Women, Art and Money in England establishes the importance of women artists' commercial dealings to their professional identities and reputations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Grounded in economic, social and art history, the book draws on and synthesises data from a broad range of documentary and archival sources to present a comprehensive history of women artists' professional status and business relationships within the complex and changing art market of late-Victorian England.
By providing new insights into the routines and incomes of women artists, and the spaces where they created, exhibited and sold their art, this book challenges established ideas about what women had to do to be considered 'professional' artists. More important than a Royal Academy education or membership to exhibiting societies was a woman's ability to sell her work. This meant that women had strong incentive to paint in saleable, popular and 'middlebrow' genres, which reinforced prejudices towards women's 'naturally' inferior artistic ability – prejudices that continued far into the twentieth century.
From shining a light on the difficult to trace pecuniary arrangements of little researched artists like Ethel Mortlock to offering new and direct comparisons between the incomes earned by male and female artists, and the genres, commissions and exhibitions that earned women the most money, Women, Art and Money is a timely contribution to the history of women's working lives that is relevant to a number of scholarly disciplines.
Author(s): Maria Quirk
Series: Contextualizing Art Markets
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 248
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Series Editor’s Introduction
Introduction: Money, Professionalism and Reputation
England’s art world in the late nineteenth century
The state of the field
Methodology and sources
Notes
Part 1: From Student to Studio
Chapter 1: Training for the Market
Education and the professional ideal
Market-specific training
A school fit for women
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 2: Commerce and Family in the Home Studio
Married life in the studio
The family studio as community hub
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 3: Single Ladies and Studio Celebrities
Performing studio life
Studios and the single girl
Conclusion
Notes
Part 2: Commerce, Enterprise, Display
Chapter 4: Academy Politics
Reforming art’s aristocracy?
The politics of membership
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 5: Members of the Club
The exhibition marketplace
Exhibition gatekeepers
No men allowed
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 6: Making a Living through Middle-Class Demand
The business of art in late nineteenth-century London
Commercial galleries
The role of art dealers
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 7: Portraiture and Patronage
The business of portraiture
Attracting patronage
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 8: Illustrating Success
Press and book illustration
Cards, valentines and printed ephemera
Conclusion
Notes
Conclusion
Notes
Appendix 1: Artist Biographies
Elizabeth Butler (nee Thompson) 1846–1933
Evelyn De Morgan (nee Pickering) 1855–1919
Gertrude Demain Hammond 1862–1952 and Christiana Demain Hammond 1860–1900
Elizabeth Forbes (nee Armstrong) 1859–1912
Maude Goodman 1853–1938
Kate Greenaway 1846–1901
Gwen John 1876–1939
Louise Jopling (nee Goode) 1843–1933
Lucy Kemp-Welch 1869–1958
Laura Knight (nee Johnson) 1877–1970
Gertrude Massey (nee Seth) 1868–1957
Henrietta Rae 1859–1928
Ethel Wright 1866–1939
Appendix 2: A Selection of Price Comparisons between Male and Female Artists of the late Victorian and Edwardian Period
Landscape, garden and animal pictures
Subject and genre pictures
Classical subject and late pre-Raphaelite pictures
Purchased by the Chantrey Bequest
Yearly incomes
Notes
Select Bibliography
Online resources
Select primary sources
Select newspapers and journals
Archives
Index
