Paris, London, Berlin, Munich and other centers of art. Clara Erskine Clemens in her book “Women in the Fine Arts” has compiled notes about several hundred of them, without enumerating them all. To mention a few of the most excellent, we name of the German artists Louise Parmentier Begas, Tina Blau, Dora Hitz, Lucia von Gelder, Herminie von Janda, Countess Marie Kalckreuth, Minna Stock, Toni Stadler, Frieda Ritter, Margarethe von Schack, Vilma Parlaghy, and Margarethe Waldau.
Italy names among its best modern painters Alceste Campriani, Ada Negri, Juana Romani, Erminia de Sanctis, and Clelia Bompiani.
The French extol the genius of Louise Labé, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Louise Ackermann.
Belgium and Holland number among their women artists Therese Schwartze, Adele Kindt and Henriette Ronner; Spain points with pride to the works of Fernanda Frances y Arribas, Adele Gines and Antonia de Banuelos. Denmark’s famous artist, Elizabet Jerichau Baumann, is remembered especially for her magnificent painting “Christian Martyrs in the Catacombs”; Switzerland has two portraitists of the first order, Louise Catherine Breslau and Aimée Rapin, while Russia produced in Marie Bashkirttseff an artist of rare ability.
Perhaps in no other country is the number of female artists so large as in England. We will name only a few of them. Laura Alma Tadema was the gifted daughter of the famous artist Laurenz Alma Tadema. Margaret Sarah Carpenter won wide reputation as a gifted portrait painter. Ethel Wright’s beautiful painting “The Song of the Ages” belongs to the best examples of English art. Clara Montalba is favorably known for her splendid scenes of Venice, and landscapes of the Adriatic coasts. Elizabeth Thompson demonstrated by many excellent sketches and pictures that women are not afraid to make a specialty of battle scenes.
Ambitious American women are likewise hard at work gaining honor and laurels in the various fields of art. The morning promises fair, as there are already many shining names upon the scroll. To begin with one of the middle of the last century, we mention Cornelia Adele Facett, whose chief work, “The Election Commission in Open Session,” contains 258 portraits of men and women, prominent in the political, literary, scientific and social circles of their time. It adorns the Senate Chamber in the Capitol at Washington.
The most brilliant woman artist of the United States is without question Cecilia Beaux, a Philadelphian, who, as a portrait painter, compares with the very best of any nation. Her portrait of a “Girl in White,” owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, verifies what a critic said about her: “Miss Beaux has approached the task of painting the society woman of to-day, not as one to whom this type is known only by exterior, but with a sympathy as complete as a similar tradition and artistic temperament will allow. Thus she starts with an advantage denied to all but a very few American portrait painters, and this explains the instinctive way in which she gives to her pictured subjects an air of natural ease and good breeding.”
Sadie Waters, born in St. Louis, produced a number of religious paintings, her best and largest showing the Madonna in a bower of roses.
Violet Oakley of New Jersey had a prominent part in decorating the new Capitol at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, one of the most elaborate and costly public buildings in America. The mural painting “The Romance of the Founding of the State” in the Governor’s room is her work.
Anna Mary Richards excelled as a marine painter. Her large canvass “The Wild Horses of the Sea” has been especially admired.
Anny Shaw, Grace Hudson, Lucie Fairchild Fuller, Mary Cassatt, and Matilde Lotz are among the latest women artists of America, favorably known for many creditable works.
Although comparatively few women have devoted themselves to sculpture, there are several among them well worth mentioning.
The first female sculptor of whom anything is known, was Sabina von Steinbach, a daughter of Erwin von Steinbach, the famous architect of the magnificent cathedral at Strassburg, in Alsace. After the southern portal of this minster had been erected, Sabina adorned it with the statues of the apostles, one of which, that of John, held in his hands a scroll with the following inscription:
“Gratia divinæ pietatis adesto Savinæ,
De petra dura per quam sum facta figura.”
“The grace of God be with thee, O Sabina,
Whose hands from this hard stone have formed my image.”
Nothing further is known about this artist of the end of the 13th Century.
Properzia de Rossi was an Italian woman sculptor, born near the end of the 15th Century at Bologna or Modena. The first-named city cherishes still a number of her works, among them a fine marble statue of Count Guido de Pepoli, and several figures that adorn the three gates of the facade of St. Petroneus. Vasari in his biographies of celebrated artists calls her “a virtuous maiden, possessing every merit of her sex, together with science and learning all men may envy.” And when she died in 1530, the following epitaph was written in her praise:
Fero splendor di due begit occhi accrebbe
Gia marmi a marmi; e stupor nuovo e strano
Ruvidi marmi delicta mano
Fea dianzi vivi, ahi! morte invidia n’ebbe.
In modern Germany Anna von Kahle, Marie Schlafhorst, Dora Beer, Helene Quitmann, Henny Geyer Spiegel and Lilly Finzelberg have done much excellent work.
In France several statues by Jeanne Hasse, a Parisian, have been purchased by the government and presented to various provincial museums.
In England Mary Thornycroft, daughter and pupil of John Francis, the sculptor, has won the praise of the severest critics.
In America Annie Whitney’s statue of “Lady Godiva” as well as her “Africa” and “Roma” have been much praised.
Helen Farnworth Mears is well known for her “Fountain of Life.” Vinnie Ream Hoxie modelled a life-size statue of Lincoln, which stands in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington. A statue of Farragut in Farragut Square is by the same artist.
Another American woman sculptor of renown was Harriet Hosmer, born in 1830 in Watertown, Mass. Having received her first instruction in Boston and St. Louis, she went to Rome in 1852 where she became a pupil of Gibson. Of her various works, the best known are “Beatrice Cenci in Her Cell”; “Willo’-the-Wisp”; “The Sleeping and the Waking Faun”; and a colossal statue of “Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, in Chains.” She exhibited a statue of Queen Isabella of Spain at the World’s Columbian Exposition. A statue of “Puck” was so spirited and original, that it was ordered more than thirty times, is also her work.
Emma Stebbins (1815–1882) produced a statue of Horace Mann for Boston, and a large fountain for Central Park, New York, the subject being “The Angel of the Waters.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has in its collections several works by Frances Grimes, Laura Gardin, Malvina Hoffman, and Evelyn Longman. Miss Hoffman’s best known work, “The Russian Bachanale,” showing two almost nude dancing figures in bronze, was in 1919 presented by an American connoisseur to the famous Gardens of the Luxembourg in Paris.
The United States of America produced also the first women architects. In 1881 Louise Bethune took the lead. Somewhat later the New York firm Hands & Gannon, both members of which were women, designed the plans for numerous schools, hospitals, and model homes for the working people. Elizabeth Holman in Philadelphia became favorably known for her excellent designs for theatres, hotels, and cottages. Mrs. Wagner in Pittsburgh made a specialty of university buildings, churches and chapels.
Miss Sophie G. Hayden of Boston, a graduate of the architectural school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the architect of the beautiful Women’s Pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition. The task of adorning this building with sculptures, emblematic of woman’s great work in the world, was after an extremely vigorous contest awarded to Miss Alice Rideout, of San Francisco. Women architects likewise designed the imposing woman’s palaces at the expositions in St. Louis, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Since then the number of women in this line of activity has steadily increased. According to the Census of 1910 the United States had in that year 1037 women architects, designers and draftsmen.
Thus we find woman hard at work in all the various realms of art. And since her joy in beauty is supreme, we may well expect that her expression of the highest beauty, the spiritual, will in time favorably compare with that of her brother-artists.