Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D Part 2

Italian artists of the eighteenth century have been called scene painters, and, in truth, many of their works impress one as hurried attempts to cover large s.p.a.ces. Originality was wanting and a wearisome mediocrity prevailed. At the same time certain national artistic qualities were apparent; good arrangement of figures and admirable effects of color still characterized Italian painting, but the result was, on the whole, academic and uninteresting.

The ideals cherished by older artists were lost, and nothing worthy to replace them inspired their followers. The sincerity, earnestness, and devotion of the men who served church and state in the decoration of splendid monuments would have been out of place in the service of amateurs and in the decoration of the salons and boudoirs of the rich, and the painting of this period had little permanent value, in comparison with that of preceding centuries.

Italian women, especially in the second half of the century, were professors in universities, lectured to large audiences, and were respectfully consulted by men of science and learning in the various branches of scholars.h.i.+p to which they were devoted. Unusual honors were paid them, as in the case of Maria Portia Vignoli, to whom a statue was erected in the public square of Viterbo to commemorate her great learning in natural science.

An artist, Matilda Festa, held a professors.h.i.+p in the Academy of St. Luke in Rome, and Maria Maratti, daughter of the Roman painter Carlo Maratti, made a good reputation both as an artist and a poetess.

In Northern Italy many women were famous in sculpture, painting, and engraving. At least forty could be named, artists of good repute, whose lives were lacking in any unusual interest, and whose works are in private collections. One of these was a princess of Parma, who married the Archduke Joseph of Austria, and was elected to the Academy of Vienna in 1789.

In France, in the beginning of this century Watteau, 1684-1721, painted his interesting pictures of _La Belle Societe_, reproducing the court life, costumes, and manners of the reign of Louis XIV. with fidelity, grace, and vivacity. Later in the century, Greuze, 1725-1805, with his attractive, refined, and somewhat mannered style, had a certain influence. Claude Vernet, 1714-1789, and David, 1748-1825, each great in his way, influenced the nineteenth as well as the eighteenth century.

Though Vien, 1716-1809, made a great effort to revive cla.s.sic art, he found little sympathy with his aim until the works of his pupil David won recognition from the world of the First Empire.

French Art of this period may be described by a single word--eclectic--and this choice by each important artist of the style he would adopt culminated in the Rococo School, which may be defined as the unusual and fantastic in art. It was characterized by good technique and pleasing color, but lacked purpose, depth, and warmth of feeling. As usual in a _pot-pourri_, it was far enough above worthlessness not to be ignored, but so far short of excellence as not to be admired.

In France during this century there was an army of women artists, painters, sculptors, and engravers. Of a great number we know the names only; in fact, of but two of these, Adelaide Vincent and Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun, have we reliable knowledge of their lives and works.

The eighteenth century is important in the annals of women artists, since their numbers then exceeded the collective number of those who had preceded them--so far as is known--from the earliest period in the history of art. In a critical review of the time, however, we find a general and active interest in culture and art among women rather than any considerable number of noteworthy artists.

Germany was the scene of the greatest activity of women artists. France held the second place and Italy the third, thus reversing the conditions of preceding centuries.

Many German women emulated the examples of the earlier flower painters, but no one was so important as to merit special attention, though a goodly number were elected to academies and several appointed painters to the minor courts.

Among the genre and historical painters we find the names of Anna Amalia of Brunswick and Anna Maria, daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, both of whom were successful artists.

In Berlin and Dresden the interest in art was much greater in the eighteenth than in previous centuries, and with this new impulse many women devoted themselves to various specialties in art. Miniature and enamel painting were much in vogue, and collections of these works, now seen in museums and private galleries, are exquisitely beautiful and challenge our admiration, not only for their beauty, but for the delicacy of their handling and the infinite patience demanded for their execution.

The making of medals was carried to great excellence by German women, as may be seen in a medal of Queen Sophie Charlotte, which is preserved in the royal collection of medals. It is the work of Rosa Elizabeth Schwindel, of Leipsic, who was well known in Berlin in the beginning of the century.

The cutting of gems was also extensively done by women. Susannah Dorsch was famous for her accomplishment in this art. Her father and grandfather had been gem-cutters, and Susannah could not remember at what age she began this work. So highly was she esteemed as an artist that medals were made in her honor.

As frequently happens in a study of this kind, I find long lists of the names of women artists of this period of whose lives and works I find no record, while the events related in other cases are too trivial for repet.i.tion. This is especially true in Holland, where we find many names of Dutch women who must have been reputable artists, since they are mentioned in Art Chronicles of their time; but we know little of their lives and can mention no pictures executed by them.

A national art now existed in England. Hogarth, who has been called the Father of English Painting, was a man of too much originality to be a mere imitator of foreign artists. He devoted his art to the representation of the follies of his time. As a satirist he was eminent, but his mirth-provoking pictures had a deeper purpose than that of amusing. Lord Orford wrote: "Mirth colored his pictures, but benevolence designed them. He smiled like Socrates, that men might not be offended at his lectures, and might learn to laugh at their own folly."

Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough were born and died in the eighteenth century; their famous works were contemporary with the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768, when these artists, together with Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, were among its original members.

It was a fas.h.i.+on in England at this time for women to paint; they princ.i.p.ally affected miniature and water-color pictures, but of the many who called themselves artists few merit our attention; they practised but a feeble sort of imitative painting; their works of slight importance cannot now be named, while their lives were usually commonplace and void of incident. Of the few exceptions to this rule I have written in the later pages of this book.

The suggestion that the nineteenth century cannot yet be judged as to its final effect in many directions has already been made, and of nothing is this more true than of its Art. Of one phase of this period, however, we may speak with confidence. No other century of which we know the history has seen so many changes--such progress, or such energy of purpose so largely rewarded as in the century we are considering.

To one who has lived through more than three score years of this period, no fairy tale is more marvellous than the changes in the department of daily life alone.

When I recall the time when the only mode of travel was by stage-coach, boat, or private carriage--when the journey from Boston to St. Louis demanded a week longer in time than we now spend in going from Boston to Egypt--when no telegraph existed--when letter postage was twenty-five cents and the postal service extremely primitive--when no house was comfortably warmed and women carried foot-stoves to unheated churches--when candles and oil lamps were the only means of "lighting up," and we went about the streets at night with dim lanterns--when women spun and wove and sewed with their hands only, and all they accomplished was done at the hardest--when in our country a young girl might almost as reasonably attempt to reach the moon as to become an artist--remembering all this it seems as if an army of magicians must incessantly have waved their wands above us, and that human brains and hands could not have invented and put in operation the innumerable changes in our daily life during the last half-century.

When, in the same way, we review the changes that have taken place in the domains of science, in scholarly research in all directions, in printing, bookmaking, and the methods of ill.u.s.trating everything that is printed--from the most serious and learned writing to advertis.e.m.e.nts scattered over all-out-of-doors--when we add to these the revolutions in many other departments of life and industry, we must regard the nineteenth as the century _par excellence_ of expansion, and in various directions an epoch-making era.

When we turn to our special subject we find an activity and expansion in nineteenth-century art quite in accordance with the spirit of the time.

This expansion is especially noticeable in the increased number of subjects represented in works of art, and in the invention of new methods of artistic expression.

Prior to this period there had been a certain selection of such subjects for artistic representation as could be called "picturesque," and though more ordinary and commonplace subjects might be rendered with such skill--such drawing, color, and technique--as to demand approbation, it was given with a certain condescension and the feeling was manifested that these subjects, though treated with consummate art, were not artistic. The nineteenth century has signally changed these theories.

Nothing that makes a part in human experience is now too commonplace or too unusual and mysterious to afford inspiration to painter and sculptor; while the normal characteristics of human beings and the circ.u.mstances common to their lives are not omitted, the artist frequently endeavors to express in his work the most subtle experiences of the heart and soul, and to embody in his picture or statue an absolutely psychologic phenomenon.

The present easy communication with all nations has awakened interest in the life of countries almost unknown to us a half-century ago. So customary is it for artists to wander far and wide, seeking new motives for their works, that I felt no surprise when I recently received a letter from a young American woman who is living and painting in Biskra.

How short a time has pa.s.sed since this would have been thought impossible!

