Sisters Of The Brush

Although the women of the Union were often quite conservative politically, socially, and stylistically, says Garb, they believed that women had a special gift that would enhance France's cultural reputation and maintain the uplifting moral-cultural position that seemed in jeopardy at the turn of the century. Focusing on the developments that made the prominence of the organisation possible, Garb discusses the growth of the women's movement, educational reforms, institutional changes in the art world, and critical debates and contemporary scientific thought.

"The story in this book begins with the first letter in the year Eliza Champlain was born, 1797, in New London. It unfolds through her own, her mother's, and her aunt's correspondence - hundreds of letters now first published with explanatory chapters, commentary, and notes around them. Her aunt, at first in their home town and then (from 1811) for eight years in New York, was the first professional artist of her sex in the United States - Mary Way, a painter of miniature portraits. Eliza's mother, remaining at home, also earned her living by her brush. The two older women taught all they knew to Eliza, sometimes looking over her shoulder, sometimes in their letters. To show how artists went about their work in the period, nothing matches this collection." "Paintings by all three can be found in various private collections and galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The book through its color plates introduces an equal number of paintings hitherto unknown which were preserved with the letters." "The core of the book, however, is the world of women - their circles and relationships, their concerns, and the opportunities open to them in the early Republic."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

For much of the nineteenth century, women artists laboured under the same restrictions and taboos they had endured for centuries, and it was assumed that marriage and child-bearing were their goals in life. However, by the 1870s female art students of every nation were flocking to Paris in search of instruction in the city's private art schools. With proper training, they now had the confidence to tackle a wider range of subjects and by the century's end they were at last able to study the nude figure. During these breakthrough years, women won the right to work and exhibit alongside men, both in Europe and America, and the advent of art galleries and art dealers opened up new ways of selling their work. This book is full of surprising adventures: young women, still not allowed to visit a museum unchaperoned, travelled thousands of miles in a quest for first-class tuition; several Americans, while still in their twenties, journeyed to Rome to study sculpture; numerous free and independent women joined the artists' colonies that sprang up all over Europe, where they made lasting friendships, painting from dawn to dusk en plein air and enjoying the bohemian life. These trailblazing women rose to the challenges of the century's dramatic development in art styles - from Realism to the Avant-Garde - and triumphantly succeeded in becoming successful professional artists.

A magisterial reconstruction and analysis of the heated debates around the 'woman question' during the French Third Republic.

The book charts an extraordinary period in Danish history: the "Press Freedom Period" of 1770-73, in which King Christian 7's physician J.F. Struensee introduced a series of radical enlightenment reforms beginning with the total abolishment of censorship. The book investigates the sudden avalanche of pamphlets and debates, initiating the modern public sphere of Denmark-Norway. Publications show a surprising variety, from serious political, economic, and philosophical treatises over criticism, polemics, ridicule, entertainment, and to spin campaigns, obscenities, libel, threats. A successful coup against Struensee led to his subsequent public execution in Copenhagen, and the latter half of the period saw the gradual smothering of the new public sphere as well as an international pamphlet storm over what was happening in Denmark. Readers all over Europe proved curious to learn about the radical experiment with enlightened absolutism in Denmark; interest was heightened by the involvement of the Danish Queen, the English princess Caroline Matilda to whom Struensee had an intimate relation. The book is a detailed portrayal of a seminal event in the development of the public sphere in Europe.

This book is a documentary survey of Hong Kong history, from the 1920s to the mid-1960s, from the perspective of the Maryknoll Sisters, as recorded in their diaries written during that period. It is a priceless collection of first-hand materials on the social history of Hong Kong.