Penseelprinsessen & Broodschilderessen : vrouwen in de beeldende kunst 1808-1913

Abstract

Of the circa 7300 artists active in the Netherlands during the nineteenth century, roughly 1100 were women. The majority of them were forgotten after their death. The aim of this study is to shed new light on these women, focusing on their position in the art world and developments relevant to their cause. Although the nineteenth-century Dutch art world was ruled by men, female artists gained in prominence, more so than in previous centuries. They began exhibiting and selling their work more and more often. Furthermore, they became members of artists’ societies and from the eighteen fifties the academies of fine arts gradually opened their doors to female applicants. The artistic profession offered women an opportunity to support themselves, and perhaps their families, at a time when this was not yet widely accepted. Most of these women operated somewhere between professionalism and dilettantism. Most professional women artists, like their amateur counterparts, came from the higher echelons of society. Although many had alternative sources of income, they built up professional practices as painters. Dilettantes often had access to the same educational opportunities, artists’ societies and exhibitions as their professional sisters. In the nineteenth century a full-time career in the fine arts remained an option for only a few women. This changed dramatically in the following century, but the groundwork had been done by the women who wielded their pens and brushes in the nineteenth century. In spite of their gaining prominence, women artists were for a long time regarded as rare creatures, and treated accordingly. Part of the curriculum at the academies was taught in separate classes for female students; women were excluded from the normal membership of artists’ societies and their work was reviewed in isolation from that of their male colleagues. In conclusion it can be said that nineteenth-century female artists operated in a different sphere from the men, although there was an overlap. The status of women artists in the nineteenth-century art world gradually changed from rare exception to that of a regular minority