Georgia Women Who Impacted The Arts: Part 1

In a continuing celebration of Women’s History Month, we want to celebrate some of our home-grown female artists who made an impact on history with their work! In this post, we’ll be focusing on three artists who were born before 1900, working through some turbulent times in history in the Deep South.

Harriet Powers (1837-1910)

Pictorial quilt by Harriet Powers Source: Wikimedia Commons

Harriet Powers was born in Athens, GA on October 29, 1837. She was a folk artist and quilt maker, born a slave, who likely learned to sew from other slaves. Powers could neither read nor write, but she found a timeless language in her art. Utilizing a mix of African applique and European stitching techniques, she created quilts that told stories, often Biblical tales.

In 1886, she displayed one of her quilts at a cotton fair in Athens and was discovered by a local art teacher named Jennie Smith. Smith tried to purchase it but was denied. She recognized its artistry and value and maintained correspondence with Powers over the years until finally in 1991 Powers was willing to part with it for $5 ($174.54 in today’s money; still a criminally low amount). Smith was so thrilled with the quilt that she wrote an 18 page document about it, which helped to keep Powers in the eye of history.

Her two surviving quits are owned by the Smithsonian’s American History Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Nearly 100 years after her death, Powers was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement Hall of Fame.

Lucy May Stanton (1875-1931)

Lucy May Stanton Self-Portrait by Lucy May Stanton Source: Wikimedia Commons

Stanton was born in Atlanta and attended the Southern Female College in LaGrange, now known as Cox College. Her art career began in 1896, and she painted many distinguished personages from Georgia that are still a part of museum collections in New York, Boston, Washington, and Emory (Howell Cobb’s portrait hangs in the Speaker’s Lobby in Washington, D.C., for example).

Stanton was well-traveled in her life, receiving formal training in Paris, living for a year in New York, returning to Athens, GA, living primarily in Boston for ten years, and returning to Athens in 1926. In 1927 she had a solo exhibition at the High.

Uncle George by Lucy May Stanton Source: Wikimedia Commons

Stanton was remarkable not only for the quality and breadth of her work, but also for the fact that she was one of the first white artists in the Deep South to portray Black subjects in her paintings with neither sentimentality nor prejudice.

Alma Thomas (1891-1978)

Photo of Alma Thomas Source: Wikimedia Commons

Alma Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia in 1891 to a family that valued culture and education. Unfortunately, freedom to participate in culture and education as a Black woman in turn of the century Columbus were highly limited. She still made the most of her environment as a child, however, using the abundant clay of Georgia’s soil to make little bits of art like puppets and sculptures.

There weren’t opportunities for education past grade school and she was not permitted to visit museums, so in 1907 her family decided to move to Washington, DC for the greater access to schools and culture.

She took her first art class in DC at Armstrong Technical High School, which she cited as laying the foundation for her life. She went to college at the school that would become the University of the District of Columbia and earned her teaching credentials.

She served as a teacher for much of her life, returning to college at Howard University to study art in the midst of a varied teaching career that ranged about 35 years and covered elementary and junior high school. She kept working on her art, using summer breaks to visit art museums in New York City.

Her art career didn’t get fully underway until she retired at the age of 68 or 69. Her practice through her teaching years had taken her through sculpture and realistic painting, but she began exploring abstracts in the 50’s and developed her signature style once she was able to devote herself completely to her art.

She was the first Black woman to get a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum, exhibiting her abstracts in 1972 at the age of 77. Her work features bright and beautiful colors, reflecting her personal philosophy to concentrate on beauty and happiness. Her work received a revival in 2015 when the Obamas hung her painting Resurrection in the White House dining room, making Thomas’s work the first piece by a Black woman to enter the White House Collection.

If you want to further explore the joyful expression of Alma Thomas, we have a free kids’ workshop this Saturday from 2-4 pm for kids ages 7-11!

We'll be back next week with more women from Georgia who made their mark on the arts. Make sure to stop by to see our current exhibition, A Woman's Place is in the Arts, open until March 29th, and don't miss our free children's workshop on Alma Thomas this Saturday!

