Turn-of-the-Century Women Writing About Art, 1880–1920

Abstract

Women were important supporters of fine art during the late Victorian and early twentieth-century period. The popular press invariably recorded their sartorial presence at exhibition openings. Women also contributed to this arena as art critics and journalists. For art criticism, the turn of the century marks a particularly crucial period in Britain, with the inception of new periodicals, such as the Studio, Connoisseur, and Burlington Magazine, but also the demise of the great Victorian journals the Art Journal and the Magazine of Art. This was linked to dramatic changes in exhibition culture; the rise of new galleries created a plethora of spaces for viewing art in the metropole beyond the Royal Academy. Increasingly correspondents also made readers aware of exhibitions in Europe and beyond, signalling a more cosmopolitan outlook in London. Not surprisingly, scholarship has historically overlooked reviews and articles written by women within the art press, in part because their contributions were often pseudonymous or indeed anonymous. More recently work has shown that the art press at the turn of the century included numerous women art writers (see Fig. 20.1). These women complicate and challenge traditional accounts of art history and modernity centred on male critics.