Pretty Young Things

It was the period of the women’s suffrage movement at the turn of the century…
The fight for equality in the field of Fine Art was just as difficult as their fight for the vote. For the most part, American women painters who worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries got a raw deal from their male counterparts. Their unenviable lot in life owed mostly to male chauvinism inside and outside of the art community. It was bad enough for a talented, beginning male student but nearly impossible for a young woman to become a successful professional artist. The odds were not in their favor. Usually their efforts, regardless of quality, were sidestepped by the art hierarchy because they were looked upon not as serious art students but as pretty young things seeking husbands.