Women at the Slade
For most of western art history, female artists were denied access to the art education available to their male counterparts. The Slade was one of the first schools in England to open its doors to women and offer them (relatively) equal footing.
I don't know as much as I would like about English art in general, but two things became clear to me as I pored through the Slade's archive of early 20th century paintings:
1. Great Britain had a strong, innovative figurative movement during that time, a lot of it centered around the Slade and the magnificent guidance offered by Henry Tonks and his colleagues.
2. A great number of the prize-winning students ardently working during this time were women.
So, today, I'd like to celebrate the female artists who helped to breathe new life into representational painting in the UK. Through their hard work, they left us a body of beautifully poetic paintings, rich with fluid drawing and exquisitely lucid color. This was a great flowering of perceptual painting, and it continues to bear fruit to this day.
