THE TURN OF WOMEN ARTISTS 1837-2018

Chris Beetles is delighted to present

The Turn of Women Artists 1837-2018

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act 1918, when some women were given the vote, this major selling exhibition showcases the exceptional work of pioneering women artists who sought to establish themselves on an equal footing and indelibly shaped the male-dominated art world.

Champagne Private View (by invitation only)
Tuesday 27th March 2018, 6-8pm

The exhibition will be opened at 7pm by Dr Gill Clarke MBE, author, curator and Visiting Professor at the Otter Gallery, University of Chichester. Her many books and exhibitions include Evelyn Dunbar: War and Country (2006), The Women’s Land Army: a Portrait (2008), From Fields and Factories: Women’s Work on the Home Front in the First World War (2014) and Women Artists: Power and Presence (2017).

The exhibition runs from 27 March -14 April 2018.

All images are viewable on our website www.chrisbeetles.com

The Turn of Women Artists 1837-2018 features the work of 31 women artists working between 1837 and the present day. The show comprises over 150 watercolours, oils and illustrations by the following artists:

Helen Allingham RWS • Anne Anderson • Honor Appleton • Diana Armfield RA RWS HRWA HNEAC HPS • Val Archer • Mabel Lucie Attwell SWA • Rose Barton RWS ASWA • Katie Blackmore RBA ASWA • Mildred Anne Butler RWS SWA UAA • Victoria Davidson • Jessie Dunlop • Lesley Fotherby • Phyllis Ginger RWS • Geraldine Girvan • Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming • Kate Greenaway RI • Kathleen Hale OBE • Florence Harrison • Lesley Anne Ivory • Helen Jacobs BWS • Isobel Morton-Sale • Beatrice Parsons • Susan Beatrice Pearse • Muriel Pemberton RWS FSIA • Beatrix Potter • Eileen Soper RMS SWLA • Betty Swanwick RA RWS • Margaret Tarrant • Mary Vermuyden Wheelhouse
Plus works on the theme of women’s suffrage by:
George Belcher RA and Sir Bernard Partridge RI NEAC
Notes:

1. The exhibition takes place from Tuesday 27 March to Saturday 14 April 2018, on Monday to Saturday from 10am-5:30pm at
   Chris Beetles Gallery
   8 & 10 Ryder Street
   St James’s
   London
   SW1Y 6QB
   www.chrisbeetles.com

2. Free digital images are available on request from the gallery.

3. Press contact
   Sasha Morse
   020 7839 7551
   gallery@chrisbeetles.com

Despite their contribution, women artists have forever been under represented. The founders of the Royal Academy in 1768 counted two women among their number, Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) and Mary Moser (1744-1819). After the death of Mary Moser, no woman was then elected a full Academician until Dame Laura Knight in 1936.

Women artists were not allowed to attend Life Drawing classes until the turn of the 19th century. Prior to that time the art education system restricted them to domestic and fantastical subject matters. The Victorian patriarchal expectation that women could only occupy passive positions in society ensured their exclusion from all male dominated exhibiting societies such as the Royal Academy.

In 1875, Helen Allingham was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours; she was the first woman to be promoted to full membership once the society opened to female artists in 1890, her friend Kate Greenaway was elected in 1889 and Rose Barton in 1893.

In 1855, the Society of Female Artists, had been set up to offer women the opportunity to exhibit and promote their art and on the elevation of their status as representative of talented women artists such as Rose Barton, changed their name to the Society of Women Artists in 1899.

This year marks the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918, when women over the age of 30 with property were given the vote. A decade later, in 1928, all women over the age of 21 were allowed to vote. It is unsurprising then that the question of equal artistic freedom should also have persisted when the political liberty of women was being fought for until 1928. Women artists had played an integral role in the Suffrage campaigns of the early twentieth century, the Artists’ Suffrage League being established in 1907 and creating enduring propaganda for the cause.

In celebrating women artists working around 1918, this exhibition, The Turn of Women Artists 1837-2018, is set against the background of a contemporary feminism that pays homage to the pioneering women who fought for equality in the hundred years before 1918, and recognises how their fight has shaped the way women artists live and work today. But it simultaneously seeks to question and challenge the remaining inequality that exists in society. The exceptional range of female artists shown in this exhibition is testament to the equal contribution of women and their art throughout the last 200 years and how their efforts have continued to shape the present.