Women’s Work: 5 Lesser-Known Female Artists Who Overcame the Odds to Make History (Part 2)

Last week we began an exploration of five lesser-known women who overcame the odds to make history. This week we continue our journey through history with two more women who made it through difficult circumstances to have a thriving art career in their lifetimes.

Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938)

Young Woman Crocheting by Suzanne Valadon Source: Wikimedia Commons

Many of the women who were able to fight their way into the art scene throughout history benefitted from such privileges as being born into a higher economic class or having a parent or spouse in the arts. Valadon is an exception to this trend.

Valadon was the illegitimate child of an unmarried laundress, born into poverty. Before she hit her teenage years she was left to support herself, working a range of odd jobs that included food service and circus performance.

When she was 15, she started modeling for painters whose names you might recognize, like Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. She observed the artists at work and was able to learn from them in lieu of formal training (the expense of which was out of her reach). She transitioned from subject to painter, developing a bold and unique style that set her apart. She frequently painted the female nude, but from the lens of a woman exploring the female experience. Paintings depicted intimate but not sexualized moments, like a woman doing her hair or a mother drying off her teen daughter.

While Valadon regretted the injury that ended her circus career, her art career was long and illustrious, with friendships formed with artists like Degas in addition to Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. She was able to become a full-time artist in 1896, which she sustained through two marriages, the deaths of her famous friends, and struggles with her son’s mental health. Her paintings did not command the prices that her son’s did, but she maintained a powerful reputation in the arts into her sixties, with 19 exhibitions between 1913 and 1932. Her painting career continued into her seventies in spite of illness, and she died at her easel, suffering a stroke while painting flowers.

Margaret Keane (1927-2022)

Keane was an American artist, born in Tennessee, who suffered a permanently damaged ear drum at the age of 2 that left her deaf in one ear. This later affected her signature style of painting, which featured portraits with big eyes as a reference to the attention she paid to people’s eyes in order to understand them when they spoke.

She drew constantly as a child and got married to Frank Ulbrich shortly after graduating high school. The marriage to Ulbrich produced her only child and also brought her to California, but the marriage didn’t last past ten years.

The move to California proved fateful, however, as it led to Keane meeting her second husband, Walter Keane, at an art fair in Berkely. She was trying to keep custody of her child, so agreed to a marriage.

Marriage to Walter seemed to provide another benefit; like many artists, Keane was devoted to her painting practice but didn’t have the promotional skills to easily and effectively sell her work. Walter, however, was excellent at promoting, so for a while it seemed like the ideal partnership. She could devote herself to her art and he could sell it on her behalf. This arrangement sounds idyllic to many artists who wish they could just focus on their work, but it soon turned sour.

Walter Keane began selling Margaret’s paintings at a San Francisco beatnik club, successfully transitioning from his work in real estate to the art scene. Unbeknownst to Margaret, who simply signed her paintings with her last name, he was also taking credit for the work. When she found out, he convinced her to go along with it by explaining that people are “more likely to buy a painting if they think they’re talking to the artist.” He also used a common scammer’s tactic: fear of legal retribution. He claimed they might have to deal with lawsuits if the people who had been purchasing from him found out the wife was actually the painter.

The relationship began a familiar downward spiral. He attempted to learn from her how to paint but couldn’t do it, and he blamed her for his own failings. Her paintings and prints were making millions, originals being purchased by celebrities, but Margaret had no control over the money she was earning. Walter moved them to a nice house and enjoyed the high life, but Margaret was kept in a locked room, painting 16 hours a day. She explains in an interview with The Guardian that he would call every hour he wasn’t home to make sure she didn’t leave, that he’d follow her if she tried to slip away, and that he’d escalated to threatening her with his mafia ties.

His biography from this time is filled with self-aggrandizing statements, claiming that when they met, Margaret called him the greatest artist she’s ever seen, and the most handsome. When Margaret painted Tomorrow Forever for the 1964 World’s Fair, he claims that his dead grandmother told him in a vision that Michealangelo nominated him for their inner circle and compared it to the Sistine Chapel. An art critic did not agree, and his scathing review resulted in the piece’s removal from the Fair. Walter was enraged at this criticism of his borrowed feathers. Margaret was initially upset, but realized enough people enjoyed her work and she decided not to let the criticism stop her from painting what she wanted.

