Women in Art

Women’s struggle with joining the field of Fine Arts

Self-Portrait Hesitating Between the Arts of Music and Painting, Angelica Kauffman, 1894, oil on canvas (public domain)

Recently, I’ve been working through the Charles Bargue and Jean-Léon Gérôme Drawing Course. It wasn’t until the third collection of plates that I took pause: All the académie (nude model) poses were of men.

Gerald M. Ackerman, who put the book together, took note of this as well, and shed some light on the situation:

“The mastery of the nude male body was considered the most important part of the artist’s repertoire, for it was taken for granted — in the persistent patriarchial worldview — that males were the most important members of society; for all practical purposes, they were also the most important characters in the historical and biblical subjects academy students were instructed to paint.” — page 180

The male form (especially like that of what you see in Greek art) was percieved to be the most beautiful, despite the female figure being more sought after by art buyers.

Also according to Ackerman, women were almost never used as live models for art students from the fourteenth-century (possibly before) until the mid-nineteenth century. And when women did start to model for students — mainly men — they were treated akin to prostitutes.

“The popular assumption [of the time] being that any woman who bared…