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Women Artists in France and Britain 1850-1950
This course will introduce the art produced by women in France and Britain from the 1850s until the 1950s. It will look at famous artists including Berthe Morisot, Elizabeth Lady Butler, Suzanne Valadon, Vanessa Bell and Barbara Hepworth and at lesser-known artists such as Evelyn Dunbar, Winifred Knights, Mary Martin, Rosemary Young, Emilie Charmy and Marie Laurencin. Topics will include the styles used, avant-garde and traditional, artistic training (often more restricted than for men), and the ways women established professional careers, often against the odds. The course aims to foster enjoyment and understanding of art by looking closely at images and thinking about the artistic and historical conditions in which they were produced.
The course tutor
Rosanna Eckersley is an art historian with a particular interest in women’s art, including French and British women painters. Her PhD research was focused on Winifred Knights, about whom she published an article in Visual Culture in Britain in 2017. Winifred Knights died during WW2, but Rosanna’s interest in women at work during wartime led to a commission to write the foreword to a book on Evelyn Dunbar, who made many images of the Home Front and was the only British female war artist to obtain a full-time salary.
The course will run over six weeks on Tuesday afternoons at Hatfield Road Methodist Church in St Albans from 13.15 to 15.15, starting on Tuesday 29th April and ending on Tuesday 3rd June. The course costs £48.