Women Painters of the World Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRITISH SCHOOL, CONTEMPORARY FROM THE ORIGINAL PEN-DRAWING Miss Jessie M. King, Ill.u.s.trator]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MUSIC LESSON Mrs. J. M. Swan, Painter PANEL OF A SCREEN AFTER THE ORIGINAL PAINTING Miss Amy Sawyer, Painter]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRITISH AND AMERICAN SCHOOLS, CONTEMPORARY.

OPHELIA. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY THE AUTOTYPE CO., NEW OXFORD STREET, LONDON Miss Offor (Mrs. F. Littler), Painter, England.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRAYER. AFTER THE ORIGINAL PICTURE, FROM A CARBON-PRINT PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN, CLeMENT & CO., PARIS Mrs.

Cecilia Wentworth, Painter, U.S.A., America.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CONTEMPORARY THE PEACE BALL AFTER THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: THE FRENCH OFFICERS, LAFAYETTE AND ROCHAMBEAU, BEING INTRODUCED TO WASHINGTON'S MOTHER. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF C. KLACKNER, HAYMARKET, LONDON Miss Jennie Browns...o...b.., Painter]

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CONTEMPORARY.

PORTRAIT. REPRODUCED FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING KINDLY LENT BY THE ARTIST.

Miss Cecilia Beaux, Painter.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CONTEMPORARY THE BAMBOO FENCE. FROM A WOODCUT DESIGNED IN THE j.a.pANESE MANNER AND PRINTED IN COLOURS BY j.a.pANESE WORKMEN. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF C. KLACKNER, NEW YORK, U.S.A., AND 12, HAYMARKET, LONDON. DATE OF COPYRIGHT, 1904 Miss Helen Hyde, Designer]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRENCH SCHOOL, 1755-1842 Portrait of Madame Vigee Le Brun and her Daughter. After the painting in the Louvre, from a Photograph by Braun, Clement & Co., Paris Madame elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, Painter 1755-1842]

Of Women Painters in France

By Leonce Benedite. Translated into English by Edgar Preston

Woman in Art is a fruitful subject. It is both psychological and aesthetic, involving as it does a question of paramount interest. At the same time it includes a special up-to-date character, by virtue of the grave questions arising from the position of woman in our social system of to-day. It is, indeed, the position of woman which has for so long a period set limits to her production of creations of the mind, and her position has had a distinct bearing on her inspiration.

Thus it will be grasped, in these times of ours when the movement for the total emanc.i.p.ation of woman has commenced, and when the first franchises granted to her have already borne conclusive results, how it is that our honoured colleague, the editor of this book, has been led, both as an artist and as a writer on art, to conduct a sort of historical examination enabling one to understand the position woman has won in the realms of art in the past, and permitting one to foresee the place she is called upon to occupy in the future.

With regard to the productions of the mind, it becomes necessary to establish a well-defined distinction, at least in so far as the past, anterior to the 19th century, is concerned, between the position of women artists and that of literary women. The literary woman, like the man of letters, was not subjected to any special obligation beyond the official sanction granting her the privilege of publication--a sanction which bore only on the question of morals and religion. Every woman was free to write without let or hindrance, without any preliminary education, and even without going through the formalities of publication or the necessities of printing, since a famous woman like Madame de Sevigne owed her celebrity to letters which were not destined to be made public. This explains the number of charming writers among women who have added l.u.s.tre to French literature by their novels, stories, or simply by their letters, and enables one to realise how these women authors are, in contradistinction to women artists, persons of high standing. The chronicles of the Hotel de Rambouillet const.i.tute an interesting little chapter in the history of letters in France, just as the "Precieuses Ridicules" or the "Femmes Savantes" of Moliere reveal to us the defects and eccentricities into which the literary pretensions of the feminine world had fallen in the 17th century. It cannot, however, be denied that the fair s.e.x freely infused into the literature of that period spontaneity, life and spirit, piquancy, affectation, and the delicate sentiments inherent to its nature, and that it had its share of influence on French taste at that time.

