Women artists in all ages and countries

by E. F. Ellet

Henriette Felicitas Tassaert, the daughter of the famous painter, painted in pastel, and engraved in copper admirably. Mademoiselle Nohren, a pupil of Chodowiecki in Berlin, became a member of the academy.

It was natural that the greater number of artists of this period should betake themselves to painting. We will glance first at some branches of this, cultivated especially by women who did not achieve any thing noteworthy in historical and genre painting. The fashionable taste of the day ran much upon miniatures and pastel portraits, and many women made themselves accomplished in this species of work, as well as in enamel-painting, as far less study and application were required than in the higher branches of the art.

Marianna Hayd, a somewhat celebrated miniature-painter, was born in Dantzic in 1688. She pursued her profession in Berlin, and, after her marriage in 1705 to the painter Werner, in Augsburg, her talents procured for her the honor of a call to the electoral court of Saxony in Dresden, where she received an appointment, and died in 1753.

Another fair artist in miniatures was Anna Rosina Liscewska, who also worked in Berlin, where she was born in 1716. She achieved no mean success, and in 1769 was admitted a member of the academy in Dresden.

The same city was adorned by the elegant labors of Anna Maria Mengs, whom Dr. Guhl calls “the most gifted of the three sisters,” and who is styled by Fiorillo “the daughter of the Raphael of his age.” She received early instruction from her father; came to Dresden in 1751, and devoted herself to painting—chiefly portraits. She made her first journey to Rome in 1777, and there married a copper-engraver, Manuel Salvador Carmona. She had many children, but continued to exercise her art while taking care of them. She produced several pastel and miniature paintings. Her chief works, done for the King of Spain and the Infant Don Luis, are in Madrid, in the Academy of San Fernando, of which she was chosen a member. She died in Madrid, 1793.

As miniature and pastel painting are peculiarly adapted to female hands by the delicate and cleanly handling required, so flowers and landscapes seem to present objects and scenes of beauty congenial to the taste of the sex. It can not be wondered at, therefore, that these branches found several cultivators. Flower and landscape painting became a passion among the German women who could be classed as amateurs or connoisseurs. Hagedorn mentions, in his work on painting, as a distinguished patroness of these, a Countess von Oppendorf. With her may be named the Countess von Truchsetz-Waldburg, the Princess Anna Paar, and others of no special note. Maria Dorothea Dietrich, the sister of the Dresden painter, and Crescentia Schott, already mentioned, labored professionally in the art.

Many were the fair painters who imitated the famous Rachel Ruysch. The representation of animals and objects in natural history became a favorite style, and the celebrity of Madame Merian stirred up many of her sex to emulate her success. The influence of example wrought as powerfully here as in every other matter.

In the early part of this century lived at Lubeck Catharina Elizabeth Heinecke, born in 1685, an enthusiastic patroness of flower-painting, and the mother of “the famous Lubeck child.” We may mention also, amid a cloud of artists to be passed unnoticed, a family at Nuremberg, named Dietsch, that included three sisters of talent and accomplishment. Catharina Treu, born at Bamberg in 1742, obtained celebrity in the same line. She studied in Düsseldorf, attracted thither, doubtless, by the works of Rachel Ruysch, and received the appointment of cabinet-painter from Karl Theodore at Mannheim. Thence she returned to Düsseldorf to take the place of professor in the academy of art in that place.

To the same period belongs Caroline Frederika Friedrich, the first female pensionnaire who exercised her art as member of the academy in Dresden. Gertrude Metz of Cologne was also a disciple of Rachel Ruysch in Düsseldorf. Of a remaining host we name only the sisters Anna and Elizabeth Fuessli (Fuseli), who painted in the style of their father, and copied from nature the flowers and insects of Switzerland.

Copper-engraving was at this period practiced by a great number of women, and patronized by many fair and princely dilettanti. The Princess of Saxe-Meiningen, already named, possessed skill in this branch. We may now leave all these, to look at the women who distinguished themselves in the more commanding and elevated styles of historical and genre painting. Here appears more evidence of individuality in the treatment of particular subjects.