Their marriage ended after 10 years, but Margaret continued to paint for Walter for a while. But in 1970, Margaret came clean. Walter responded predictably: spouting furious lies about her character. She finally issued a direct challenge to him: meet her at high noon at Union Square with paint, brush, and canvas, and they’d prove once and for all who the real painter was. He didn’t show.

In 1986, they went to trial after she filed a defamation suit. She was asked to produce an example of her work in front of the jurors, while Walter lamely cited a shoulder injury as a reason he couldn’t draw right now.

She was awarded $4 million after quickly proving to the jurors that she was the painter, but unfortunately Walter had already squandered the fortune she’d earned and she never saw that money.

Thankfully her life turned around. She became the subject of a Tim Burton biopic called Big Eyes that created a resurgence of interest in her paintings. She had a successful third marriage, lived in Hawaii for 25 years, and then spent the last years of her life in Napa Valley California. She lived a long, full life, passing in the peace of her own home at the age of 94.

This is far from a complete list of the female artists through history that fought hard to have their voices heard and their work seen. There is also a strong European bias in the readily available information on female artists, which must be acknowledged; the names of famous artists that get heard are affected by more than just gender bias. These biases have seen improvements in the past decades, but there is still a long way to go before we achieve true equity in the arts.

There is still plenty we can learn from these powerful women that can apply to our own lives and art careers. Don’t let the opinions and behaviors of others dim your own light. Form friendships and lift each other up in your art career (and life in general). Find your own path to learning, especially if the traditional paths are blocked to you for any reason. Fight for the credit for your work and don’t let anyone take the love of creating away from you.

Join us at The Art Center this March to celebrate Women’s History Month with our current exhibition, A Woman’s Place is in the Arts.

Women’s Work: 5 Lesser-Known Female Artists Who Overcame the Odds to Make History (Part 1)

When President Jimmy Carter officially designated a Women’s History Week, the precursor to Women’s History Month, he cited the fact that “men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed.” This neglect of attribution has proven true throughout history and across varying fields. From Enheduanna, the first named author in history, to Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer, women have been contributing to advances in science and culture since the beginning of recorded time. Unfortunately, far fewer female innovators, scientists, or creators reach the level of renown to make them a household name like their male counterparts. The arts are no exception to this gendered gap in recognition.

Women have worked in the arts for centuries, but much of their work has gone unattributed or under-represented. Across cultures, ancient women heavily contributed to ceramic arts and fiber arts as part of the necessary work to keep a household clothed and fed. Women in many ancient societies, including China and Greece, painted as well. Medieval women, particularly those cloistered in convents, were able to make some contributions to religious art as well as embroidery and weaving. Victorian and Regency women of the middle and upper classes had access to some arts education, learning “fancy work” (painting and decorative arts) and “plain work” (sewing and practical arts); these were among the “accomplishments” referenced by authors like Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen.

Despite their participation in the arts, it was an uphill battle for women to advance in the professional art fields, or for women’s contributions to be taken seriously when they did. Women were, throughout history, often barred from art institutions or the common practice of apprenticeship that allowed many of their male counterparts to receive a focused and in-depth education in the arts. Due to expectations of propriety and innocence, women were often forbidden from studying human anatomy or the nude figure. Exhibition opportunities and representation have also been limited throughout history. In 1989, a collective known as the Guerrila Girls put together a poster called Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? after surveying the artists and nudes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection and discovering that while 85% of the nudes were female, fewer than 5% of the represented artists were women.