It is also true that subjects not new in art are treated in a nineteenth-century manner. This is noticeable in the picturing of historical subjects. The more intimate knowledge of the world enables the historical painter of the present to impart to his representations of the important events of the past a more human and emotional element than exists in the historical art of earlier centuries. In a word, nineteenth-century art is sympathetic, and has found inspiration in all countries and cla.s.ses and has so treated its subjects as to be intelligible to all, from the favored children for whom Kate Greenaway, Walter Crane, and many others have spent their delightful talents, to men and women of all varieties of individual tastes and of all degrees of ability to comprehend and appreciate artistic representations.

A fuller acquaintance with the art and art-methods of countries of which but little had before been known has been an element in art expansion.

Technical methods which have not been absolutely adopted by European and English-speaking artists have yet had an influence upon their art. The interest in j.a.panese Art is the most important example of such influence, and it is also true that j.a.panese artists have been attracted to the study of the art of America and Europe, while some foreign artists resident in j.a.pan--notably Miss Helen Hyde, a young American--have studied and practised j.a.panese painting to such purpose that j.a.panese juries have accorded the greatest excellence and its honors to their works, exhibited in compet.i.tion with native artists.

Other factors in the expansion of art have been found in photography and the various new methods of ill.u.s.tration that have filled books, magazines, and newspapers with pictures of more or less (?) merit. Even the painting of "posters" has not been scorned by good artists, some of whom have treated them in such a manner as to make them worthy a place in museums where only works of true merit are exhibited.

Other elements in the nineteenth-century expansion in art are seen in the improved productions of the so-called Arts and Crafts which are of inestimable value in cultivating the artistic sense in all cla.s.ses.

Another influence in the same direction is the improved decoration of porcelain, majolica, and pottery, which, while not equal to that of earlier date in the esteem of connoisseurs, brings artistic objects to the sight and knowledge of all, at prices suited to moderate means.

In America the unparalleled increase of Free Libraries has brought, not books alone, but collections of photographs and other reproductions of the best Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in the world, as well as medals, book-plates, artistic bindings, etc., within reach of students of art.

Art Academies and Museums have also been greatly multiplied. It is often a surprise to find, in a comparatively small town, a fine Art Gallery, rich in a variety of precious objects. Such an one is the Art Museum of Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Me. The edifice itself is the most beautiful of the works by McKim that I have seen. The frescoes by La Farge and Vedder are most satisfactory, and one exhibit, among many of interest--that of original drawings by famous Old Masters--would make this Museum a worthy place of pilgrimage. Can one doubt that such a Museum must be an element of artistic development in those who are in contact with it?

I cannot omit saying that this splendid monument to the appreciation of art and to great generosity was the gift of women, while the artists who perfected its architecture and decorations are Americans; it is an impressive expression of the expansion of American Art in the nineteenth century.

The advantages for the study of Art have been largely improved and increased in this period. In numberless studios small cla.s.ses of pupils are received; in schools of Design, schools of National Academies, and in those of individual enterprise, all possible advantages for study under the direction of the best artists are provided, and these are supplemented by scholars.h.i.+ps which relieve the student of limited means from providing for daily needs.

All these opportunities are shared by men and women alike. Every advantage is as freely at the command of one as of the other, and we equal, in this regard, the centuries of the Renaissance, when women were Artists, Students, and Professors of Letters and of Law, filling these positions with honor, as women do in these days.

In 1859 T. Adolphus Trollope, in his "Decade of Italian Women," in which he wrote of the scholarly women of the Renaissance, says: "The degree in which any social system has succeeded in ascertaining woman's proper position, and in putting her into it, will be a very accurate test of the progress it has made in civilization. And the very general and growing conviction that our own social arrangements, as they exist at present, have not attained any satisfactory measure of success in this respect, would seem, therefore, to indicate that England in her nineteenth century has not yet reached years of discretion after all."

Speaking of Elisabetta Sirani he says: "The humbly born artist, admirable for her successful combination in perfect compatibility of all the duties of home and studio." Of how many woman artists we can now say this.

Trollope's estimate of the position of women in England, which was not unlike that in America, forty-five years ago, when contrasted with that of the present day, affords another striking example of the expansion of the nineteenth century.