19th-century women artists As educational opportunities expanded in the 19th century, women artists became part of professional enterprises, which included them founding their own art associations. Artwork created by women was considered to be inferior; women, in response to that stereotype, helped overcome it by becoming "increasingly vocal and confident" in promoting women's work, and thus became part of the emerging image of the educated, modern, and freer "
New Woman". Artists, then, "played crucial roles in representing the New Woman, both by drawing images of the icon and exemplifying this emerging type through their own lives."
Education Beginning in 1859, Alcott studied art at the
School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. May Alcott visited Paris, studied at the
Académie Julian in 1870 and exhibited in both cities, as she also did later elsewhere in the US and in London. She painted flowers mainly, but also made excellent copies of works by
J.M.W. Turner. She studied art anatomy with
William Rimmer in Boston and also studied with
William Morris Hunt, Krug, Vautier, and Müller among others. She even taught art to the young
Daniel Chester French. She studied in
Paris,
London, and
Rome during three European trips in 1870, 1873 and 1877, which the 1868 publication of her sister Louisa's book
Little Women made possible. Alcott had illustrated the first edition of
Little Women, to a negative critical reception. The early illustrations were made before her trips to and studies in Europe.
Career After studying in Paris, she divided her time between Boston, London and Paris. Her strength was as a copyist and as a painter of still life, either in oils or watercolors. She published
Concord Sketches with a preface by her sister Louisa May (Boston, 1869). After having studied in Europe, she had become "an accomplished artist" by the 1870s, and her works during that time showed marked improvement compared to the earlier illustrations for
Little Women and the "quirky" depiction of
Walden Pond in
Concord Sketches. Her works after her European studies and exposure to great works of art reflected "a surer hand, a clearer focus, and a broader vision as the world". In 1877, her
still life was the only painting by an American woman to be exhibited in the
Paris Salon, May was 38 years old and Ernest Nieriker was a 22-year-old Swiss tobacco merchant and violinist. The couple honeymooned in
Le Havre It is a realistic painting of a black woman that portrays her unique individuality without being romantic or erotic. == Childbirth and death ==