“TO BE SOMEONE AND NOT SOMETHING: SOUTHERN WOMEN ARTISTS’ QUEST FOR EDUCATION”

Avery CloseWofford CollegeMarch 7th, 2016

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Throughout history, women have been linked with domesticity, while men

dominated the public sphere of politics and professional life. For centuries, a

woman’s success was measured in her ability to bear children and raise them, and

until fairly recently, very few women dared to step outside of this status quo.

However, by the end of the nineteenth century, gradual social and political

advancements were empowering women to seek equality in many different realms,

including the arts. As women gained access to some of the most prestigious art

institutions in the United States, they were able to create works on the same level as

their male counterparts. Just as the American academies looked to Europe for

inspiration, the artists of the Southeastern United States wanted to establish their

own schools in their home states. Regardless of gender, Southern artists faced the

hierarchical structure of the arts with the determination to establish themselves as

equal to their Northern and European predecessors, in the same way that women

sought to gain equal opportunities as men.

With the development of the feminist movement, contemporary scholars

have attempted to understand the minimal presence of women in the arts up until

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Author Laurie Schneider Adams

describes the feminist challenge as a two fold approach: one side which studies the

way women have been discriminated against throughout history, and the other

looking at the way feminist art historians have recovered information about the

contributions of women to the history of art.1 This method is especially applicable

when studying the works of Southern women artists who, until this progressive

1 Laurie S. Adams, "Contextual Approaches II: Feminism.," In The Methodologies of Art: An Introduction (New York, NY: Westview Press, 1996), 79.

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period, were either nonexistent or overlooked. Many women, regardless of their

location, faced circumstances that either prohibited or discouraged them from

pursuing careers in the arts, such as societal pressures to conform to particular

stereotypes or simply not having access to necessary training in the arts. Thus, it is

necessary to understand the obstacles these women faced in order to fully

appreciate the significance of their contributions to their communities and the art

world at large.

Prior to the twentieth century, the majority of women who worked in the

arts were restricted to the “lower arts,” or crafts. Sewing, needlepoint, and

embroidery were common activities among women because they could be worked

on from home and easily set aside when more pressing matters arose. Some women

occasionally took up painting or drawing as a hobby, but almost never as a career.

The instances of successful female artists in history were mostly those whose

fathers or husbands were artists as well, and thus they were exposed to the artistic

sphere, albeit in a less active role than their male counterparts. In addition, women

artists typically painted genre scenes, landscapes, portraits or still-lifes, subjects

that can be designed with little to no artistic training. For centuries, the artistic

canon, or the most influential elements and principles in the construction of art, has

been “considered a patriarchal construct – which values the notion of genius and

confers it exclusively on men.”2 In the more recent centuries, however, the art

world has started to place a greater emphasis on the educational benefits of artistic

2 Laurie S. Adams, "Contextual Approaches II: Feminism.," In The Methodologies of Art: An Introduction (New York, NY: Westview Press, 1996), 81.

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creation, and scholars and artists alike have become more inclined to doubt the

belief of an intrinsic genius. Thus, with the rejection of the male dominated canon,

women were able to move into the sphere of well-respected artists and create on

the scale that had, for centuries, previously been reserved only for men.

One of the most well-known feminist art historians, Dr. Linda Nochlin, also

rejects the idea of an innate artistic talent and instead focuses on the importance of

education in the developing artist. Nochlin believes that education is the source of

equality between the sexes and, by teaching equality, then we are able to change the

way that women are viewed not only in the arts, but in society as well.3 In her

writings, Nochlin repetitively draws attention to the disadvantages that women face

in comparison to men, especially in the pursuit of proper artistic training. In “Why

Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” Nochlin offers her explanation for this

issue, claiming that,

“The question of women’s equality – in art as in any other realm – devolves

not upon the relative benevolence of ill-will of individual men, nor the self-

confidence or abjectness of individual women, but rather on the very nature

of our institutional structures themselves and the view of reality which they

impose on the human beings who are part of them.”4

According to Nochlin, in order to reverse the deeply ingrained gender roles of our

society, women must not only be offered the same opportunities as men, but “they

3 Linda Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" In Women, Art, and Power: And Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 150.

4 Ibid., 152.

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must view their situation with that high degree of emotional and intellectual

commitment necessary to create a world in which equal achievement will be not

only made possible but actively encouraged by social institutions.”5 In her opinion,

women have the ability to determine their own futures and invert the existing

gender discrimination, a trend that will materialize in the late nineteenth and early

twentieth century as women began to push for equal opportunities in artistic

educational institutions and careers in the art world.

