Women of the Academie Julian
Transcript of Women of the Academie Julian
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Women of the Académie Julian: The Rise of the Female Art Student
Katherine Amato
Art History 156
Professor Karen Linehan
April 22, 2010
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Marie Bashkirtseff, In the Studio, 1881, Oil on Canvas This painting, by Marie Bashkirtseff, shows one of the female ateliers of the Academie Julian, one of the first art schools to allow female students.
Katherine Amato
Professor Karen Linehan
ARH156
22 April 2010
Women of the Académie Julian: The Rise of the Female Art Student
Women have faced many challenges in the battle for equal rights, including the
battle for an equal artistic education. While men were allowed to enter premier art
schools such as the École des Beaux-Arts, females were barred from entering such
academic environments. The
alternative for those females
seeking an artistic education was
to study under a master, however
this option was expensive and
some masters chose not to have
female students to prevent any
kind of impropriety. Rodolphe
Julian and the Académie Julian
offered women one of the first
opportunities to study, exhibit, and pursue a career as an artist on a more equal level with
male art students than most other art academies of the time.
The Academic tradition began in France, in the middle of the seventeenth century
with the Académie Royal de Peinture et de Sculpture. This Académie was established
with the purpose of professionalizing artists working for the French court and giving
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these artists government approval that could not be obtained from other popular art guilds
of the time. Students during this period attended the Académie des Beaux-arts and were
educated in drawing, painting, sculpture, engraving, architecture, and other media,
females were not accepted. Following the French Revolution, the Académie Royal de
Peinture et de Sculpture and Académie des Beaux-Arts were renamed the Académie de
Peinture et de Sculpture and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, reflecting that these entities were
now independent of the French government. Also, the Institut de France was established,
which consisted of five different Académies. The Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture,
Académie de musique and Académie d’architecture were combined in 1795 to form the
Institut’s Académie des beaux-arts. (Institut de France)
During this time, individuals achieved artistic success by studying diligently,
entering salon shows, winning prizes and competitions, and finally being accepted as
members of the Académie. Students were expected to either study with a master, or to
enter into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. However, enrollment in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
was very competitive amongst men and not available to women. Instead, women either
belonged to artistic families or had a wealthy family that could pay for them to study
under a master. (Fehrer 752)
The Académie Julian was founded by Rodolphe Julian in 1868. Julian, who was
an artist himself, had moved to Paris as a young man with few resources. Because of this
lack of resources, he had never been able to enroll in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Instead,
he had been independently trained by Cabanel and Cogniet, teachers at the Ecole. The
challenges that he faced when attempting to enroll led him to found the Académie with
the purpose of preparing students for entry to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. (Fehrer 752)
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The women’s anatomical studio of the Academie Julian. Photograph. Reproduced from The Sketch. 1893.
Julian was one of the first schools to offer women and men similar course options, including life study, where the female students would draw from
nude male models, something which was discouraged throughout much of traditional French society
Julian observed that women ““were given none of the opportunities which each male
artist [claimed] as his right’ and that ‘few artists [cared] to have the responsibility of
taking ladies into their ateliers”” (Fehrer 752). Therefore, it was decided to allow women
to attend the Académie Julian, unlike most other schools of the time.
Initially, the Académie had men and women in the same ateliers, until around
1876 when separate studios were established for women. Initially, a few select women
were allowed to continue studying with the men but Julian found that “it was extremely
awkward and disagreeable and…to get my own countrywomen to work with me, I should
have to make different arrangements” (Fehrer 753). Therefore, women were no longer
allowed to study with men in mixed ateliers. The establishment of gendered ateliers was
also done to appease “bourgeois families who felt that the study of art was essential for
the education of their daughters but were fearful of mixed classes” (Fehrer 753). Marie
Bashkirtseff, an early student at the Académie Julian, described the school as “the only
serious training for
women in Paris. She
could if she wished
have chosen to work
with the men but
elected to enter the
women’s
atelier…she felt that
there was no
essential different
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between the classes, since the women also drew from the male nude” (Fehrer 753).
The Académie Julian was established with the goal of launching students on an
independent career. Therefore, it was extremely important that all students, including the
females, received proper attention and guidance from their professors. Students could
choose to study under one professor or under several, whichever they preferred. Marie
Bashkirtseff and Cecilia Beaux both studied under Tony Robert-Fleury. Another student,
Alice Kellogg, actually left the academy after her preferred professor died. (Fehrer 754)
Students had to work hard in order to be noticed by their professors, “‘if a pupil had little
talent…no notice was taken of her, everything was done to discourage her…there would
come a day when she would not be in her accustomed place. No one knew what
happened, but whatever it was, it was kindly done and effective’” (Fehrer 755).
Another way in which the Académie worked to prepare its students was through
its establishment of:
An elaborate system of concours involving both the men’s and women’s
ateliers…once a month all students competed together and the examining
professors were not told the name or the sex of the competitors till the results
were declared. Julian himself remarked that it was astonishing “how often
women have the best of I tin these trials. Especially is this true of portraiture
which is generally supposed to be a man’s specialty” (Fehrer 754).
