Evolving Images of Women Religious in Nineteenth-Century American Art

Abstract

Robert Walter Weir’s Taking the Veil (1863) is perhaps the best-known depiction of a woman religious in American art. Hailed as a masterpiece, the painting received an outpouring of public enthusiasm during a period characterized by its antipathy to the emerging Catholic Church, especially its convents. As a historical artifact, Taking the Veil reveals much about attitudes toward women religious in the United States, Protestant fascination with Catholic rituals, and a new understanding of the place of religion itself in American art. Women religious were objects of fascination in the emerging American art scene and appeared at every level of the marketplace, proliferating in catch-penny dime novels, children’s readers, genteel gift books, and even high art oil paintings like Weir’s. Inspired by Weir’s own encounter with Catholic art during his studies in Italy as a young man, the artist intended his piece to be a testament to “the value of art as a handmaid of Religion.” Rather than view Taking the Veil in isolation as one painter’s private encounter with Catholicism, it is more useful to see it as part of an evolving understanding of both women religious and religious art.