As Nochlin pointed out, it would be through women’s acive pursuit of artistic

training that would bring them to a more comparable position in the art world. By

the end of the nineteenth century, women had gained access to some of the most

prestigious art academies in the United States, such as the Pennsylvania Academy of

the Fine Arts and the Art Students League in New York City. As early as 1824, the

Pennsylvania Academy had two female students in attendance, albeit in separate

classes from men.6 Based on the model of European academies, American art

academies followed a strict curriculum that moved from basic drawing skills to

figure drawing and painting, with increasing difficulty on each level.7 It would take

over two decades for women to be able to work from the nude figure, training that is

absolutely necessary in the creation of history paintings, which, at the time, were

5 Linda Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" In Women, Art, and Power: And Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 151.

6 Mark Hain and Alex Baker, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1805-2005: 200 Years of Excellence (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2005).

7 Ibid.

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the most premier and challenging of all subjects, reserved only for the most talented

and learned artists. The demand for these grand commissions “made drawing of the

nude figure the foundation of picture making and the central skill to be learned,”

and it should come as no shock that mainly men were creating these monumental

works.8 Women would ultimately be excluded from life courses until the end of the

nineteenth century, preventing them even attempting to paint on this level.

Even in academies that did not explicitly restrict female participation from

their courses, women were often discouraged against it, for people believed that

they were unable to “tolerate the heat, poor ventilation and crowded atmosphere of

life-study classrooms.”9 Artistic education until the eighteenth century was thus

constructed around the “rigorous preparation, rationalized training, and demanding

instruction [which] seemed to both embody and require masculine rationality,

strength, and autonomous drive.”10 Women in the American South especially felt

this discrimination, for they were raised on the premise that southern women were

supposed to be gentle, delicate and proper. For example, artist Emma Josephine

Sibley Couper, born in Augusta, Georgia, had to wait until after her father’s death

before attending the Art Students League in New York, for he was not supportive of

8 Kirsten Swinth, Painting Professionals: Women Artists & the Development of Modern American Art, 1870-1930 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 19-20.

9Kirsten Swinth, Painting Professionals: Women Artists & the Development of Modern American Art, 1870-1930 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 26.

10 Ibid.

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her endeavor to become an artist.11 However, during her time at the Art Students

League, Couper studied with the distinguished artist William Merritt Chase, whom

inspired her to pursue impressionistic techniques in her work. Chase was

“renowned for his egalitarian attitude,” and often encouraged his female students to

pursue their artistic aspirations despite limitations.12

Regardless of gender, the American artist during the nineteenth century

faced struggles when competing with academic institutions abroad. Despite the

country’s growth as a well-respected and developed country, Americans still looked

towards the major cities in Europe as the heirs to centuries of development in the

arts and humanities, thus allowing them to determine artistic criteria around the

world. Serious art students would take a semester, or several, to travel to the

European art capitals, such as Paris and Rome, to learn from the works of the

classical masters. American academies, such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the

Fine Arts, encouraged this experience, offering scholarships for students to study

abroad.13 The Cresson Traveling Scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy funded

students on a yearlong experience abroad and was awarded to many notable

twentieth century artists, such as the impressionist Daniel Garber, who painted

Summer Afternoon (Figure 1), or the North Carolinian Sarah Mabel Pugh, creator of

11 "Josephine Couper," The Johnson Collection, LLC (Spartanburg, SC), Accessed December 12, 2015, http://www.thejohnsoncollection.org/josephine-couper/.

12 Martha R. Severens, "Some Things That Are Charming," in Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection, (Columbia: Johnson Collection in Association with the University of South Carolina Press, 2015), 41.

13 Mark Hain and Alex Baker, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1805-2005: 200 Years of Excellence, (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2005).

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The Champion (Figure 2). Both artists would later become teachers; however,

Garber remained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, whereas Pugh

returned to her alma mater, North Carolina’s Peace Institute, an all-womens college

in North Carolina.

One of the most recognizable female artists from the late nineteenth and

early twentieth century, Mary Cassatt, also attended the Pennsylvania Academy of

the Fine Arts and would later study in the major European art centers. Under the

influence of Edgar Degas and other Impressionist painters, Cassatt often depicted

genre scenes that were focused on domestic life, many of which showed mothers

interacting with their children. Cassatt was inevitably torn between the career she

loved and the circumstances she was born into, as “she aspired unswervingly

towards professionalism and the serious work it entailed but nevertheless honored

the feminine sphere of activity.”14 Although she remained unmarried and childless

throughout her life, she still preferred typical “female subjects,” which often

depicted mothers taking care of their child, such as Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy

Child (Figure 3).

Cassatt was not the only female artist to have this inclination towards

domestic images; for instance, Irma Howard Cook’s Mother and Child in Bed, 1924 is

constructed in a similar vein to Cassatt’s maternal images (Figure 4). In addition,

both artists received their formal artistic training at the Pennsylvania Academy of

the Fine Arts. Yet, unlike Cassatt, Irma Cook was married and gave birth to two

14 Linda Nochlin, "Mary Cassatt's Modernity," In Representing Women, (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 181.

