Many of the American students who flocked to Paris were women. They had far more restricted access to teaching (and often had to pay more for the privilege) but they persevered and often became successful artists.
Ellen Day Hale painted her self-portrait just before returning from Paris to her native Boston. She shows herself as confident, self-assured and curious - her straight fringe and protuding ears making no concessions to conventional ideas of femininity.
Elizabeth Jane Gardner enjoyed early success at the Paris Salon, and became a mentor to many other Americans. Her work is conventionally academic, and her large painting of the Shepherd David was regarded as one of the best of that year, 1895.
Mary Fairchild, later MacMonnies, sums up some of the challenges for the woman artist in her painting of the room she used both as a studio and as a nursery.
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Main image: Ellen Day Hale, 'Self Portrait', 1885. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, Gift of Nancy Hale Bowers, (1986.6450).
Top detail: Detail from Elizabeth Jane Gardner, 'The Shepherd David', about 1895. © National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.,
Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay, 1986.
Bottom detail: Detail from Mary Fairchild, 'In the Nursery - Giverny Studio', about 1896-1898. © Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois. Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999. |