Altogether different is the position of their sisters, the women-painters. Let us first look into that of the men. Painters formerly were part of a Guild such as that of the Drapers, Bakers and Butchers, and in their case it was a Guild which was far from occupying the first place in the hierarchy of Guilds. The Butchers were beyond doubt higher up in the scale than the painters. The painters were subjected to narrow and despotic regulations; rigorous conditions governed both apprenticeship and mastership, conditions hardly encouraging to those who had a vocation, more especially in the case of women, ill-protected by the weakness of their s.e.x, by prevalent custom, and ill-adapted for the struggle. The _regime_ of the Academies, which followed that of the Guilds, did not bring in its wake conditions in any degree profitable to womankind. The Academie de Saint-Luc, while pretending to safeguard the professional interests of artists, displayed such tyrannical pretensions that a certain number of artists rose in revolt against it, and appealed to the Royal power, which, approached by its chief painter, Charles Le Brun, came to their rescue, by helping them to found the celebrated Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (1666). The Academie Royale proved itself somewhat more liberal. It set no limits to the reception of those who seemed worthy of its suffrages; we know that it welcomed into its bosom a number of strangers of merit, and that it opened its doors to women. Therein lies a victory of appreciable importance, if one considers the energy and the talent which women artists were compelled to display, in order to conquer ancient prejudices in so signal a fashion. Henceforth a place was a.s.signed in art to women, a place still hedged in with limitations, and which could be attained only by the few privileged ones. For, in its turn, the Academie served the purpose of a few, but not that of the many. The Academie reserved the monopoly of exhibitions exclusively for its members; and artists who did not, in one way or other, belong to this congregation, were allowed to exhibit their works in public only once a year. It was on the one day of the Octave of Corpus Christi, for a s.p.a.ce of two hours, in the open air, and within the circ.u.mference of the Place Dauphine.

All great artists had to submit to this treatment, ere they could force the portals of the Academie. But times have changed! Our contemporaries, so inconstant, so impatient, who wear out the attention of the public by the excessive multiplicity of their exhibitory manifestations, should occasionally think of the conditions under which their forerunners laboured.

Imagine a woman placed in the midst of these quarrels and struggles of rival Academies, with men in strong and often fierce antagonism on all sides of her; picture not only these general difficulties, but those of a more particular sort which arise from the disabilities of her s.e.x, her subordinate state; think of the drawbacks--the prejudices, the _convenances_ to be considered, and then the embarra.s.sing promiscuity of life in studio and school, particularly as regards the study from the living model--and one can realise how brave, how energetic, or how ambitious must be the woman who would win the t.i.tle of Artist.

It is clear that the Royal Academy's liberal measure in opening its doors to women of talent was an event of some importance, from the moral point of view at any rate. It was the public recognition of woman's capacity in matters of art, the official consecration of merit which might come to light; also it afforded a goal to strive for--a goal hard to reach and very remote, doubtless, but still a goal possible of attainment to the most courageous and the most hopeful among women. The real, as distinct from the moral, advantages were, however, rather limited. From 1663, the date which marks the admission of the first woman artist, to 1783, when the last was admitted--that is to say during a period of eighty years--exactly fifteen women painters were elected, and among them were three foreigners. In 1770, indeed, on the nomination of Mlle. Giroust, wife of Roslin, the painter, it was decided that, as there were already in the company two other women previously elected, there must not be more than four women in all within the Academy. This measure of restriction was renewed in 1783 and ratified by Royal ordinance on the election of Mme. Vigee Le Brun.

Nevertheless there was an appreciable number of women artists in France throughout the course of the 18th century. Their social rank was strictly confined. There were no "women of quality," such as were to be found in the world of letters, no representatives of the _bourgeoisie_ even. The women artists, with very rare exceptions, all belonged to artist families. They were the wives, the daughters, the sisters or the nieces of artists, and this tradition, as we shall see, even continued long into the 19th century. Catherine d.u.c.h.emin, the first woman elected to the Academy, was the wife of the sculptor, Girardon, while Genevieve and Madelaine Boulogne, both academicians, were related to distinguished painters of that name. Mlle. Reboul was Mme. Vien, and Mme. Labille des Vertus became Mme. Vincent on her second marriage. Then we have Mlle. Natoire, sister of the director of the Academy of France, Catherine van Loo, one of the innumerable family of Van Loo, Mme. de Valsaureaux, _nee_ Parrocel, of the no less numerous family of Parrocel, Mme. Therbouch, _nee_ Liscewska, all this family, father, mother, and daughters alike, being painters; and Mme.

