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Category: women in art

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In control

Every day, in every way, things are not necessarily getting better.

In Control (Grace and her unicorn), 24X36, is one of the paintings that’s going to Rye Arts Center’s Censored and Poetic: the works of Carol Douglas and Anne de Villemejane, March 2022.

A visitor to my studio recently asked me about the gender disparity in painting. “Eighty percent of art students are women,” I said—and that may be a low estimate. “But 80% of the top cadre of professional painters are men.” That, too, may be a low estimate.

“Why?” she asked. I was stumped for an answer. If I’d thought about it at all, I’d have attributed it to change—women moving up through the atelier system to take their rightful place in the art world. But since the 19th century women have studied and practiced painting with great seriousness. There were more girls in art class when I was young, and the earning disparity didn’t disappear when we came of age.

Michelle Reading, 24X30, is one of the paintings that’s going to Rye Arts Center’s Censored and Poetic: the works of Carol Douglas and Anne de Villemejane, March 2022.

This is not anecdotal. There have been many studies worldwide that document this phenomenon. The most exhaustivewas done in 2017. It analyzed 1.5 million auction transactions in 45 countries, and found a 47.6% gender discount in prices. The discount was worst (unsurprisingly) in countries with greater overall gender disparity.

Do women drop out, practicing art as dedicated amateurs rather than professionals? No; 51% of practicing visual artists are women.

Are women’s paintings somehow more ‘girly,’ and therefore less attractive to buyers? In blind studies (with the artist’s name excised), participants could not guess the gender of the artist. Women’s art sells for less because the signature is feminine. Period.

The Beggar, 36X48, is one of the paintings that’s going to Rye Arts Center’s Censored and Poetic: the works of Carol Douglas and Anne de Villemejane, March 2022.

My childhood chum Cynthia Cadwell Pacheco was a professional ballet dancer. While she was traveling around the world, her mother regaled me with stories of the culture of submission, abuse and body-shaming that the corps de ballet were subject to.

It’s a miserable career choice for women, but, ironically, serious ballet used to be a women-led art form. That was before it spun money. Today, it’s a multi-billion-dollar business. As it has grown in economic importance, women have been pushed out of leadership. Today’s companies are run by men, the work is choreographed by men, the jurors are men, and the big bucks go to men. Let that be a lesson to you if you believe that every day, in every way, we’re getting better and better.

“Despite the fact that girls outnumber boys 20 to one and pay most of the fees in ballet schools, and despite the audience and donor base being 70% women, female artistic directors are paid 68 percent of what their male counterparts earn,” wrote Elizabeth Yntema.

Saran Wrap Cynic, 20X24, is one of the paintings that’s going to Rye Arts Center’s Censored and Poetic: the works of Carol Douglas and Anne de Villemejane, March 2022.

Our culture actively discourages boys from dancing. That’s foolish and unfair, and it leads to a tremendous imbalance in dance classes. If there is a boy at all, he won’t lack for principal roles, no matter how execrably he dances; the great classical ballets require male dancers. No wonder boys in the dance world grow up thinking they’re the cock of the walk.

No other legal American industry is as gender-skewed as ballet, but the visual arts do share some of its daft values. You only have to compare the career of Lois Dodd with her contemporaries to see that.

Identifying the problem is only the first step. What can we do about it? Young artists might choose a gender-neutral nom de pinceau, but that perpetuates the problem. Women’s role in the arts will only be as strong as women’s role in the greater culture. I’m old enough to have seen some remarkable changes in society, but I’m also alive to the very real risk that we can move backwards, just as the dance world has.

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A feminist painter and her feminist royal patron

It’s very trendy right now to ‘discover’ women artists. But how lost were they, really?
Mary Moser, c. 1770-71, George Romney, courtesy National Gallery
I’m in Edinburgh finishing a portrait this week. My subject bought me a copy of The Lady. This is one of Britain’s longest-running magazines. Founded in 1885, it was where the gentry advertised for domestic servants. Between the nanny ads and the horoscopes, there are some pieces of surprising interest, including a biography of 18th century painter Mary Moser.
Moser is best remembered for her decorative painting at Frogmore House, an English country house within the Home Park at Windsor. Started in 1680, it was largely renovated by Queen Charlotte, whom Americans know as the wife of King George III.
A Vase of Flowers, 1792-97, Mary Moser, Frogmore House, courtesy Royal Collection Trust
But the Queen was much more than that. Among other things, she was a champion of women artists and a keen amateur botanist who helped expand Kew Gardens. It was this interest in botany that led to her hiring Moser to decorate the South Pavilion at Frogmore House.
The house was more than a century old when Queen Charlotte purchased it in 1792. She used it as a retreat from nearby Windsor Castle, where she and her daughters could practice their hobbies of “painting, drawing, needlework, japanning, reading and ‘botanising’.” The Queen had borne 15 children (13 of whom lived to adulthood) and had a mentally-ill husband, so it’s perhaps understandable that she then built another retreat within the gardens of this retreat. That’s Frogmore Cottage, where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex now live with their new baby.
Queen Charlotte, 1761, studio of Allan Ramsay
Moser was already well-regarded as a floral painter when she took up the commission at Frogmore House. She had been trained by her father, an enamellist and himself a drawing tutor to George III. She was one of 36 artists who joined together to form the Royal Academy of Arts. At the age of 24, she was the youngest Academician and one of just two women among the founders. The other was Angelica Kauffman.
Moser did not marry until later in life. By convention, a woman’s professional life ended upon marriage. “[P]erhaps there was no man worth giving it all up for,” suggested The Lady.
Moser carried on an affair with miniaturist Richard Cosway. He was well-known as a libertine, and “commonly described as resembling a monkey.” (His wife was, in turn, getting it on with Thomas Jefferson.) In his notebooks, Conway made lascivious comments and “invidious comparisons between her and Mrs Cosway,” implying that Moser was more sexually responsive than his wife. He died insane, just in case you’re wondering if there’s cosmic justice.
A Bunch of Flowers, 1792-97, Mary Moser, Frogmore House, courtesy Royal Collection Trust
Moser married at age 49. Bowing to social pressure, she retired and began exhibiting as an amateur under her married name. She’d made a pile of money as a painter; the Frogmore commission alone earned her ÂŁ900, which is equivalent to ÂŁ100,000 today. She left most of her wealth to women: relatives, friends, and the wives of other artists.
It’s very trendy right now to ‘discover’ women artists. But how lost were they in the first place? Artemisia Gentileschi, for example, may not have been a household name twenty years ago, but was well-known to students of the Baroque.
The problem wasn’t so much with their own times, but with the peculiar blinders of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Moser’s membership in the Royal Academy was circumscribed to some degree by her gender; she could not attend nude sketch sessions, for example, and some meetings were closed to her. But all in all, she had a happy and complete life as a painter.