The Fount of Inspiration

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When scholars have shown interest in the lives of artists' models, they have tended to focus on their personal lives or artistic aspirations. Through an examination of the work of Minnie Clark, a poor woman who modeled for Charles Dana Gibson and James Carroll Beckwith, and the foundation of the Art Workers' Club for Women, which functioned as something of a union for artists' models in turn‐of‐the‐century New York, this essay reevaluates modeling as a kind of artistic labor. Artists and models considered labor to be an important performance done best by those with “artistic intelligence.”