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children. As a result, Irma’s life became more private than her husband’s, as she let

her career become secondary and chose to focus primarily on raising her children.15

Whereas her husband, August Charles Cook, was a professor at Converse College in

Spartanburg, South Carolina, Irma taught private art lessons from her basement.

Although she may not have been in the spotlight as often as her husband, Irma’s

natural talent stayed with her throughout her life and even her husband himself

claimed that she was the better artist between the two.16

Both Irma Howard Cook and Sarah Mabel Pugh are prime examples of

Southern female artists in the Johnson Collection who were forced to leave their

beloved hometowns in order to receive artist training, but who also always

remained attached to the South. This is the case for many Southern artists, both

male and female, who were compelled to move to the North in order to pursue

educational opportunities that were unavailable in the South at the time. However,

many of these artists drew inspiration from their birth regions as subjects for their

artworks. During the nineteenth century, the South was seen as a rural region

focused around agriculture, which ultimately offered “a refuge from the

mechanization and materialism that dominated the cities of the Northeast and

Midwest.”17 Artists with ties to the South depicted this region with admiration and

nostalgia, emphasizing the quaint lives of Southerners in their quiet genre scenes, as

15 August and Irma Cook: A Legacy of Art (Exhibition Catalogue from Spartanburg County Museum of Art, Spartanburg, South Carolina. 2001).

16 Ibid. 17Mariea C. Dennison, Art of the American South, 1915 – 1945, (Ann Arbor,

Michigan: Bell & Howell, 2000), 36.

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well as gardens, forests and swamps of their landscape paintings. Elizabeth O’Neill

Verner, a Charleston born artist, often drew her surroundings in many of her pastel

works, such as Shem Creek (Figure 5). Shem Creek is similar to William Chase’s

Beach at Shinnecock in that they are both created on wood and show an

Impressionistic landscape that deemphasizes the human presence in comparison

with the environment (Figure 6). However, Chase’s painting was created almost

sixty years prior to Verner’s and reflects his Northern heritage, whereas Verner’s

drawing shows her loyalty to her Charleston hometown.

As Southern artists began to note the lack of artistic institutions in their

home region, many of them attempted to assert their own influences in the arts of

the South so that future artists could benefit from their accomplishments. Female

artists were especially active in establishing a Southern artistic sphere. For

example, it was a group of women who pushed for the formation of the Southern

States Art League, one of whom was Alice Ravenel Huger Smith.18 Along with her

friend and fellow artist, Elizabeth O’Neill Verner, Smith was an active figure in the

Charleston Renaissance movement, which brought artistic recognition to one of the

most remembered cities of the South.19 Another influential Southern female artist

was Adele Goodman Clarke, who was a founding member of the Equal Suffrage

League of Virginia, chair of Virginia’s League of Women Voters for nineteen years,

18 "Alice Smith," The Johnson Collection, LLC (Spartanburg, SC), Accessed December 12, 2015, http://www.thejohnsoncollection.org/alice-smith/.

19 "Alice Smith," The Johnson Collection, LLC (Spartanburg, SC), Accessed December 12, 2015, http://www.thejohnsoncollection.org/alice-smith/.

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and the dean of women at the College of William and Mary.20 Many other women

followed her example, becoming advocates for equal rights movements for both

women and minorities.

Despite the many advances women made during this period, author and

curator Paul Sternberg Sr. points out that about forty percent of all artists painting

during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were women, but only five

to six percent of major American art collections are constituted by the works of

women artists.21 By this period in American history, women had already achieved

access to the major academic institutions, such as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine

Arts and the Art Students League in New York City. In addition, they had begun to

create careers for themselves and become influential in their own respective artistic

communities. However, women had still not been entirely accepted into society as

equal counterparts to men. For example, artist Emma Josephine Sibley Couper

signed both Fisherman’s Conversation and Marigolds with the abbreviation “J.S.

Couper” as a way to prevent her work from being judged by gender prejudices, a

common practice of women artists during this time (Figure 7 and Figure 8).22

Unfortunately, many people during this time still maintained the belief that “women

20Jennifer Davis McDaid, "Clark, Adele (1882-1983)," (Encyclopedia Virginia. August 27, 2015. Accessed December 12, 2015), http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Clark_Adèle_1882-1983.

21 Paul E. Sternberg, Art by American Women: Selections from the Collection of Louise and Alan Sellars, (Marietta, Georgia: Louise and Alan Sellars Collection of Art by American Women, 1991), 8.

22 "Josephine Couper," The Johnson Collection, LLC (Spartanburg, SC), Accessed December 12, 2015, http://www.thejohnsoncollection.org/josephine-couper/.

