Women artists in all ages and countries

by E. F. Ellet

“Men have not grudged to women,” says a modern writer, “the wreaths of literary fame. No history of literature shows a period when their influence was not apparent, when honors were not rendered to them;” and the social condition of woman has been generally allowed to measure the degree of intellectual culture in a nation. Although in the realm of art her success is more questionable, she may yet claim the credit of having materially aided its progress. Woman is the type of the ornamental part of our life, and lends to existence the charm which inspires the artist, and furnishes him with an object for effort. Her native unconscious grace and beauty present the models which it is his highest merit to copy faithfully.

A New England divine says, “Woman, like man, wants to make her thought a thing.” “All that belongs to the purely natural,” observes Hippel, “lies within her sphere.” The kind of painting, thus, in which the object is prominent has been most practiced by female artists. Portraits, landscapes, flowers, and pictures of animals are in favor among them. Historical or allegorical subjects they have comparatively neglected; and, perhaps, a sufficient reason for this has been that they could not command the years of study necessary for the attainment of eminence in these. More have been engaged in engraving on copper than in any other branch of art, and many have been miniature painters.

Such occupations might be pursued in the strict seclusion of home, to which custom and public sentiment consigned the fair student. Nor were they inharmonious with the ties of friendship and love to which her tender nature clung. In most instances women have been led to the cultivation of art through the choice of parents or brothers. While nothing has been more common than to see young men embracing the profession against the wishes of their families and in the face of difficulties, the example of a woman thus deciding for herself is extremely rare.

We know little of the practice of the arts by women in ancient times. The degraded condition of the sex in Eastern countries rendered woman the mere slave and toy of her master; but this very circumstance gave her artistic ideas capable of development into independent action. These first showed themselves in the love of dress and the selection of ornaments. From the early ages of the world, too, spinning and weaving were feminine employments, in which undying germs of art were hidden; for it belongs to human nature never to be satisfied with what merely ministers to necessity. The ancient sepulchres and buried palaces disclosed by modern discovery display the love of adornment prevailing among the nations of antiquity. Women rendered assistance in works upon wood and metal, as well as, more frequently, in the productions of the loom. The fair Egyptians covered their webs with the most delicate patterns; and the draperies of the dead and the ornamented hangings in their dwellings attested the skill of the women of Assyria and Babylon.

The shawls and carpets of Eastern manufacture, and other articles of luxury that furnished the palaces of European monarchs, were often the work of delicate hands, though no tradition has preserved the names of those who excelled in such labors.

Among the ancient Greeks the position of woman, though still secluded and slavish, gave her a nobler life. The presiding deities of the gentle arts were represented to popular apprehension in female form, and, doubtless, the gracious influence the sex has in all ages exercised was then in some measure recognized. Poetry had her fair votaries, and names are still remembered that deserve to live with Sappho. Schools of philosophy were presided over by the gifted and cultivated among women.

Sculpture and architecture, the arts carried to greatest perfection, were then far in advance of painting; at least, we know of no relics that can support the pretensions of the Greeks to superiority in the latter. “What is left,” says a writer in the “Westminster Review,” “of Apelles and Zeuxis? The few relics of ancient painting which have survived the lapse of ages and the hand of the spoiler all date from the time of the Roman Empire; and neither the frescoes discovered beneath the baths of Titus, the decorations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, nor even the two or three cabinet pictures found beneath the buried city, can be admitted as fair specimens of Grecian painting in its zenith.”

THE DAUGHTER OF DIBUTADES.

But, though few Grecian women handled the pencil or the chisel, and women were systematically held in a degree of ignorance, we find here, on the threshold of the history of art, a woman’s name—that of Kora, or, as she has been called, Callirhoe, the daughter of a potter named Dibutades, a native of Corinth, said to have resided at Sicyonia about the middle of the seventh century before Christ. Pliny tells us she assisted her father in modeling clay. The results of his labor were arranged on shelves before his house, which the purchasers usually left vacant before evening. It was the office of his daughter, says a fanciful chronicler, to fill the more elaborate vases with choice flowers, which the young men came early to look at, hoping to catch a glimpse of the graceful artist maiden.

As she went draped in her veil to the market-place, she often met a youth, who afterward became an assistant to her father in his work. He was skilled in much learning unknown to the secluded girl, and in playing on the reed; and the daily life of father, daughter, and lover presented an illustration of Grecian life and beauty. The youth was constrained at length to depart, but ere he went the vows of betrothal were exchanged between him and Kora.