Vigee herself, who married the picture dealer Le Brun, was the daughter of a portrait painter.

During the 17th and 18th centuries these great artist families intermarried to such an extent as to form a series of veritable dynasties--for instance, those of the Coypels, the Coustous, the Van Loos, the Boulognes, the Parrocels, and the Vernets, to name but a few of the most renowned. Artist families became allied just as do those of lawyers and merchants. Thus their social life grew more limited, each category more and more distinct and apart, for these artist families rarely strayed beyond their own _milieu_. And those very circ.u.mstances which tended to r.e.t.a.r.d the development of the artistic calling in woman exerted their influence over the inspiration of the female artist. The impossibility of pursuing very far the study of anatomical drawing, owing to the nudity of the model, diverted them almost entirely to the studies of observation and of imitation, to portrait work, and flowers and animals and still-life. Later, when they obtained greater liberty, they devoted themselves to _genre_ of a size and kind demanding less substantial preparation. But as for composition, they never touched "history," as it was termed--that is, lofty, heroic or allegorical subjects--and if there should chance to have been any exception to this rule, it was simply in the direction of religious _motifs_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRENCH SCHOOL, ABOUT 1793-1824 Portrait of Gaetano Apollino Balda.s.sare Vestris, Dancer (1729-1808). Reproduced from a Photograph by permission of Braun, Clement & Co., Paris Madame Adele Romany, nee de Romance, Painter exhibited from 1793 to 1824]

Further, they long affected what may be called medium processes: pastel, water-colour, miniature, all kinds of work offering opportunity of finish and _eclat_. They showed a partiality for oil painting after the manner of the smaller Dutch masters, who had no more faithful imitators in all France. Mme. Vien, Mme. de Valsaureaux, _nee_ Parrocel, and particularly Mme. Vallayer Coster--"_femme qui fut un habile homme_," according to the verses written in her honour--excelled in this style.

Some of the "_Academistes_"--to use the old French expression--won real celebrity, but few there were who achieved lasting glory. In the reign of Louis XIV, the woman artist whose reputation shone with the clearest l.u.s.tre was Elisabeth Sophie Cheron, who excelled in all the arts--for she was a clever painter, a consummate musician, a poet of merit and _femme d'esprit_ into the bargain. Following the general rule she belonged to one of the numerous artist families. Daughter of a painter (Louis Cheron), she was also sister of a painter. This latter, who was her junior, had talent, but not to the extent of the elder. elisabeth Sophie Cheron was of Huguenot family, as was frequently the case among the Academicians, although, from what absurd prejudice I know not, the _reformes_ were regarded as less artistic than other folk. But in 1668,--she was twenty then--terrified no doubt by the ever-increasing persecution of the Protestants--a persecution which was soon to result in the Edict of Nantes--she, like her sister, abjured her faith, whereas her brother, remaining true to the family faith, was forced to take refuge in London, where he died.[1]

[1] Several Academiciens of the reformed religion were excluded, or obliged to submit to the Catholic religion.

Sophie translated into French the Psalms of David, which her brother ill.u.s.trated admirably, and she has left at least one important engraved work, but above all, she has left a number of portraits of well-known people of her time, portraits that the sitters made her copy four and even five times.