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embodied the antithesis of the professional – dependent, imitative, and merely

‘accomplished’ rather than autonomous, skilled and expert.”23 It would be centuries

before women would be completely integrated into society, however that same

gender inequality will always remain in the minds of some people.

When describing the female artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries, Sternberg said, “they did not necessarily perceive themselves as being on

the cutting edge of emancipation.”24 Instead, “they demonstrated that access to

knowledge, resources, opportunity, and esteem freed their potential.”25 These

women were not necessary trying to lead radical reform movements or even

achieve national recognition for their efforts; rather, they simply wanted to achieve

the educational status and artistic recognition that men during this time were

capable of reaching. As a whole, these women will represent the new female artist

of the early twentieth century, one who challenged their limitations, sought to build

careers for themselves, and helped create opportunities for other women in their

communities.

23 Kirsten Swinth, Painting Professionals: Women Artists & the Development of Modern American Art, 1870-1930 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 14.

24 Paul E. Sternberg, Art by American Women: Selections from the Collection of Louise and Alan Sellars, (Marietta, Georgia: Louise and Alan Sellars Collection of Art by American Women, 1991), 6.

25 Ibid.

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Bibliography

Adams, Laurie S. "Contextual Approaches II: Feminism." In The Methodologies of Art: An Introduction, 79-100. New York, NY: Westview Press, 1996.

"Alice Smith." The Johnson Collection, LLC (Spartanburg, SC). Accessed December 12, 2015. http://www.thejohnsoncollection.org/alice-smith/.

August and Irma Cook: A Legacy of Art. Exhibition Catalogue from Spartanburg County Museum of Art. Spartanburg, South Carolina. 2001.

Dennison, Mariea C. Art of the American South, 1915 - 1945. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Bell & Howell, 2000.

Hain, Mark, and Alex Baker. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1805-2005: 200 Years of Excellence. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2005.

Heller, Nancy. Women Artists: An Illustrated History. 3rd ed. New York: Abbeville Press, 1997. 73-162.

"Josephine Couper." The Johnson Collection, LLC (Spartanburg, SC). Accessed December 12, 2015. http://www.thejohnsoncollection.org/josephine-couper/.

McDaid, Jennifer Davis. "Clark, Adele (1882-1983)." Encyclopedia Virginia. August 27, 2015. Accessed December 12, 2015. http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Clark_Adèle_1882-1983.

Nochlin, Linda. "Mary Cassatt's Modernity." In Representing Women, 180-215. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999.

---. "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" In Women, Art, and Power: And Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

Severens, Martha R. "Some Things That Are Charming." In Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection, 27-45. Columbia: Johnson Collection in Association with the University of South Carolina Press, 2015.

Sternberg, Paul E. Art by American Women: Selections from the Collection of Louise and Alan Sellars. Marietta, Georgia: Louise and Alan Sellars Collection of Art by American Women, 1991.

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Swinth, Kirsten. Painting Professionals: Women Artists & the Development of Modern American Art, 1870-1930. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

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Referenced Images

Figure 1 (right). Daniel Garber. American, 1880-1958Summer Afternoon  circa 1905Oil on boardThe Harry and Mary Dalton Collection.

1989.62.2

Figure 2 (left). Sarah Mabel Pugh, The

Champion, Undated. Oil on canvas, 32 x 36

inches, The Johnson Collection, LLC,

Spartanburg, South Carolina.

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Figure 3 (left). Mary Cassatt, Mother

About to Wash Her Sleepy Child, 1880. Oil

on Canvas, 39 ½ x 25 7/8 inches. Los

Angelos County Museum of Art, Los

Angeles, California.

Figure 4 (right). Irma Howard Cook, Mother and

Child in Bed, 1924. Oil on canvas, 22 1/8 inches x

20 inches. The Johnson Collection, LLC.,

Spartanburg, South Carolina.

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Figure 5 (left). Elizabeth

O’Neill Verner, Shem Creek,

1954. Pastel on silk, glued to

plywood, 23 x 28 inches. The

Johnson Collection, LLC,

Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Figure 6 (right). William Merritt Chase. American, 1849-1916Beach at Shinnecock  circa 1891Oil on panelThe Harry and Mary Dalton

Collection. 1993.90.2

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Figure 7 (right). Emma Josephine Sibley

Couper, Fisherman’s Conversation, circa

1925. Oil on canvas, 30 x 34 inches. The

Johnson Collection, LLC, Spartanburg,

South Carolina.

Figure 8 (left). Emma Josephine Sibley

Couper, Marigolds, Undated. Pastel on

paper, 24 ½ x 20 ½ inches. The Johnson

Collection, LLC, Spartanburg, South

Carolina.