FREE ESSAY ON THE EDUCATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY WOMEN ARTISTS

THE EDUCATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY WOMEN ARTISTS

The formal education of women artists in the United States has taken quite a long journey.
It wasn't until the nineteenth century that the workings of a recognized education for
these women finally appeared. Two of the most famous and elite schools of art that
accepted, and still accept, women pupils are the Philadelphia School of Design for Women
and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (the PAFA).
Up until the early nineteenth century, women were mostly taught what is now called a
"fashionable education" (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 5). Their mothers raised
them to be proper, young ladies and expert housekeepers in expectation of marriage. If
these women were fortunate enough to receive some kind of formalized schooling, they were
to study penmanship, limited aspects of their mother language, and very little arithmetic
(Philadelphia School of Design for Women 5). Unfortunately, this small degree of
education was extremely constrictive to women. If they never married or were widowed at a
young age, they really had no place to go. This form of women's education created
generations of women that were almost entirely dependent on their husbands and male
relatives.
During the nineteenth century, when the feminist movement was beginning, many schools
were established specifically for the education of women, such as the Philadelphia School
of Design for Women, and also for the education of both. In the beginning, women's art
schools mostly taught pupils practical applications of art. For example, female art
students often studied drawing and lithographing, in hopes that they would be hired by
industrial companies as designers. The Philadelphia School of Design for Women was one of
the first all women's art schools to establish this form of education.
Founded in 1844 by a woman named Sarah Peter, the Philadelphia School of Design for Women
was a school like none that had come before it. Peter was a wealthy woman of stature and
decided to start this school in one of the rooms of her mansion and to hire a teacher to
hold regular classes for women in art and design. (As a wonderful incentive for all
women, tuition was free for the poor and the wealthy paid a very small sum.) Sarah Peter
saw how truly poor the traditional education for women was and she strongly believed that
every woman should "stand by her sex," thus her reasoning for establishing this soon to
become famous art school. As Peter saw it, she wished to give young women "some practical
training,…should [they] so desire or the necessity arise, for well paying self
support," (qtd. in Philadelphia School of Design for Women 6). In addition to her
personal feelings, she had a very specific reason for starting the Philadelphia
school—train women to create designs for the city's industrial lines, such as
textiles, lithographing, wood engraving, floor coverings, and furniture. From this point
on, Peter devoted the rest of her life to overseeing the School and also traveled around
the U.S. to establish art schools, like the Philadelphia, in other cities (Philadelphia
School of Design for Women 6-11).
The Philadelphia School of Design for Women originally had three departments from which
young women could take classes: drawing, industrial, and wood engravings/lithography.
The majority of the women were instructed within the drawing department, in which pupils
made copies of original compositions and applied coloring and shading. From here on,
depending on the instructor, they would progress toward drawings from casts and life
(Philadelphia School of Design for Women 23-24). The industrial department showed the
women applications of drawing, shading, and coloring to the art of design. Surprisingly,
these designs and patterns created by the women of the Philadelphia School were secured
under copyright law for some time (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 24). In the
third department, lithography/wood engraving, women were taught drawing on stone and
carving in wood. During the first years of the school, the actual printing was done on
school grounds. However, in later years, most printing was done outside the school by
contract. Due to the beauty and perfection of the pupils' works, very soon after the
School's establishment, several of the students' lithographs were used in floral
brochures, such as the "Philadelphia Florists' and Horticultural Journal" (Philadelphia
School of Design for Women 26-27).
During the 1850s and 1860s, the Philadelphia School flourished. It was moved several
times to larger buildings with better lighting and many more teachers were hired to
instruct the growing number of women who wished to attend (there were over 100 total
women admitted to the School by 1852) (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 24-25).
Many of the industrial firms in the Philadelphia area began to put orders in to the
school for ironwork, paper hangings, calico prints, and woven textiles. And amazingly,
the women pupils were given three-quarters of any money they received for their work done
at the school that sold to these industrial firms (Philadelphia School of Design for
Women 40). In 1853, an official charter was granted for the school—a board of
directors, officers, and a board of Lady Managers were elected (Philadelphia School of
Design for Women 34). An interesting and ironic note can be made concerning the new
charter: after everything, men still managed everything (the Lady Managers still had to
obtain authority from the male board of directors). It was stated in the charter that the
board of directors had to be "12 gentlemen." The incorporators of the newly public school
still followed the custom of that time in denying representation in direction to the very
people that the school was to benefit, the Women. It wasn't until 56 years after the
Philadelphia School's first charter, in 1909, that an amendment was granted making the
Board consist of certain members "who may either by men or women," (Philadelphia School
of Design for Women 34-37). In 1860, a man named James Dundas (a very wealthy man who
lived in a mansion quite close to the School) began sending flowers to the school daily
from his extensive hothouses, to be used by the pupils in drawing and painting from
nature (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 60). During this same time, the School
was extremely prosperous and began to return the favor by donating some of its own
flowers, fruits, antiques, figures, casts from life, and sketches/diagrams to other
women's art schools, such as those in Pittsburgh, Wilkes-Barre, and Millersville
(Philadelphia School of Design for Women 63).
