Women's Equality Day

Eighty years ago today, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, extending the right to vote to women nationwide.

All women and girls today, including women artists, owe a great debt to our foremothers who struggled for civil rights and job opportunities.

One goal of feminist art historians has been to expose the difficulties faced by women artists. Avoiding conventional female roles, demanding access to instruction, ignoring the ridicule of male colleagues, women artists have been seen as fighters against discrimination, as independents and rebels.

The story of Harriet Hosmer, imbued as it is with determination, indifference to the opinions of others, and critical and financial success, has become a classic. Sent to a progressive school that fostered independence and provided her with creative female role models, Hosmer became determined to sculpt. On her way to achieving this goal, she studied human anatomy, a necessity for sculptors and a subject usually forbidden to women. She sailed for Rome in 1852 and gained entrance to the studio of the English sculptor John Gibson, where she attracted the patronage of affluent tourists.…

Hosmer generally concentrated on dignified heroines of history and literature, but Puck provided a lucrative alternative. She produced over thirty replicas of her interpretation of this mischievous fairy known in folklore since the Middle Ages and made famous in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Buyers included England's Prince of Wales. The smooth white surface and the idealized form of the child reflect Hosmer's neoclassical bias, even in depicting such a fanciful subject.

Source: Elizabeth Chew. Women Artists (brochure, Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution).

Pictured: Harriet Hosmer, 1830–1908, Puck, modeled 1854, carved 1856, marble, 30 1/2 x 16 5/8 x 19 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. George Merrill.