Women in the Galleries: New Angles on Old Masters in the Late Nineteenth Century

Clarke, Meaghan

doi:10.16995/ntn.823

Cited by 16 publications

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“…51 Meaghan Clarke has drawn attention to women art scholars exploiting galleries as working spaces in much the same way as Emilia Dilke must have used the galleries of Sir Richard's collection. 52 More research into the specific visitors to Hertford House is needed in the many areas that fall beyond the remit of this article, such as a comparison of the visitors to this collection…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More than Mere Ornaments: Female Visitors to Sir Richard Wallace’s Art Collection

Jones

2021

19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century

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Ten months after Lady Wallace's death in February 1897, the Hertford House Visitors' Book was closed for the final time. For the previous twentythree years, this large, black, leather-bound volume had been displayed on one of the desks in the Great Gallery, for visitors to sign as part of their tour of the collection. The book begins in 1876, shortly after Sir Richard Wallace had inherited Hertford House and refurbished it as a fitting home for his magnificent art collection, and continues until December 1897, after Lady Wallace's bequest of the collection to the nation. During this period, Hertford House was a private collection that could be visited by prior appointment or on occasional open days. After 1897 the Visitors' Book became part of Lady Wallace's legacy to Sir John Murray Scott, who had been private secretary to both Lady Wallace and Sir Richard. It remained in his family's possession until the death of his sister Mary in 1943, at which point it returned to its original home at Hertford House. 1 Now one of the most important documents in the Wallace Collection Archive, it has recently been digitized and is available to view on the Internet Archive (Fig. 1).From 2017 to 2018, I transcribed the 245 pages of the Visitors' Book, deciphering the identities of the signatories. Only a handful of visitors had left comments alongside their signatures and so a mere list of names was the starting point for all the research that followed. The signatures took me on a whistle-stop tour of British, European, and American society of the late nineteenth century -and of all types of handwriting, from neat to indecipherable. The visitors cover a number of different categories: royalty, nobility, military men, art critics, historians and collectors, artists, wealthy businessmen, and men of the cloth. The overwhelming category here, of course, is men, many of whom are of great interest. Disraeli famously visited, as did Auguste Rodin, Thomas Hardy, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and many other renowned and/or wealthy men.However, the variety of female visitors to the Wallace Collection deserves special attention, for although they are less well known than 1 London, The Wallace Collection Archive (WCA), Hertford House Visitors' Book, HHVB, MS note on preliminary pages.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More than Mere Ornaments: Female Visitors to Sir Richard Wallace’s Art Collection

Jones

2021

19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century

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Art Critics

Jones¹

2020

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women's Writing

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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.

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Art Critics

Jones

2022

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing

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Women in the Galleries: New Angles on Old Masters in the Late Nineteenth Century

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

More than Mere Ornaments: Female Visitors to Sir Richard Wallace’s Art Collection

More than Mere Ornaments: Female Visitors to Sir Richard Wallace’s Art Collection

Art Critics

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