The Education of Nineteenth Century Women Artists :: Essays Papers

The Education of Nineteenth Century Women ArtistsThe formal education of women artists in the United States has taken quite a long journey. It wasnt until the nineteenth atomic number 6 that the workings of a recognized education for these women fin on the wholey appeared. Two of the most famous and elite schools of art that accepted, and still accept, women pupils are the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the public address system Academy of the Fine Arts (the PAFA).Up until the early nineteenth century, women were mostly taught what is now called a fashionable education (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 5). Their mothers raised them to be proper, infantile ladies and expert housekeepers in expectation of marriage. If these women were fortunate enough to receive some kind of formalized schooling, they were to study penmanship, limited aspects of their mother language, and very small(a) arithmetic (Philadelphia School of Design for Women 5). Unfortunately, t his small degree of education was extremely constrictive to women. If they never married or were widowed at a young age, they really had no place to go. This form of womens education created generations of women that were almost entirely dependent on their husbands and male relatives.During the nineteenth century, when the feminist movement was beginning, galore(postnominal) schools were established specifically for the education of women, such as the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, and also for the education of both. In the beginning, womens art schools mostly taught pupils practical applications of art. For example, female person art students often studied drawing and lithographing, in hopes that they would be hired by industrial companies as designers. The Philadelphia School of Design for Women was one of the first all womens art schools to establish this form of education.Founded in 1844 by a woman named Sarah Peter, the Philadelphia School of Design for Women wa s a school like none that had occur before it. Peter was a wealthy woman of stature and decided to start this school in one of the rooms of her mansion and to hire a teacher to hold regular classes for women in art and design. (As a wonderful incentive for all women, tuition was free for the poor and the wealthy paid a very small sum.) Sarah Peter saw how truly poor the traditional education for women was and she strongly believed that every woman should stand by her sex, thus her logical thinking for establishing this soon to become famous art school.