Art Work -- Women Artists and Democracy in Mid-Nineteenth Century New York by April F. Masten, UPenn '08, 318 pages, ISBN #0812240715. Index, source notes, no bibliography, b&w images sprinkled throughout text.
The period from 1850 to 1880 in America was, like the current era, one of economic turbulence. Women not yet even able to vote often found themselves the primary or sole support of their families as financial panic and the Civil War made many men an unreliable source of income.
In this engaging history, University of Stony Brook historian April F. Masten follows the thousands of young women who moved to New York City to train to become professional artists and found "an aesthetic ideology that made no distinction between fine and applied arts or male and female abilities."
Many trained at the Cooper Union School of Design for Women to become "painters, designers, illustrators, engravers, colorists, and art teachers," with the encouragement of the likes of New-York Tribune editor Horace Greeley and mechanic/philanthropist Peter Cooper.