Among other "_Academistes_," interesting if not so well known, was that sister of the "_Visitandine_" order, Anne Marie Tresor, who decorated with religious subjects the church of the monastery of the "Dames de Ste. Marie de Chaillot." She was received by the Academy in 1676, and the choice of the Academy showed, as its accepted members were of such different views, that the body was after all somewhat broad in character. Another proof of this liberal spirit is to be found in the fact that the Academy received foreign artists within its body. There were three of them; the first was Mlle. Haverman, of Dutch origin, who was, however, excluded shortly after her election--she attempted to justify her election by sending in a painting which was not her own, but the work of her master, Van Huysum. The second foreign "_Academiste_" was specially ill.u.s.trious and worthy of the honour conferred on her. She was Rosalba Carriera, a Venetian, a woman who was really original, and whose reputation has lived through the centuries, but about whom, in this chapter devoted to France, I must not speak at length. The last of the three was Mme. Terbouche, or, more exactly, Therbousch, who, although born in 1728 at Berlin, was numbered by our old museum catalogues in the ranks of the French School.

May 31st, 1783, was an exceptionally important date for the Academy, in respect of women artists. On that day were received Mme. Vigee Le Brun and Mme. Adelade Labille Guyard (or Guiard). One may say that at that very hour began officially the rivalry which constantly existed between the two women, both of real merit, throughout their careers--a rivalry which has been maintained in the preference shown for one or the other, after death, by their historians. Mme. Vigee Le Brun was the more celebrated of the two, and rightly so, for one might say that of all the women painters of her time she had a personality quite her own, quite feminine, rich in grace, ease, variety of att.i.tude, gesture and composition, discreet and delicate affectedness, freshness and brightness. Mme. Vigee Le Brun was the daughter of a somewhat mediocre painter, and the wife of a well-known picture dealer, whom she married when quite young. She had lessons from Doyen, Greuze and Joseph Vernet, and her success was quickly achieved. Mlle. Adelade Labille des Vertus, the daughter of a mercer, was married to a certain Guyard, a neighbour. She did not live long with him, and had lessons from an old friend, the painter Vincent (the father), and afterwards from La Tour. While Mme. Le Brun, whose work was admired by Marie Antoinette, was supported by the Court, Mme. Guyard secretly made friends in the body of the Academy itself, painting the portraits of first one member and then another. On the day of the election, she seemed to be overcoming her rival, whom her friends succeeded in putting on one side because the rules of the Academy forbade the traffic in pictures.

Mme. Le Brun was received only by order of the King. Her own autobiography, as well as the pamphlets of the time, depict for us the powerful rivalry which existed, and also the many calumnies with which the three women painters were attacked (there was a third candidate, Mme. Vallayer Coster), even in their private life, the persecution of offensive insinuations, and the existence of the accusation so often levelled against women painters, that their work is not their own.

Posterity has reconciled the rivals on the walls of our galleries. If Mme. Vigee Le Brun certainly holds pride of place, Mme. Guyard, by her more solid talent, perhaps more characteristic, has an enviable position at her side.

By the side of these celebrated women there are a few others of whom the recollection is not quite so keen, but who were not without a touching grace, though they lived their life within the sphere of their masters' influence, illuminated by the renown of these masters and breathing their atmosphere. It would not be right to say that these women artists copied their masters, or slavishly imitated them, but they transposed their qualities, elevated them by feminising them.

Of these, I may mention Mlle. Ledoux, who followed in the wake of Greuze; Mlle. Marguerite Gerard, who lived under the shadow of Fragonard; and that exquisite and sorrowful figure, Mlle. Constance Mayer, whose devotion for her master Prudhon found its supreme expression in her tragic end. Less brilliant, rather hidden in the twilight of history, these women yet exercise on our thoughts an influence more subtle and delicate, and more penetrating.

The approach of the great national crisis, and even the worst days of that period, at the same time glorious yet barbaric, did not extinguish the zeal of the women painters. It seems rather as though they shut themselves up in the study of their art so as to secure a refuge for their hopes and their dreams. In the first "Salons" of the century, one is surprised to find works by a comparatively large number of women painters. In 1800, of 180 exhibitors they number 25; eight years later, in the "Salon" of 1808, they are 46 out of 311. The difficulties set up by the Academy were overcome, the liberty to exhibit was a fresh encouragement, even an exceptional stimulus. The figures, therefore, rise still further in the first quarter of the century, so that in 1831 the women number 149 out of 873 exhibitors.