Julian also worked hard to have his students work exhibited in the Salon. Many
of the professors that he selected for his school were chosen for the “influence
that they might be able to exert on their students’ behalf” (Fehrer 754). Some
students resented the amount of pull that Julian had in having work selected for
the Salon, noting the “all-powerful potency of ‘influence’ and wire-pulling [and]
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Womens Studio at the Academie Julian, Paris. Photograph. 1889. One of the main complaints of women who attended the academie was the overcrowded classroom setting
that going in a pupils of Julian did more than half towards gaining [their]
admission” (Fehrer 754)
Much of the work done by students of the Académie was “‘technical, with long
sessions of life classes…[as well as]… ‘a course of lectures on anatomy and perspective
given by an assistant of Mathias Duval, Lecturer at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts’ and there
also appear to have been ‘dissections on dead bodies performed in the students’
presence’” (Fehrer 755). This technical work was balanced by work on developing ones
individual style, a modernist view in the academic art world.
There were some complaints from females about the Académie Julian. One
complaint concerned the quality and overcrowdedness of the ateliers that were opened to
women. The first women’s atelier was “‘located near one of the principle boulevards…a
small door opened
into a moderate
sized room with a
skylight, a stove in
the corner, an
evident lack of
ventilation and a
platform on which
sat a draped
model.’” (Fehrer
755) Soon, due to the
growing number of female
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students and the first studio being extremely overcrowded, a second studio was opened
which was described as “‘a huge brick-floored room whose one light from the sky-
window filtered down upon the model’s head as through the bung-hole of a
hogshead…our rivals…they secretly thanked their stars that they were not under it’”
(Fehrer 755). This atelier was eventually closed and replaced with other ateliers. After
the creation of the separate ateliers for women, the fees for female students were adjusted
to be almost double those for men.
The placement of women in their own separate ateliers served as an important
step in uniting female artists: it helped female artists “to fight discriminatory education,
in opposition to many male art students as well as academicians” (Radycki 9). It also
helped to begin organizing women into organizations such as the Union des Femmes
Peintres et Sculpteurs, which had several goals including:
First, to mount annual exhibitions of members’ work; second, to represent and
defend the interests of its members’; third, to establish a sense of solidarity
among women artists; fourth, to contribute to raising the artistic level of
women’s work; fifth, to nurture to the best possible advantage the innate and
acquired talents of women artists (Radycki 9).
The Union des Femmes helped achieve many rights for women artists in France,
most importantly opening up admission to the École des Beaux-Arts to women for
the first time in history (Garb 63).
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Louise-Catherine Breslau, Les Gamines, 1890. Oil on Canvas
Despite the challenges faced by female artists who attended the Académie Julian,
several were able to achieve fame. These famous women artists included Elizabeth
Gardner,
Marie
Louise
Catherine
Breslau,
Sophie
Schäppi,
Anna
Nordgren, Mme Real Del Sarte, Marie Del Sarte, Jenny Zillhardt, Victorine Meurent,
Amélie Beaury-Saurel, and Marie Bashkirtseff to name a few. Amélie Beaury-Saurel
would later marry Rodolphe Julian and “achieve considerable success as a portrait painter
while continuing to take an active part in the administration of the women’s ateliers.”
(Fehrer 757)
The attention given to students by their professors, the quality of lectures and
lessons, and the monthly concours in which women and men competed against one
another helped many of the female students to succeed in the professional art world. By
1887, “many of [the Académie Julian’s] students, including women, were exhibiting in
Paris and had embarked on careers as artists; their success served to undermine the
prestige of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which had lost much of its exclusive power by the
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time it finally admitted women in 1897” (Fehrer 757). The training of students and high
quality work produced by both genders at the Académie “helped prepare the way for the
artistic diversity of the twentieth century, in which women artists came to be major
players” (Fehrer 757).
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Works Cited
Fehrer, Catherine. "Women at the Academie Julian in Paris." Burlington Magazine Nov 1994:
752-757. Web. 14 Apr 2010.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/886272>.
Garb, Tamar. "Revising the Revisionists: The Formation of the Union des Femmes Peintres et
Sculpteurs." Art Journal 48.1 (1989): 63. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 27
Apr. 2010.
"Institut de France." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition (2009): 1. Academic Search
Premier. EBSCO. Web. 27 Apr. 2010.
Radycki, J. Diane. "The Life of Lady Art Students: Changing Art Education at the Turn of the
Century." Art Journal 42.1 (1982): 9-13. Web. 10 Apr 2010.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/776485>.
Weisberg, Gabriel, and Jane Becker. Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Academie
Julian. United States of America: The Dahesh Museum and Rutgers University Press,
1999. 13-41, 57-59. Print.
Zimmerman, Enid. "The Mirror of Marie Bashkirsteff: Reflections about the Education of
Women Art Students." Studies in Art Education 30.3 (1989): 164-175. Web. 10 Apr
2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1320961>.