California Women Artists Unveiled:
“A Woman’s View”

Donna Norine Schuster (1883 ­ 1953)  Girl with Mirror Oil on canvas 26" x 20"

by Elaine Adams

Exploring new styles, expressing unconventional thoughts, experiencing great adventures — these are some of the traits that can keep today’s woman vital, exciting, and in demand at fashionable parties. Yet, throughout much of history women who exhibited these interests were often shunned for displaying what the public perceived as unladylike behavior. Prime career opportunities were not typically given to women who expressed ambitions other than homemaking. Motivated women felt forced to hide behind the scene — “behind every great man...” — or to conceal themselves under male pseudonyms. Many professional women artists of the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries never married, or if they did marry, they rarely had children, as so much of their lives were purely devoted to creating art.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, established in 1805, was among the first institutions in the world to provide women the opportunity to train as artists, although mostly as “copyists.” A copyist was one who reproduced works by popular artists to satisfy a market demand for buyers who could not afford the originals. This was an occupation that was considered perfectly respectable for women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Many American women opted to study at the more progressive Art Students League of New York. With its renowned list of instructors, including William Merritt Chase (1848-1916), Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) and Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), the school soon boasted 1,000 students and became arguably the most important American art school at the turn of the twentieth century. Another popular training ground for aspiring women artists was the Art Institute of Chicago. The Art Institute was recognized for having excellent instruction and the country’s largest collection of plaster casts, essentially used for the study of academic drawing.

On the west coast the only nationally recognized influential art school was the San Francisco Art Association (after 1907 the name was changed to the San Francisco Institute of Art). Following the death of the school’s first director, the illustrious Virgil Williams (1860-1945), Arthur Mathews(1860-1945) became director and served from 1890 to 1 9 06. Mathews’ tonalist and highly decorative style influenced an entire generation of California painters, including several women artists, such as Mary De Neale Morgan (1868-1948) and E. Charlton Fortune (1885-1969). What set Mathews apart from most instructors of the day was that he was willing to teach life drawing classes to women, a practice that was generally forbidden since students were required to study nude male bodies. American art schools aside, every artist of the time knew that to be considered truly “professional,” it was advantageous to have studied in Europe, especially in Paris. This great city host ed a thriving community of American artists who found inspiration in the Paris of La Belle Epoque. Visiting artists also enjoyed the luxury of studying the abundance of paintings and sculptures by great masters displayed throughout local museums and cathedrals. It was common to see women with their sketch pads and easels lined up along the great halls of the Louvre Gallery copying the works of distinguished artists.