The "staff," so to speak, of the women artists of that day, surrounding Mme. Vigee Le Brun, whose glorious and somewhat chequered career did not close till 1842, included a number of distinguished women, such as Mlle. Bevic and Mlle. Capet, pupils of Mme. Guyard; Mme. Chaudet, the wife of the sculptor; Mlle. Eulalie Morin; Mme. Adele Romance, who also signed Romany, or Romany de Romance; the "good" Mlle. G.o.defroid, pupil of Baron Gerard, who helped him in so many of the portraits of contemporary cosmopolitan people of distinction, commissions for which rained in the master's studio, after the entry of the allied forces into Paris. Later on, we have Mlle. Cogniet; Mme. Filleul; Mme. Rude, the wife of the great sculptor, who had a severe yet confident talent. Lastly, there was the woman artist who benefited by all the advantages of fashion, Mme.

Haudebourt-Lescot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRENCH SCHOOL, 1755-1842 MADAME VIGeE LE BRUN AND HER DAUGHTER. AFTER THE PAINTING IN THE LOUVRE, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN, CLeMENT & CO., PARIS Madame elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, Painter 1755-1842]

Mlle. Lescot, wife of Haudebourt, the architect, and pupil of Lethiere--mischievous tongues, of course, declared that he painted her pictures--was a strange creature, who, at the start, owed the popularity she obtained as much to her personal charm as to her real talent. Her first success was in the drawing-room, where people admired her dances. "She was," says a writer, "ugly and captivating, with crooked eyes and a charming expression, her mouth ill-shaped, but tender and inviting," such as Ingres represented her in one of his finest pencil drawings.

Hitherto, women had certainly banished themselves into the domain of portrait or still-life painting, that is to say, they had done little that was not sheer copying. But, little by little, under the influence of the lesser Dutch masters, who had been pa.s.sionately appreciated since the close of the previous reign, and thanks to the opening of the Royal Collections at the Luxembourg Palace, where they could be studied and copied, the women-painters, following the example of the masters who gained inspiration therefrom, began to devote themselves to landscape and to _genre_. They sought out little touching subjects, which very frequently bordered on the ridiculous. For example, "the child's bed catches fire through the carelessness of the nurse who has fallen asleep, and the dog attempts to waken her."

Mlle. Lescot cut herself adrift from all these insipidities. The opportunity came for her to spend several years in Rome. She was struck by the popular customs of the country, by its colour and that singular and picturesque charm which Granet had been the first to discover--the charm which, after her own time, was to be made further known by the paintings of the well-known Leopold Robert. As a matter of fact, she was practically the creator of the type of exotic subjects borrowed from Italy, to which numerous artists in France devoted themselves--Hebert, Bonnat and Jules Lefebvre, to name but a few of the most important of them. In choosing her _motifs_ she displayed wit and inventiveness, and at times a delicate grace, notably in her first pictures, before the desire to satisfy a daily increasing connection had driven her into unduly hurried work. Her technique, too, was brisk, yet careful, as it should be in small works such as hers. Her lightly-touched lithographs, together with those which she did "after" her own pictures, contributed to popularise her special subjects and her name.

The novelty of these paintings, devoted to the cult of "local colour,"

caused them to be adopted as "romantic." It was the same with Schnetz and Leopold Robert, who shared the popularity. But the real "Young romantic" among artists was Mlle. de Fauveau. What one discovers with regard to her is that she is not a painter but a sculptor. The Royal Academy of the 17th century had already boasted certain wood carvings by _la demoiselle_ Ma.s.se. Also, there was Mme. Falconet. But the great and austere art was cultivated only as a rare exception by woman.

Mlle. Felicie de Fauveau was the first pre-Raphaelite, although the return to the primitive Italian masters of the 16th century dates further back, but with cropped head under a velvet toque, after the style of Raphael himself, she unceasingly uttered curses against that n.o.ble personality, whose brush produced the highest incarnation of the art of painting.

But the naturalist movement it was that witnessed the development of the greatest artistic personality in the feminine world of to-day--Rosa Bonheur. The _role_ played by Rosa Bonheur is important from the feminine point of view, for the reason that she broke away from ancient traditions. She revealed what woman was capable of in the matter of energy, of continuity of purpose, of method, of scientific direction, in a word, in the indispensable impetus of inspiration.

