Women Sculptors and their Male Assistants: a Criticised but Common Practice in France in the long Nineteenth-Century

The creation process of sculpture always has relied on the use of assistants. However, women sculptors often have faced a double standard. Despite simply following standard sculpting practices, they have commonly been reproached for not being the true authors of their works, as sceptics could hardly believe a woman, due to her slighter physique, could be a sculptor. The multitude of references to such rumours and comments in historic and more recent publications on women sculptors shows that it has been an international and persistent phenomenon. This article takes France, and particularly Paris, as a case study, covering the (very) long nineteenth century, with the aim of examining developments across different periods.The earliest French sculptresses – some worked as ‘amateurs’ because of their high social status while others struggled to make money – were attacked for their use of assistants. The Second Empire, with its many commissions for contemporary sculptors, saw a rise in ‘professional’ women sculptors from the middle classes. It then became more acceptable for women to employ assistants and openly communicate about it. The relatively easy access to praticiens in Paris actually seems to have helped sculptresses in nurturing professional careers alongside their male colleagues, while their training opportunities were still all but equal. In the late nineteenth century, when training and exhibition possibilities grew, a new wave of amateur women artists again elicited new accusations on authorship. Some sculptresses preferred to work entirely on their own, precisely to avoid rumours, or because they liked to master and practice all skills themselves. This ties into the twentieth-century vogue for direct carving, which attracted some female practitioners despite its association with masculinity. The fact that women sculptors’s (assisted) work often was viewed differently because of their gender and biology created yet another obstacle in their careers.