The Philadelphia School of Design for Women had an enormous impact on the growth of
education of women artists during its time. Many of the women who attended the
Philadelphia School graduated and were immediately hired by industrial firms (e.g.,
Warner, Howell & Brother, the Pennypack Print Works) as designers or were hired by the
School as teachers for the new pupils (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 63). And
during 1877, a series of gold medals were awarded to the School's pupils who submitted
original designs with "refined artistic taste." (Eventually, the President of the School
decided to award prizes regularly, so as to push women to study even harder)
(Philadelphia School of Design for Women 67-68). In the year 1932, this school merged
with the Moore Institute of Art, Science, and Industry and remains, to this day, one of
the only art schools that grants bachelor's degrees in art.
Yet another art school that changed the education of women artists is the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts. The Academy was founded in 1805 by Charles Wilson Peale,
William Rush, and other artists and business leaders of Philadelphia. It is the oldest
art museum and school in the nation (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). During the
first half of the nineteenth century, the Academy only admitted male students, but later
women pupils, as well.
The Academy's primary instruction when it was first incorporated was the study of casts
of classical statues in the Louvre (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). It continued
educating its students in a classical manner and drawing from the live nude model was
introduced around 1812, followed in succeeding decades by figure modeling and portrait
classes. One of the most famous aspects of the Academy's drawing and sculpture program
began in the 1880s, by the hands of a man named Thomas Eakins (McKinney 16). A new kind
of study was introduced to help the pupils with their instruction—anatomy. The
Academy was very well known for is anatomy program, which had pupils dissecting cadavers
and animals in order to gain a truly comprehensive knowledge of life from which to draw
and sculpt from (McKinney 16).
A most interesting fact surrounding the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts concerns
the start of drawing from life, from the nude. During its beginnings, there was
significant controversy surrounding the allowance of nudes for life drawing at the
Academy, especially for women. Male models were allowed to pose completely nude for men's
drawing classes but had to wear a loincloth when posing for women's classes. And the
women who stood for life drawing classes were always made to wear a mask over their
faces, so as to sustain "morality." Thomas Eakins, who was a student at the Academy and
later a teacher and director completely ignored this fact. A Philadelphia newspaper from
1886 once said that, "Mr. Eakins has for a long time entertained and strongly inculcated
the most 'advanced' views…teaching large classes of women as well as men, he holds
that, both as to the living model in the drawing room and the dead subject in the
anatomical lecture and dissecting room, Art knows no sex," (Porter 23). Eakins taught
many life drawing classes for both women and men, often receiving much criticism from the
public. He wanted to give his students as much knowledge of the human body and anatomy as
possible (McKinney 16). Around 1886, Eakins was teaching a women's life drawing class and
wished to show them the origin of a certain muscle in the male body—thus, he
removed the loincloth from the posing male model. Afterwards, Eakins was confronted by
the other directors of the Academy, due to their belief that exposing the female students
to such immortality devastated their femininity, and asked to justify and apologize for
his behavior. He refused to and was thus forced to resign from the Academy (Porter
22-23). However, after his resignation, many of Eakins' pupils followed him (including
women) to be instructed solely by him.
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, although not as customized for women as the
Philadelphia School, had much influence over the formal education of women artists,
especially in the area of life drawing. There are many famous women artists who were
taught at and inspired by the Academy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such
as Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts).
The nineteenth century brought many changes to the world of art for women. A formal
education for future women artists finally became available, and many new opportunities
for careers in art were unleashed. Two of the most prominent art schools that catered to
female pupils are the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts, which both still exist today. These two schools introduced
women artists to drawing, sculpture, lithography, life drawing, and even anatomy. The
mark that these two fine schools made on the women's world of art will never be
forgotten.
Bibliography
McKinney, Roland. Thomas Eakins. New York: Crown Publishers, 1942.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. PAFA. n. pags. ? 2000 .
Philadelphia School of Design for Women. Training for the Useful and the Beautiful.
Philadelphia: Philadelphia School of Design for Women, 1922.
Porter, Fairfield. Thomas Eakins. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1959.