From Victorian Girl Reader to Modern Woman Artist
From Victorian Girl Reader to Modern Woman Artist: Reading and Seeing in the Paintings of the Canadian Girl by William Brymner, Emily Coonan, and Prudence Heward —Loren Lerner In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth looking at images, and making art. centuries, “the girl reader” was a popular theme The subject of this essay is the representation for artists. Concurrently, what girls should read of the “girl reader” by these artists.1 The analysis and how this would affect their growth and considers the formal features of the images, development was the subject of numerous elements such as composition, colour, line, scale, advice manuals, novels, magazine articles, and and rhythm, to explain how the artists arrange and books written especially for and about girls (Flint use these aspects to communicate certain beliefs 71–136; Lyons; Bollman). Creating effective and ideas. The discussion focuses on the context in visual documents of the transformation of the which the artworks were produced and how and Victorian girl into the modern girl through reading why each work with the same subject is a variation and seeing were three Canadian artists: William on the theme. This encompasses the ways that Brymner (1855–1925), director and teacher for the paintings involve larger meanings like gender, thirty-five years at the Art Association of Montreal artistic creation, culture, art trends in which the (AAM); and two of his female students, Emily artists participated, and intellectual influences. Coonan (1885–1971) and Prudence Heward The interpretive approach is synthetic, taking into (1896–1947). Brymner’s depictions of late- account these factors and, more specifically, the nineteenth-century daughters, and the more biographies of the artists, the art education of girls, enlightened girls depicted by Coonan and Heward, and the books read by women during this era.
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