Painting Professionals

“The manoeuvres, successes and failures of American women artists are engagingly narrated. Swinth relies on lively documentary evidence supplied by diaries, letters and contemporary criticism.” — Times Literary Supplement

“Clearly written. . . . A significant cultural history that identifies the parameters for further study by cultural and art historians.” — CHOICE

“Demonstrating the artistic resiliency and professional commitment of two generations of women artists, this comprehensive volume provides an important feminist intervention into the history of American art.” — ##Journal of American History#

“A convincing model of the gendering of turn-of-the-century modernism that restores women artists to a deservedly prominent position.” — American Studies

“This ambitious, provocative work is a leap forward in establishing the vital connection between women artists and high culture in the United States. Future discussions in the field will find this book impossible to ignore.” — American Nineteenth Century History

“Meticulously researched and brilliantly argued, Painting Professionals pictures the unsure paths American women traveled in the late nineteenth century as they sought out training, careers, and a market in the arts. Kirsten Swinth helps explain all those women we see in photographs of late Victorian art classes — where they came from, where they went, and why so many disappeared. A magnificent achievement!” — Wanda M. Corn, Stanford University

“Swinth gives the reader the big picture, weaving together diaries, letters, and contemporary criticism to create a fascinating story of women’s considerable professional achievements in the American art world. She describes their triumphs at the end of the nineteenth century and then traces how, in spite of early-twentieth-century attempts to reclassify art in masculine terms, women used modernism’s call for art as self-expression to define themselves anew. Swinth’s book is a welcome addition to our field.” — Erica E. Hirshler, John Moors Cabot Curator of Paintings, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston