Feminism and 19th-century Art History

Feminist perspectives in art history of the nineteenth century were stimulated by second-wave feminism and introduced new critical approaches, issues, artists, methods, and interpretations. I will refer to this scholarship as feminist art history of the nineteenth century. Overall, its initial focus was to study art created by women who had previously been excluded or marginalized, and to analyze the constraints and obstacles that hindered women in obtaining art education and pursuing professional careers. Looking at gender biases in art history of the nineteenth century, feminist art historians critiqued the impeding influence of ideologies of domesticity and femininity on women artists and the devaluing categorization of their art as “feminine.” They also stimulated reinterpretations of the art of canonical male artists, critiqued the notion of the male artist as “genius,” and investigated the authority of the heteronormative masculine gaze. Over the years, feminist art history developed a body of scholarship on women artists, focusing on their accomplishments and their ways of negotiating gender constraints rather than merely accommodating limitations. As a result of these acts of recuperating, reevaluating, and reinterpreting the work of women artists, these artists were written into the art history of the nineteenth century. The new scholarship also led to the study of forms of creative production previously denigrated as crafts (like quilts) or ignored (like the political visual culture created by the suffragists). All of this scholarly literature resulted in the realization that what had appeared to be a lack of professional women artists was in fact the result of their exclusion from art history, art collections, and display in museums. Increasingly focusing on female agency, feminist art historians also turned their attention to multiple kinds of gazes, analyzing women artists’ gazes as depicted or performed in their art. As both feminism and art history evolved, feminist art history of the nineteenth century widened its analyses of power to explore the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and other components of identity, both in representations in art and visual culture and in the identities of artists and models. Like the field of art history as a whole, feminist art history of the nineteenth century broadened geographically and culturally beyond its initial focus on Europe and the United States to include non-Western artists, art, and visual and material culture. As feminist art history progressed over time, it also expanded the primary focus on women artists and women’s art works and visual representations to include the study of women in relation to exhibitions, museums, collecting (e.g., how women artists are represented or excluded in museums), and also recuperating the contributions of women collectors who made bequests to established museums, participated in founding major museums, and founded their own museums. The texts chosen for this contribution to Oxford Bibliographies in Art History range from early foundational texts of feminist art history of the nineteenth century to recent scholarship, and will give students an overview of the evolution of this dynamic field.