Before her day, the woman-painter had always been looked upon rather as a phenomenon, or her place in the domain of art was conceded to her on the grounds that she was indulging in an elevating and tasteful pastime, coming under the category of "accomplishments." Rosa Bonheur gave to woman a position equal to that of man. She won for herself unanimous admiration, based, not on the singularity of her life, not on looseness of morals, not on social triumphs, not on friends at Court, but on her robust, virile, observant and well-considered talent, which in its turn was based on a primary study of anatomy and osteology, developed by a continuous observation of the const.i.tution and the life of the animal world. Her long life was crowned with glory. She held an exceptional place in art, akin to that of George Sand in the world of letters.

From that day forth, there appeared a new phase in the artistic life of woman. Art became for her, not merely an intellectual pastime, but a vocation and a career. Rosa Bonheur lived nearly to the close of the nineteenth century, seeing many revolutions both in French life and in French art, but remaining always quite true to herself. Perhaps the most uncertain period of all, historically, so far as women were concerned, was that period of wave-like fluctuation in French art that occurred in the seventies and eighties, reflecting itself in the work of such women painters as Angele Dubos, Jeanne Fichel, Marie Petiet, Laure de Chatillon, Felicie Schneider, Eva Gonzales, Marie Nicolas, and Rosa Bonheur's successor--her heiress, so to speak--Madame Virginie Demont-Breton, the daughter, wife and niece of a family of distinguished artists. She has achieved a well-deserved popularity with her subjects of popular and rustic life, and, like Rosa Bonheur, has attained the rank of officer of the Legion of Honour. Two other feminine personalities have attracted the attention of both public and artists, the one, the sister-in-law of Manet, the delightful Mademoiselle Morisot, who has, so to speak, improved on the refinement of her master; the other, that strange and alluring young Russian girl, who adopted France as her Fatherland, and whom France adopted as artist. Marie Bashkirtseff, struck down by a cruel and premature death, at the age of twenty-three, revealed something far more than mere happy gifts. One is surprised at the amount of studies produced by the unfortunate and beautiful creature in the short s.p.a.ce allotted to her for her life-work.

We now enter upon the present period of woman's artistic life, the active period, let us call it. We no longer trouble about her place at our exhibitions, since she has nowadays her own exhibition, or rather exhibitions proper to herself. Among the many youthful _amateurs_ who const.i.tute the bulk of feminine artists, one finds a number of true artists. To name a few: Mademoiselle Louise Abbema, Madame Madeleine Lemaire, Madame Nanny Adam, Mlle. Fierard, Mme. Vallet-Bisson, Madame Chatrousse, Madame Darmesteter, Mme. Delacroix-Garnier, Mme.

Baury-Saurel, and many others, as this book proves.

Several women-artists have won their place in the National Museum, wherein first rank is held, after Rosa Bonheur and Mme. Demont-Breton, by Madame Marie Cazin, painter and sculptor, Madame Victoria Dubourg (widow of Fantin-Latour), Mlle. Dufau, who has just been commissioned to execute some important decorations for the Sorbonne, Mlle.

Delasalle, Mlle. Marie Gautier, Senora Eva Gonzales, and a couple of semi-naturalised foreigners, Miss Mary Ca.s.satt, an American, and Mlle.

Breslau, a Swiss--both dames of the Legion of Honour.

To conclude, women are proving just now not only that the domain of art should be open to them as freely as it is to men, on the grounds of right and reason, but also that they are specially gifted by their delicate sensitiveness, their quickness of comprehension, their initiative faculty, and lastly, by all the phases of their natural temperament, and by their intelligence to endow art with the elements of expression and beauty proper to womankind.

LeONCE BeNeDITE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRENCH SCHOOL, 1768-1826 PORTRAIT OF MARIE PAULINE, PRINCESSE BORGHESE. AFTER THE PAINTING AT VERSAILLES, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY NEWIDEIN, PARIS Madame Marie Guilhelmine Benoits, Painter 1768-1826]