Dr Caroline Palmer, Ashmolean Museum - "Falling out of History - Women Artists from Elisabetta Sirani to Lizzie Siddal - Talk", October 2019
Dr Caroline Palmer
Caroline is the Print Room Supervisor, Department of Western Art Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford. She studied Modern and Medieval Languages at King’s College, Cambridge, before becoming an editor with art publishers Thames & Hudson. As a freelance editor, she then worked for Routledge, Penguin (Pevsner Guides), Calmann & King, Everyman, and the Royal Fine Art Commission. In 2009 she completed her PhD in Art History: ‘Women writers on art and perceptions of the female connoisseur, 1780–1860’ (AHRC). This focused on Maria Callcott, Anna Jameson, Mary Philadelphia Merrifield and Elizabeth Eastlake, and explored the travel writing of Anna Miller, Mary Berry and Mariana Starke, the art criticism of Sarah Flower Adams, and the iconographical studies of Louisa Twining. A former Associate Lecturer in the History of Art at Oxford Brookes University, she has worked in the Western Art Print Room since 2009.
Sharon Ellis, Chair, wrote about this talk on 15 Oct 2019:
"Today we were treated to an illustrated talk by Dr Caroline Palmer. She talked about the number of women artists, from the 17th to 20th century, who have been forgotten. She showed us some of their remarkable drawings and prints. During the coffee break, Caroline invited us to read various critiques of well known works of art and to guess which had been written by a male, and which by a female, art critic. It proved to be quite illuminating and good fun guessing which gender had written which critique and our thoughts on why!"
"Today we were treated to an illustrated talk by Dr Caroline Palmer. She talked about the number of women artists, from the 17th to 20th century, who have been forgotten. She showed us some of their remarkable drawings and prints. During the coffee break, Caroline invited us to read various critiques of well known works of art and to guess which had been written by a male, and which by a female, art critic. It proved to be quite illuminating and good fun guessing which gender had written which critique and our thoughts on why!"
Carol Marchant also wrote about this talk from a member's viewpoint:
"Dr Caroline Palmer gave a fascinating illustrated talk on the work of several women artists, emphasizing the difficulty they faced in gaining recognition of their work in their own right. Many, like Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) who produced over 200 paintings in her short life, were related to established male artists. She learned her technique in her father’s studio and was credited with training many artists."
"Throughout the centuries, women artists have fought prejudice and rejection in the male dominated world of classical art. Although in 1768 there were two female founder members of the Royal Academy, it was over a hundred years later, in 1936, before another woman was accepted into the hallowed Society. Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman were still treated differently from their male counterparts as it was considered unthinkable that they should attend life-drawing classes."
"The Royal Female School of Art was founded in 1842 to enable ‘young women of the middle class to obtain an honourable and profitable employment’!"
"Dr Palmer included the following Artists in her presentation:
Diana Scultoria, or Mantuana born 1547 Italy - engraver
Elisabetta Sirani 1638-1665 Italian - Baroque painter
Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella 1636-1697 - French engraver
Mary Philadelpha Merrifield 1804-89 - British writer on art and fashion
Rosa Bonheur – a favourite of Queen Victoria - French artist and sculptor 1822-1899
Berthe Morisot 1841-1895 French Impressionist 1841-1895
Mary Cassatt American painter and printmaker – lived in France Impressionist
Marie Bashkirtseff - Ukrainian painter and sculptor
Gertrude Hermes 1901-83 studied with Henry Moore – wood engraver and sculptor
Dame Laura Knight 1877-1970 English Artist – oils, water colours, etching, engraving – Impressionist
Lizzie Siddal – artist and poet. 1829-1862 Rossetti’s muse and model
Julia Margaret Cameron 1815-1879 photographer and portraitist
Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale 1872-1945 Edwardian artist Pre-Raphaelite style
Anna Alma Tadema 1867-1943 British artist and suffragette portraits and interiors
Margaret Millicent Fisher Prout 1875-1963 Artist Slade School
Clare Leighton, Gertrude Hermes and Monica Poole all wood engravers."
"I could go on a lot more about this talk because it was so good. I loved finding out about prominent women artists through the ages and their struggles to be accepted for their work, rather than it being attributed to their fathers, brothers, uncles etc."
"I think the list of artists may be useful for anyone wanting to delve further into their work. I loved, for example, that Dame Laura Knight, throughout 1929 and 1930, went on a tour with Bertram Mills and Great Carmo's circus and 'painted at great speed directly on the canvas without any preliminary drawing'. She produced some fantastically colourful circus folk and horses."
"I would love more talks like this and I am not an artist! Really good!"
Many thanks to both Sharon and Carol for writing so positively about this talk.
"Dr Caroline Palmer gave a fascinating illustrated talk on the work of several women artists, emphasizing the difficulty they faced in gaining recognition of their work in their own right. Many, like Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) who produced over 200 paintings in her short life, were related to established male artists. She learned her technique in her father’s studio and was credited with training many artists."
"Throughout the centuries, women artists have fought prejudice and rejection in the male dominated world of classical art. Although in 1768 there were two female founder members of the Royal Academy, it was over a hundred years later, in 1936, before another woman was accepted into the hallowed Society. Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman were still treated differently from their male counterparts as it was considered unthinkable that they should attend life-drawing classes."
"The Royal Female School of Art was founded in 1842 to enable ‘young women of the middle class to obtain an honourable and profitable employment’!"
"Dr Palmer included the following Artists in her presentation:
Diana Scultoria, or Mantuana born 1547 Italy - engraver
Elisabetta Sirani 1638-1665 Italian - Baroque painter
Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella 1636-1697 - French engraver
Mary Philadelpha Merrifield 1804-89 - British writer on art and fashion
Rosa Bonheur – a favourite of Queen Victoria - French artist and sculptor 1822-1899
Berthe Morisot 1841-1895 French Impressionist 1841-1895
Mary Cassatt American painter and printmaker – lived in France Impressionist
Marie Bashkirtseff - Ukrainian painter and sculptor
Gertrude Hermes 1901-83 studied with Henry Moore – wood engraver and sculptor
Dame Laura Knight 1877-1970 English Artist – oils, water colours, etching, engraving – Impressionist
Lizzie Siddal – artist and poet. 1829-1862 Rossetti’s muse and model
Julia Margaret Cameron 1815-1879 photographer and portraitist
Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale 1872-1945 Edwardian artist Pre-Raphaelite style
Anna Alma Tadema 1867-1943 British artist and suffragette portraits and interiors
Margaret Millicent Fisher Prout 1875-1963 Artist Slade School
Clare Leighton, Gertrude Hermes and Monica Poole all wood engravers."
"I could go on a lot more about this talk because it was so good. I loved finding out about prominent women artists through the ages and their struggles to be accepted for their work, rather than it being attributed to their fathers, brothers, uncles etc."
"I think the list of artists may be useful for anyone wanting to delve further into their work. I loved, for example, that Dame Laura Knight, throughout 1929 and 1930, went on a tour with Bertram Mills and Great Carmo's circus and 'painted at great speed directly on the canvas without any preliminary drawing'. She produced some fantastically colourful circus folk and horses."
"I would love more talks like this and I am not an artist! Really good!"
Many thanks to both Sharon and Carol for writing so positively about this talk.