Women Art Critics In Nineteenth Century France

This book is the first sustained study of a corpus of writings by women art critics active in nineteenth-century France that have all but “vanished” from the historical record. Written by scholars in art history and in literature, the essays employ a variety of interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies to study the women’s reception of specific artworks and aesthetic movements in the nineteenth century, the intersections of aesthetics and politics in their essays, and their rhetorical strategies and literary styles.

This book examines the relationship of class, gender and race to visual culture in early nineteenth-century France. Drawing extensively on contemporary sources, the author looks at the work of women artists, women art critics and writers to demonstrate that many of the assumptions about female invisibility and objectification in bourgeois culture and society need serious reconsideration. The first half of the nineteenth century was a complex and contradictory period in the formation and contestation of bourgeois ideologies of 'the feminine'. Women, though at a serious disadvantage, became visible as artists, critics and patrons and were not merely invisible, domesticated or 'constructed' by forces outside their control. Women artists such as Angelique Mongez painted heroic neo-classical nudes, while many named (and anonymous) women wrote art criticism, articulating their views as female spectators. Doy also examines notions of 'appropriate' work for women in relation to landscape, genre, sculpture and the emergence of Realism. Of particular interest is the discussion of the representation of black women during this period, when Fren

In this innovative volume, literary critics and art historians explore the relationship between literature and the visual arts in 19th-century France. Eighteen leading scholars, including Pierre Bourdieu, Germaine Greer, Segolene Le Men, Roger Cardinal and Mary Ann Caws analyse contemporary forms of representation to reveal the rich variety of factors that link image and text.

This book explores a range of social, institutional and discursive conditions in and through which criticism emerged and functioned in 19th-century France, and goes on to develop broader theoretical questions drawn from historical case studies.

Mining various archives and newspaper repositories, Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Nineteenth-Century Pioneer of Modern Art Criticism provides the first full-length study of a remarkable woman and heretofore neglected art critic. Pennell, a prolific 'New Art Critic', helped formulate and develop formalist methodology in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, which she applied to her mostly anonymous or pseudonymous reviews published in numerous American and British newspapers and periodicals between 1883 and 1923. A bibliography of her art criticism is included as an appendix. In addition to advocating an advanced way in which to view art, Pennell used her platform to promote the work of ?new? artists, including ?ouard Manet and Edgar Degas, which had only recently been introduced to British audiences. In particular, Pennell championed the work of James McNeill Whistler for whom she, along with her husband, the artist Joseph Pennell, wrote a biography. Examination of her contributions to the late Victorian art world also highlights the pivotal role of criticism in the production and consumption of art in general, a point which is often ignored.

Examining the relationship of class, gender and race to visual culture in early 19th-century France, this study looks at the work of women artists, critics and writers to demonstrate that many of the assumptions about female invisibility and objectivization need reconsideration.

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.

This collection examines the development of art criticism across Russia and Western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Art criticism articulated local ideas about functions of art but, more importantly, it also became one of the most responsive fields in which a larger, transnational European exchange of ideas about the role of critical discourse could take place. Art criticism of this period was also rich in rhetorical strategies and textual diversity. International contributors to this volume, who include art historians, cultural historians, and specialists in critical and philosophical discourse, examine the emergence of art critical discourse in a variety of cultural and geo-political contexts.