Definition
Art criticism as a profession expanded dramatically in the Victorian period. Yet, while the names most recognized today are those of male critics, women were also important contributors to the field. Despite facing challenges such as a lack of formal education and prejudice against women’s critical talents, women such as Anna Jameson (1794–1860), Elizabeth Eastlake (1809–1893), Alice Meynell (1847–1922), and Julia Cartwright (1851–1924) were able to carve out successful careers as authorities on art. Moreover, they were influential figures who were instrumental in shaping the field. Women wrote about art in a wide variety of forms, including articles and exhibition reviews for newspapers and periodicals; guidebooks for galleries; and monographs.
Introduction
Art criticism as a profession expanded dramatically in the Victorian period. As Adele M. Holcomb has noted, the mid-nineteenth century was a turning point, “as for the first time in England it was possible to make a...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Alambritis, Maria. 2019. “Such a pleasant little sketch […] of this irritable artist”: Julia Cartwright and the Reception of Andrea Mantegna in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 2018 (28). https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.825.
Aliquis. 1892. Art critics of to-day. Art Journal: 193–197.
Anon. 1890. Art critics. The Speaker 1: 592–593.
Avery-Quash, Susanna. 2019. Illuminating the old masters and enlightening the British Public: Anna Jameson and the contribution of British women to empirical art history in the 1840s. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 2019 (28). https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.832.
Berenson, Bernard. 1965. The selected letters of Bernard Berenson. Edited by A. K. McComb. London: Hutchinson.
Bomford, Zahira Véliz. 2019. Navigating networks in the Victorian age: Mary Philadelphia Merrifield’s writing on the arts. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 2019 (28). https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.826.
Cartwright, Julia. 1894. The art annual for 1894: Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Bart. His life and work. London: J. S. Virtue & Co.
———. 1989. A bright remembrance: The diaries of Julia Cartwright 1851–1924. Edited by Angela Emanuel. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Clarke, Meaghan. 2005. Critical voices: Women and art criticism in Britain 1880–1905. Aldershot: Ashgate.
———. 2015. The art press at the Fin de Siècle: Women, collecting, and connoisseurship. Visual Resources 31 (1–2): 15–30.
———. 2019. Women in the galleries: New angles on old masters in the late nineteenth century. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 2019 (28). https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.823.
Codell, Julie F. 2003. The Victorian artist: Artists’ lifewritings in Britain, ca. 1870–1910. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Della Monica, Ilaria. 2019. Mary Berenson and ‘the guide to the Italian pictures at Hampton Court’. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 2019 (28). https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.827.
Dilke, Emilia. 1899. French painters of the XVIIIth century. London: George Bell and Sons.
Ellegård, Alvar. 1971. The readership of the periodical press in Mid-Victorian Britain II: Directory. Victorian Periodicals Newsletter 13: 3–22.
Ffoulkes, Constance Jocelyn, and Rodolfo Maiocchi. 1909. Vincenzo Foppa of Brescia, founder of the Lombard school, his life and work. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head.
Fraser, Hilary. 2014. Women writing art history in the nineteenth century: Looking like a woman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gerrish Nunn, Pamela. 1996. Critically Speaking. In Women in the Victorian Art World, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr, 107–124. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Herringham, C.J. 1902. Van Eyck’s discovery. The Architectural Review: For the Artist and Craftsman 11 (66): 165–169.
———. 1904. Review. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 6 (19): 74–81.
Holcomb, Adele M. 1983. Anna Jameson: The first professional English art historian. Art History 6 (2): 171–187.
Jameson, Anna. 1849. Some thoughts on art: Addressed to the uninitiated. Art Journal: 69–71.
Johnston, Tiffany L. 2019a. Maud Cruttwell and the Berensons: “A preliminary canter to an independent career”. 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 2019 (28). https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.821.
———. 2019b. Mary Berenson (14 February 1864–23 March 1945). 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 2019 (28). https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.858.
Kanwit, John Paul M. 2013. Victorian art criticism and the woman writer. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press.
Low, Frances H. 1904. Press work for women. London: L. Upcott Gill.
Mitchell, Rosemary. 2008. Eastlake [née Rigby], Elizabeth, Lady Eastlake (1809–1893), journalist and writer on art. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/8415. Accessed 3 Jan 2020.
Palmer, Caroline. 2015. “I will tell nothing that I did not see”: British women’s travel writing, art and the science of connoisseurship, 1776–1860. Forum for Modern Language Studies 51 (3): 248–268.
Prettejohn, Elizabeth. 1997. Aesthetic value and the professionalisation of Victorian art criticism 1837–78. Journal of Victorian Culture 2 (1): 71–94.
———. 1999. Out of the nineteenth century: Roger Fry’s early art criticism. In Art made modern: Roger Fry’s vision of art, ed. Christopher Green, 31–44. London: Courtauld Gallery.
Reynolds, K. D. 2004. Campbell [née Blood], Gertrude Elizabeth [Lady Colin Campbell] (1857–1911), art critic and journalist. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/39636. Accessed 3 Jan 2020.
Roberts, Helene E. 1970. British art periodicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Victorian Periodicals Newsletter 9: 1–10.
Robins-Pennell, Elizabeth. 1891. The woman’s world of London. The Chautauquan 12: 772–773.
Ruskin, John. 1972. Ruskin in Italy: Letters to his parents, 1845. Edited by Harold I. Shapiro. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sherman, Claire Richter, and Adele M. Holcomb. 1981. Precursors and pioneers (1820–1890). In Women as interpreters of the visual arts, 1820–1979, ed. Claire Richter Sherman and Adele M. Holcomb, 3–26. London: Greenwood Press.
Sickert, Walter. 2003. The greatest living critic, Art News, 3 March 1910. In Walter Sickert: The complete writings on art, ed. Anna Gruetzner Robins, 200–201. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ventrella, Francesco. 2017. Constance Jocelyn Ffoulkes and the modernization of scientific connoisseurship. Visual Resources 33 (1–2): 117–139.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Jones, M. (2020). Art Critics. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women's Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02721-6_253-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02721-6_253-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02721-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02721-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities