page_title: Women artists
section_title: Female education in the 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Women artists / 19th century / Female education in the 19th century
caption_attribution_description: Illustration of Mrs. Chippy Hackee and the Goody Tiptoes from The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes
context_page_description: Although women artists have been involved in the making of art throughout history, their work, when compared to that of their male counterparts, has been often obfuscated, overlooked and undervalued. Many of their works have been wrongly attributed to men artists. Prevailing stereotypes about the sexes have caused certain media, such as textile or fiber arts, to be primarily associated with women, despite having once been categories, such as ceramic art, in which both men and women participated. Additionally, art forms that have gained this distinction are, as in the case of both textile and fabric arts, demoted to categories like "arts and crafts", rather than fine art.
  Women in art have been faced with challenges due to gender biases in the mainstream fine art world. They have often encountered difficulties in training, travelling and trading their work, as well as gaining recognition. Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, feminist artists and art historians created a Feminist art movement that overtly addresses the role of women especially in the Western art world, how world art is perceived, evaluated or appropriated according to gender.
context_section_description: During the century, access to academies and formal art training expanded more for women in Europe and North America. The British Government School of Design, which later became the Royal College of Art, admitted women from its founding in 1837, but only into a "Female School" which was treated somewhat differently, with "life"- classes consisting for several years of drawing a man wearing a suit of armour.
  The Royal Academy Schools finally admitted women beginning in 1861, but students drew initially only draped models. However, other schools in London, including the Slade School of Art from the 1870s, were more liberal.  By the end of the century women were able to study the naked, or very nearly naked, figure in many Western European and North American cities. The Society of Female Artists (now called The Society of Women Artists) was established in 1855 in London and has staged annual exhibitions since 1857, when 358 works were shown by 149 women, some using a pseudonym. However, one woman who was denied higher or specialist education and who still "broke through", was the natural scientist, writer and illustrator, Beatrix Potter (1866-1943).
caption: Beatrix Potter's Goody and Mrs. Hackee, illustration to The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes, 1911
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