Presentation

From the sixteenth century on, a few women, mainly Italian, emerged on the artistic scene. In France, artistic institutions are linked to the Academy, created in 1648, which opened – sparingly - to women from 1663, and a little more widely in the following century. The Academy closed to women in the nineteenth century. Some «energetic women still managed to study seriously and produce intense and original works» will find Virginie Demont-Breton, president of the Union des Femmes Peintre et Sculpteur, and activist for opening the Academy to women.

The main exhibition venue in Paris is the Salon, which is also the responsibility of the Académie. While the jury of the Salon tends to strengthen the influence of the Academy, a growing number – but relatively speaking – of women manage to be admitted. In the years 1800-1830, they never represented less than 14% of exhibitors. But they lost ground and by 1855 they would represent only 6.7%. By 1880 they had more than 600 exhibitors, but they represented only 12.5% of the total number of participating artists. It is at the Salon that the State buys, often to deposit in regional museums.

Impressionists, a group of artists to which three women will belong: Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Marie Bracquemond, try to escape the monopoly of the Academy. If their aesthetics shock, their independent approach is widely praised. In 1881, the state decided to liberalize the situation: artists' associations and salons multiplied, invested by many women. The State does not disdain to buy works there, sometimes from women, including foreign artists who, although having made their entire career in France, and often being dead and buried there, are today totally unknown. Who remembers the Swedish girl Julia Beck, of the British Beatrice How, of the Polonaise Olga Boznanska, of the American Elisabeth Nourse ? Yet works by these artists are kept in museums in France. Some, for fear of never being represented in our public collections, offer works to the French State, such as the American Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux.

Three women, still French, offer all their collections to create museums. One was a painter, Nélie Jacquemart, creator of museum Jacquemart-André, in Paris. The second, Marie Grobet, was the initiator of the Grobet-Labadie museum in Marseille. Jeanne Magnin, who practices enamel on glass, constitutes with her brother Maurice an important collection of works of art. Jeanne Magnin meut in 1937, her brother two years later. Maurice bequeathed their collection to the State. The museum will long bear the sole name of Maurice Magnin. More recently, there was the prestigious legacy of actress Jacqueline Delubac (1907–1997) at the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon.

The representation of women in the collective catalogue of the collections of the museums of France, Joconde, is a reflection of this history. Out of a total of 511,979 entries from nearly 35,000 artists, there are 2,304 women artists, with 20,575 works. They therefore represent 6.6% of the artists in the database, with 4% of the number of works. Even if they are very small, these 2021 percentages are nonetheless higher than the figures known for the second half of the nineteenth century. In France, they were 3,818, or 1.74% of the artists listed...

May this virtual exhibition encourage the online publication of records and images of works of women artists preserved in museums in France.

If it also leads to studies, publications and exhibitions, which are not virtual, then we will have achieved our second objective.

Anne-Solène Rolland, head of the French Museum Service