Women Sculptors in 19th-Century Paris

This dissertation traces the complex process of the professionalization of women sculptors in France during the 19th-century. Though often considered according to a model of repression and victimization, a closer consideration of the history of women artists at this time reveals far greater agency on their part, as well as a more fluid system, albeit still unequal, of power relations. I argue that the women of my study were not simply subject to gender-biased institutional constraints, but that they experienced a more interactive relationship. Making the radical and often unexplained choice to pursue what was considered to be an inappropriate profession, these women chose to work in a conservative vein, and to conduct themselves according to a successfully established model of "appropriate feminine behavior." Despite institutional change later in the century which opened the profession to more women, their success still depended in part on their conduct according to this earlier model. By the Second Empire a "first wave" of women sculptors was established, not because of any systematic institutional changes, but largely through connections and privilege established through Napoleon III's exercise of arbitrary power. The situation changed with the establishment of the democratic Third Republic, bringing about greater institutional change, but also forcing women to appeal to a larger voting public through a "separate but equal" ideal. While there was discernible yet nebulous cross-over within this context between several women sculptors and the avant-garde, most of these women did not embrace the masculine model of the individualist artistic genius. How women sculptors strategically positioned themselves within the various systems they confronted throughout the 19th-century may have been ultimately limiting. But their strategies were the only really viable options aside from the unacceptable solution of overthrowing the established order altogether.