The nineteenth century saw a marked rise both in the sheer numbers of women active in visual art professions and in the discursive concern for the woman artist

Looks at the experience of women painters within the oppressive confines of the Victorian patriarchy. Using biographies, journals and letters, Cherry shows how

As women entered the field of cultural production in unprecedented numbers in nineteenth-century France and Britain, they gradually forged a place for themselve

Examines the ideology of women's art practice and their position in the art world of Victorian Britain in relation to codes of femininity and feminist movements