45% female art

Back to our regularly scheduled program....

To delve back into the world of feminism and the museum, I thought I would showcase a project that I have been working on over the past few months, in association with the UCL Art Museum. I was part of a team of 5 who researched several female artists who had won the most prestigious prize at the Slade School of Fine Arts before WWI.

The process of getting this topic was just coincidental to have any relevance to this blog...

Within my Master's elective course, we had to give our preference of what museum apart of UCL campus that we would like to work with. There were 5 options to choose from and I was assigned with the UCL Art Museum. The curator of the museum, Andrea, then gave us the option of 4 different objects to research. However she somewhat 'cheated' the system, she did give us 4 options but also proposed that we could research all of them as part of a project already taken on by the Art Museum for the new summer exhibition and rearrangement of a room's display on campus. She also explained that this project was to showcase more female artists within the new room hang for the summer, because unlike most art galleries and museums, the UCL Art Museum collection houses 45% female created art pieces. [This is what peeked my interest, I then knew that this would not only be an interesting research project, but also be very relevant to this blog that I have made - a major plus].

The ambitious group we were, we chose to research all 4 objects (paintings to be exact). This however was a bit of a different story than the other groups, for one: the objects were paintings: 2nd: we already knew the provenance and object biography and 3rd: we already knew exactly the context of the paintings themselves...

What we were going to research were the women behind the paintings... their networks and their lives during their studies at the Slade and beyond.

For the purpose of this blog post... so that it doesn't go on for too long, I am going to just highlight the women that we researched...

Elinor Proby Adams (10 October 1885 - 18 December 1945)

• Born in Sudbury, suffolk

• Formally registered as a student of the Slade School of Fine Arts – 9 October 1903 until 1908

• Took the same class on 7 November 1906 with another of the artists researched – Elsie McNaught

• Awarded Professor’s Prize of 15 pounds – shared with Douglas G. MacLaren in 1905

• 1906 – won 2nd prize for figure painting and granted a one-year scholarship

• Also won the Summer Composition Prize (grand prize) in 1906 - joint recipient with Edward Morris

• Took part in several exhibitions at Alpine Club Gallery, International Society of Sculptors, Painters & Gravers, Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, Newlyn Art Gallery, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Cambrian Academy, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colour 1908-1941, Goupil Salon, Manchester City Art Gallery, and London Portrait Gallery

• Artworks included: 'The Old Church', 'Coulsden', 'Chrysanthemums', and 'Thursday Market Dieppe'

• Was also a lithographer, a book illustrator and a mural decorator

• Was an art critic for the magazine ‘Homes and Abroad’ for part of her career as well as a lecturer on crafts

• Died, unmarried, at Pembury Hospital on 18 December 1945

• Here is her prize winning painting we started with: 'Mammon'

Elsie McNaught (12 March 1886 - 1987)

• Born in Hackney, London

• Enrolled in the Slade in 1906 having previously attended a Roedean School in Brighton

• Graduated from Slade in 1911

• Won Summer Composition in 1910, also won 1st place for life model painting of a woman in 1910

• Received a distinction in drawing in 1908

• Friends with Dora Carrington

• Helped paint a mural, along with Dora Carrington on the walls of a girls club in Lillie Road, Fulham in 1910

• Painted murals in the entryway of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1918

• Displayed works with classmate Elinor Proby Adams at the New England Art Club in 1910s

• Worked as pattern designer in the 1920s for scarf company ‘Tootal’

• Painted ‘Winter in Switzerland’ in 1919 – now held at University of Leeds

• Made a woodcut print ‘Tree and Hills’ early 20th century – held at Central St. Martins Museum in London

• Died at age of 101 in Tilford, near Farnham in 1987 (seemingly unmarried)

• Here is McNaught's Summer Composition Prizewinning painting: 'A Frieze of Figures in a Landscape'

Part of my specific research found a letter between Dora Carrington and Christine Nash, another artist discussing one of Elsie McNaught's mural projects. The letter is to ask for Christine Nash's help to assist McNaught.

Antonia Violet Hamilton Bradshaw (6 September 1890 - 21 April 1964)

• Born in Caversham, Oxfordshire

• Attended Slade since October 1910

• Won Summer Composition Prize in 1915 (last of WWI period, next prize awarded in 1919)

• Almost fourty of her paintings are listed at the Chenil Gallery

• One painting held at Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester

• 2 artworks held at a museum in Plas Yn Rhiw, Gwynedd

• Might have been married, but when she died her last name was still Bradshaw (married to George F. Jones at Brentford in 1928?)

• Died at age of 73 in a Beaconsfield Nursing Home

As you can see, there are only 3 artists above, unfortunately with the last artist, Beatrice Whateley, there was no information we could find on her. For starters she did not have a student record at the Slade because she entered the school before they were standardized...

If you want to find out a bit more about the overall research project, there is another blog post written, here is the link:

http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2017/06/19/focus-on-slade-women-artists-2017-2018/#more-50953

Here are the highlights that relate directly to what I and my team researched:

• Emerging – UCL Art Museum will focus its research and events programming on a key component of the collection: Slade Women Artists

• Approx 45% of works in UCL Art Museum’s collection are by women artists

• Typically, permanent collections in Europe and the US contain between 3-5% of works by women

• UCL Art museum’s 2017/18 focus on Slade Women is an opportunity to concentrate research and showcase this area of the collection, exploring questions ranging from the role of artists’ networks in advancing professional practice and innovation, to interrogating the structures that support gender hierarchies within established exhibition and curating practices

• The proposal for the new painting hang - where these paintings will be displayed - will then allow these female artists to be displayed 'semi-publicly' bringing them out of storage and into the light - important for awareness of female artists who had not previously been displayed; but also all levels of skill including amateur and professional artists

• This hang will also be in commemoration of the centenary of the women's right to vote (Yay!!!)

I hope this was a little educational, and an interesting read... I really enjoyed researching a part of UCL, especially with the opportunity to delve into the lives of female artists...

As always... see ya later gals!

*All photo credit and rights go to UCL Art Museum*