Page 34 - Contemporary Art and Old Masters

These images, all devised by men, plainly show how
women in the art system were given the subordinate role
of models and muses to be transformed, painted and
gazed at.

MINIATURE PAINTERS
In emulation of aristocratic custom, the cultivation of
painting became another of the accomplishments, like piano
playing and singing, that accompanied the upbringing of
every young lady in respectable nineteenth-century society.
However, since they had no access to the teaching at the
Fine Arts Academies, the artistic education of women
was limited to drawing schools or the studios of other
painters. Even so, some managed to exhibit their skills as
amateur painters at public exhibitions, where they were
labelled as “amusing” or “charming” by the critics. The few
who succeeded in pursuing a professional career, most of
them from families of artists, devoted themselves mainly
to miniature portraits or copies of works by old masters,
generally religious. Their lack of training, together with
the rules of decorum of the period, thus channelled them
towards an almost ineluctable destiny as miniaturists,

Pride
Baldomero Gili y Roig (1873-1926), Oil on canvas, c. 1908. Logroño, Museo
de la Rioja, long-term loan from Museo Nacional del Prado.
Photo © Museo Nacional del Prado

The Father’s Advice
Plácido Francés y Pascual (1834-1902), Oil on canvas, 1892. La Coruña,
Museo de Bellas Artes, long-term loan from Museo Nacional del Prado.
Photo © Museo Nacional del Prado

copyists or drawing teachers, activities which they largely
performed in circles close to the nobility. Their careers
were regarded as minor, and they have been treated with
condescension to this day.

THE FIRST WOMAN PHOTOGRAPHERS
Since photography was regarded in its early years
as a minor discipline, it allowed for the more active
participation of women. From the 1840s onwards,
a considerable number devoted themselves to the
production of daguerrotype portraits. Some of the
pioneers who came to Spain were temporary and
itinerant visitors, such as Madama Fritz, who travelled
around the Iberian Peninsula offering her services as a
portraitist. Others had stable jobs in photography studios,
family businesses run predominantly by men.
In the autumn of 1850, a British couple, Charles and
Jane Clifford, took up residence in Madrid, where they
organised aerostatic balloon displays and opened a

34 WORLD of ART