Sculpting in Tiaras: Grand Duchess Maria Fedorovna as a Producer and Consumer of the Arts

Abstract

Implicit in many accounts of women artists working in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is the notion of struggle. Denied both the education and the exhibiting opportunities available to men, women had to battle to acquire the training necessary to develop their art, as well as the attention of patrons who might support it. At the same time, there were daily struggles, perhaps of a lesser nature, which nevertheless affected their ability to progress as professional artists, as when women portraitists risked provoking scurrilous rumours when, unaccompanied, they met the sitters for their work.