The Education Of Nineteenth Century Women Artists Essays

The Education Of Nineteenth Century Women Artists The formal education of women artists in the United States has taken quite a long journey. It wasnt until the nineteenth century that the workings of a recognized education for these women finally appeared. Two of the most famous and elite schools of art that accepted, and still accept, women pupils are the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (the PAFA). Up until the early nineteenth century, women were mostly taught what is now called a fashionable education (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 5). Their mothers raised them to be proper, young ladies and expert housekeepers in expectation of marriage. If these women were fortunate enough to receive some kind of formalized schooling, they were to study penmanship, limited aspects of their mother language, and very little arithmetic (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 5). Unfortunately, this small degree of education was extremely constrictive to women. If they never married or were widowed at a young age, they really had no place to go. This form of womens education created generations of women that were almost entirely dependent on their husbands and male relatives. During the nineteenth century, when the feminist movement was beginning, many schools were established specifically for the education of women, such as the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, and also for the education of both. In the beginning, womens art schools mostly taught pupils practical applications of art. For example, female art students often studied drawing and lithographing, in hopes that they would be hired by industrial companies as designers. The Philadelphia School of Design for Women was one of the first all womens art schools to establish this form of education. Founded in 1844 by a woman named Sarah Peter, the Philadelphia School of Design for Women was a school like none that had come before it. Peter was a wealthy woman of stature and decided to start this school in one of the rooms of her mansion and to hire a teacher to hold regular classes for women in art and design. (As a wonderful incentive for all women, tuition was free for the poor and the wealthy paid a very small sum.) Sarah Peter saw how truly poor the traditional education for women was and she strongly believed that every woman should stand by her sex, thus her reasoning for establishing this soon to become famous art school. As Peter saw it, she wished to give young women some practical training,should [they] so desire or the necessity arise, for well paying self support, (qtd. in Philadelphia School of Design for Women 6). In addition to her personal feelings, she had a very specific reason for starting the Philadelphia schooltrain women to create designs for the citys ind ustrial lines, such as textiles, lithographing, wood engraving, floor coverings, and furniture. From this point on, Peter devoted the rest of her life to overseeing the School and also traveled around the U.S. to establish art schools, like the Philadelphia, in other cities (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 6-11). The Philadelphia School of Design for Women originally had three departments from which young women could take classes: drawing, industrial, and wood engravings/lithography. The majority of the women were instructed within the drawing department, in which pupils made copies of original compositions and applied coloring and shading. From here on, depending on the instructor, they would progress toward drawings from casts and life (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 23-24). The industrial department showed the women applications of drawing, shading, and coloring to the art of design. Surprisingly, these designs and patterns created by the women of the Philadelphia School were secured under copyright law for some time (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 24). In the third department, lithography/wood engraving, women were taught drawing on stone and carving in wood. During the first years of the school, the actual printing was done on school grounds. However, in later years, most printing was done outside the school by contract. Due to the beauty and perfection of the pupils works, very soon after the Schools establishment, several of the students lithographs were used in floral brochures, such as