Women, Art and Money in Late Victorian and Edwardian England: The Hustle and the Scramble

Description

Women, Art and Money in England establishes the importance of women artists' commercial dealings to their professional identities and reputations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Grounded in economic, social and art history, the book draws on and synthesises data from a broad range of documentary and archival sources to present a comprehensive history of women artists' professional status and business relationships within the complex and changing art market of late-Victorian England. By providing new insights into the routines and incomes of women artists, and the spaces where they created, exhibited and sold their art, this book challenges established ideas about what women had to do to be considered 'professional' artists. More important than a Royal Academy education or membership to exhibiting societies was a woman's ability to sell her work. This meant that women had strong incentive to paint in saleable, popular and 'middlebrow' genres, which reinforced prejudices towards women's 'naturally' inferior artistic ability - prejudices that continued far into the twentieth century. From shining a light on the difficult to trace pecuniary arrangements of little researched artists like Ethel Mortlock to offering new and direct comparisons between the incomes earned by male and female artists, and the genres, commissions and exhibitions that earned women the most money, Women, Art and Money is a timely contribution to the history of women's working lives that is relevant to a number of scholarly disciplines.

Maria Quirk is an historian of women's and art history based at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.

Quirk offers a deeper and more narrowly defined study, focusing on women artists in the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods and mapping their newly emergent professional status. * Victorian Studies * Innovative ... Quirk's insistence on remuneration as the key strategy to women's professionalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries makes her book an important addition to the growing field of scholarship on art markets. * The Burlington Magazine * Drawing upon an impressive range of primary sources including diaries, letters, autobiographies and the periodical press, this book tells a fascinating story about women artists' struggles and strategies at the turn of the century, while also providing tremendous insight into the larger artistic ecosystem as viewed from the artist's perspective at a pivotal moment in the history of modern art and the art market. * Pamela Fletcher, Professor of Art History, Bowdoin College, USA *