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WOMEN ARTISTS
IN ALL AGES AND COUNTRIES.
By
MRS. ELLET,
AUTHOR OF “THE WOMEN OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION,” ETC.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1859.
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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine, by
Harper & Brothers,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.
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TO
MRS. COVENTRY WADDELL,
WHOSE ELEGANT TASTE AND APPRECIATION OF ART, AND WHOSE LIBERAL KINDNESS TO ARTISTS, HAVE FOSTERED AMERICAN GENIUS,
This Volume is Inscribed
BY HER FRIEND
THE AUTHOR.
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PREFACE.
I do not know that any work on Female Artists—either grouping them orgiving a general history of their productions—has ever been published,except the little volume issued in Berlin by Ernst Guhl, entitled “DieFrauen in die Kunstgeschichte.” In that work the survey is closed withthe eighteenth century, and female poets are included with painters,sculptors, and engravers in the category of artists. Finding ProfessorGuhl’s sketches of the condition of art in successive ages entirelycorrect, I have made use of these and the facts he has collected,adding details omitted by him, especially in the personal history ofprominent women devoted to the brush and the chisel. Authorities, toonumerous to mention, in French, Italian, German, and English, have beencarefully consulted. I am indebted particularly to the works of Vasari,Descampes, and Fiorillo. The biographies of Mdlles. Bonheur, Fauveau,and Hosmer are taken, with a little condensing and shaping, from latenumbers of that excellent periodical, “The Englishwoman’s Journal.” Thesketches of many living artists were prepared from materials furnishedby themselves or their friends.
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It is manifestly impossible, in a work of this kind, to include eventhe names of all the women artists who are worthy of remembrance. Amongthose of the present day are many who have not yet had sufficientexperience to do justice to their own powers, and any criticism oftheir productions would be premature and unfair.
No attempt has been made in the following pages to give elaboratecritiques or a connected history of art. The aim has been simplyto show what woman has done, with the general conditions favorableor unfavorable to her efforts, and to give such impressions of thecharacter of each prominent artist as may be derived from a faithfulrecord of her personal experiences. More may be learned by a viewof the early struggles and trials, the persevering industry and thewell-earned triumphs of the gifted, than by the most erudite orfine-spun disquisition. Should the perusal of my book inspire withcourage and resolution any woman who aspires to overcome difficultiesin the achievement of honorable independence, or should it lead toa higher general respect for the powers of women and their destinedpo