The Unrecognized Artists...

Last week's blog was about the modern day influences of the Hudson River School - a pastoral art movement of the mid-19th century.

The movement included names such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt. What you don't hear about - even in Wikipedia - are the names of the women artists in the movement. The question is: why not?

The answer is reminiscent of the same circumstances that surrounded the women Impressionists artists. (Archives: Morisot - Jan. 2010).Women were excluded from the academies and did not have access to wealthy patrons. Some were actually forbidden to make art and came to art later in their lives. Some were the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of their highly recognized male artists and were not able to compete. (Portrait of Eliza Greatorex above.)

Now, recognition of these gifted artists is beginning to happen. There have been recent museum exhibits and an article in the Smithsonian magazine on these talented women.

These were women who hiked in long skirts and corsets through the mountains and cliffs to paint, etch, photograph and embroider images of the landscapes. Many of these women traveled throughout the east and went even south all the way to Florida for the opportunity to paint the countryside and waterways in the Hudson River School style.

Here are some of the women whose names are finally being recognized:

Laura Woodward (1834-1926)

Harriet Cany Peale (1800-1869)

Elizabeth Gilbert Jerome (1824-1910)

Susie Barstow (1857-1934)

Julia Hart Beers (1835-1913)

Eliza Greatorex (1819-1897)