Not all female artists have been forgotten or ignored throughout history, of course. Artists like Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keefe are household names, but many lesser-known artists fought incredible odds to pursue their dreams and make an impact on the world of art.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-early 1650’s)

Judith and Her Maidservant by Artemisia Gentileschi Source: Wikimedia Commons

Gentileschi was born in Rome to the painter Orazio Gentileschi, a follower of the style of Caravaggio. She was able to train under her father and his friend Agostino Tassi, a landscape painter. Her familial connection allowed her to bypass the usual barrier women faced in finding an apprenticeship. Unfortunately, Tassi was no simple benevolent tutor; he forced himself on her when she was only 17, promising to marry her when she threatened him with a knife and then working to destroy her reputation. Artemisia and her father took him to trial, where she had to undergo torture (ye olde lie detector test, I assume: citation here, but be warned that it contains graphic language and details from her testimony).

This early trauma did not hold her back. She surpassed her father in her use of color and the use of extreme contrast between light and dark popularized by Caravaggio. She married a Florentine man and in 1616 became the first woman to be admitted to Florence’s Academy of Design, where she developed her own style.

She was well-traveled in a time when travel was extremely difficult, living in Rome, Florence, and Naples and also briefly visiting Venice and London in her lifetime. After some troubles with creditors and debt that led her to escape to Rome in 1620, she eventually settled in Naples and ran a successful painting studio for more than two decades.

She did all of this with five children to raise!

Adelaide Labille-Guiard (1749-1803) and Marie-Gabrielle Capet (1761-1818)

The story of Labille-Guiard and Capet’s friendship and professional careers stands as a testament to what women can achieve when they support and help each other in a world that is hostile to their advancement.

Self-Portrait with Two Pupils by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard Source: Wikimedia Commons

Labille-Guiard began her career as a miniaturist, which was a more acceptable form of art for young women, but she joined the Académie de Saint-Luc, a Parisian guild for painters and sculptors that was a little more accessible to women. This allowed her to receive instruction from other artists and participate in exhibitions at the guild. She then learned from portraitist François-André Vincent, expanded her repertoire of art materials, and devoted herself to teaching young women artists. Her work was often featured at the Académie de Saint-Luc’s Salon exhibitions, which were so successful that the Académie Royale petitioned the King to shut them down in the late 1770’s.  This didn’t keep Labille-Guiard down long; in 1783, she was one of the few women admitted to the prestigious Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which capped its female admission to only four students at a time.

In between Labille-Guiard’s time at de Saint-Luc and the Académie Royale, she met Marie-Gabrielle Capet. Capet had modest origins and likely got her early training from a free public art school in Lyon. But in 1781, she came to Paris to learn under the tutelage of Labille-Guiard, which was the start of a lifelong friendship between the two women. They took turns modeling for each other, and Labille-Guiard was able to open doors for Capet for more prestigious commissions, which for both of them eventually included royalty. The two of them fought the sexism of their era, as well as the tendency of threatened male artists to spread rumors about sexual misconduct to sully their reputations, but both were able to maintain thriving careers. The two of them maintained a close friendship and working relationship, living together for most of Capet’s life even after Labille-Guiard’s marriage to the portraitist who taught her in her early career.

Labille-Guiard broke significant ground during her illustrious career, but she didn’t simply allow her success to be hers alone. Her famous Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, which features Capet, is a striking illustration of her devotion to uplifting other women in the arts. In 1795, she succeeded at a decades-long campaign to gain artist’s lodging at the Louvre where she could teach her students. She fought to remove the limits of female admission to the Académie, which largely resulted in snarky commentary about her being a “hen amongst roosters.”

Portrait of the Late Madame Vincent (Studio Scene) by Marie-Gabrielle Capet Source: Wikimedia Commons

Capet’s work didn’t receive the acclaim that Labille-Guiard enjoyed, but she was still able to maintain her career thanks to the support of her friend. At the end of Labille-Guiard’s life, Capet repaid the support by caring for her friend through her illness until her death. Afterwards, she painted The Atelier of Madame Vincent in honor of her teacher and friend, a large-scale historical rendering that celebrates the popularity, skill, and professionalism of her groundbreaking mentor.

Next week we'll look at two more lesser-known female artists who fought the odds to make history! If you want to experience the work of currently working and local women artists, join us at The Art Center this Saturday March 15 from 6-7:30 PM for the opening reception of "A Woman's Place is in the Arts."