A Studio of One's Own: Fictional Women Painters and the Art of Fiction is a critical study of the portrayal of women artists in nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels in English, including British, American, Irish, and Canadian women writers. This book traces the gradual progression from amateur parlor painters in the novels of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and others, to the serious professional painters depicted by contemporary writers such as Margaret Atwood, Mary Gordon, and A. S. Byatt. In fiction as in history, the woman artist's working space enlarges through time - by uneven steps - from a portfolio in a cupboard to a studio or atelier where work may be completed and prepared for sale or exhibition. This working space is a measure of the claim that the artist makes upon the world.
The first chapter of the book has the title:
The book sounds splendid. A thoughtful commentary on an interesting subject.
ReplyDeleteI know that Jane Eyre did a lot of painting when she was at school, and even showed Rochester her portfolio when she first met him.
What other painters are in Bronte novels - and poems, I wonder?
Oh, I remember now. Helen Huntingdon Graham in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was an artist too. She actually sold her paintings, as far as I can recall from the TV show I saw a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteSome other women painters that we have traced in Brontë novels. In Anne's "Agnes Grey" there's a reference to Mary, Agnes' sister to be a "beatiful drawer":
ReplyDelete"What do you say to doing a few more pictures, in your best style, and getting them framed with the water-colour drawings you have already done, and trying to dispose of them to some liberal picture-dealer, who has the sense to discern their merits?" (Chapter 1)