Amazing Women In History

Miss Florence Smith, factory manageress at Tate & Lyle

Keri — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:11:38 +0000

Today I’m excited to share with you a guest post by Nuala Calvi, co-author of The Sugar Girls which is being released on March 29, 2012. Be sure to check out The Sugar Girls blog for more great stories from the book, and follow @The_Sugar_Girls on twitter.

Researching my book The Sugar Girls, about female workers at Tate & Lyle’s East End sugar and syrup factories in the years during and after the Second World War, I met many remarkable women, and heard about many more. But one character stood out – a legendary figure to all the women I interviewed, remembered by them vividly even 60 years later: Miss Florence Smith, the Labour Manageress.

As the top woman at Tate & Lyle’s Plaistow Wharf refinery in Silvertown, Miss Smith was in charge of hiring and firing the 1,500-strong female workforce, among whom she had acquired a legendary reputation. Young girls looked up to her with a combination of terror and awe, and whenever she was spotted approaching on her daily rounds, a whisper of ‘The Dragon’s coming!’ would quickly spread across the factory floor.

Some of the sugar girls Miss Smith looked after

Of course, in a traditional sense, Miss Smith is not a ‘historical figure’ at all. Her name does not appear in any history books (apart from a very brief footnote in Oliver Lyle’s self-published memoir of his factory) and she is not widely known. But within the community of women who worked for Tate & Lyle between 1944, when she took over the top job, and her retirement three decades later, Miss Smith was a towering presence – and nearly every individual we interviewed about their time at the factory remembered her clearly and had something to say about her.

Miss Smith cut a striking figure, with her short-cropped blonde hair and tight blouse buttoned up to the throat. She was a large woman, broad-shouldered and imposing, a Miss Trunchball type who could strike fear into her young charges – many of them just 14 years of age – with as little as a raised eyebrow. The women we spoke to described her variously as ‘a sergeant major’, ‘a prison warden’ and ‘a policeman’. One woman told us, ‘She’d walk through the shop floor and frighten the life out of everybody.’

One girl, Gladys Taylor, a rebellious redheaded troublemaker, quickly became the bane of Miss Smith’s life when she started in the late 1940s. Gladys was forever finding herself sent to the Personnel Office for a dressing down – one time it was for getting her dungarees caught in the bag-printing machine while chatting away to the boys, another time it was for terrorizing her supervisor with a nest of mice she had discovered in the waste paper, and another time she was discovered by Miss Smith riding in the telpher, a packing crate that carried the Lyle’s Golden Syrup tins from one department to another along a cable high up in the air.

Miss Smith must have threatened Gladys with the sack a hundred times, but Gladys’s saving grace was the fact that she excelled at sports. More than anything, Miss Smith liked to see the girls at her Plaistow Wharf refinery triumph over those at the Thames refinery downriver, at the annual company Sports Day, and Gladys was the star of both the women’s netball and athletic teams. Sacking her would have been handing an easy victory to the Thames girls, so Gladys kept her job.

Perhaps after all Miss Smith enjoyed Gladys’s strong personality and sense of mischief, since there were hints she had quite a sense of humour herself. When the time finally came for Gladys to get married and leave the factory, Miss Smith told her: ‘I’d like you to give your husband-to-be a message from me. Tell him, I wish him all the luck in the world!’

Many other former sugar girls also saw another side to Miss Smith who, despite her foreboding persona, could be very caring and protective of those in her charge. She always took a special interest in girls who had been orphaned, looking out for them and visiting them at home if they were struggling in any way. When she noticed that girls were under stress or suffering from ill health, she would send them, at the company’s expense, to a convalescent home by the seaside. And when a young unmarried sugar girl fell pregnant, she tried her best to help her. The girl, who had attempted to hide her bump by wrapping lengths of cloth around her stomach, refused to admit that she was pregnant, and later died. Miss Smith was visibly distressed at the sight of her funeral procession going past the factory gates, and urged all the other sugar girls to come to her if they ever found themselves in trouble.

As they grew older, the sugar girls came to realise that Miss Smith’s strictness was perhaps a necessary tool for survival as a woman in the male-dominated factory management, and for dealing with the hoards of teenage girls that she had to control in order to make the factory run smoothly. ‘She was strict, but she had to be really,’ one woman told us. ‘She was for the women,’ another said. ‘She was our champion. There was no one like Miss Smith.’

Miss Smith on the far left at the 1985 reunion

In 1985 Gladys Taylor organised a reunion of the girls from her department, and decided, on a whim, to invite Miss Smith along too. Her friends thought it unlikely that she would come, given their previous relationship. But, sure enough, Miss Smith replied that she would be glad to attend.

By then retired, and an old lady, Miss Smith nonetheless still cut an imposing figure, but her demeanour had changed entirely. ‘You can call me Flo,’ she told the other women who had once worked under her. ‘After all, we’re all equal now.’ She told them that, as a woman who had never married and started a family of her own, she had always looked on the sugar girls as her children.

After the reunion, Gladys and her friends would look out for news of Miss Smith. Sometimes she was spotted walking her dogs in Barking, with the same upright demeanour she had always displayed at the factory. After a while though, the sightings stopped altogether. The women heard that she had been moved into a nursing home, and when they phoned up to ask if they could visit they were told she didn’t want to see them. Treating them as equals was one thing, but perhaps Miss Smith couldn’t show that kind of vulnerability.

Miss Smith died in 2009 at the age of 92. A small group of sugar girls attended her funeral.

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Trieu Thi Trinh, the Vietnamese Joan of Arc

Keri — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:38:35 +0000

In the year 43, Vietnam came under the rule of the Chinese Han dynasty. This foreign domination was to last for hundreds of years, with the Chinese campaigning to “civilize” and assimilate the native people.

Though the Chinese ruled Vietnam for hundreds of years, their rule was not accepted by the Vietnamese and there were many organized rebellions over the years.

Pronunciation

The name Triệu Thị Trinh has a few sounds that don’t exist in English (plus Vietnamese is a tonal language). You could probably get pretty close by pronouncing it as “Tria Tea Trin”.

One of these rebellions was led by a legendary Vietnamese hero known as Triệu Thị Trinh.

Trieu Thi Trinh, also called Lady Trieu (Bà Triệu) or Triệu Ẩu (趙嫗), was born in a small village in Vietnam. She was orphaned as a toddler and lived with her brother.

Lady Trieu saw the way her people were oppressed by the Chinese and could not take it. Trieu ran to the countryside and set up an army base, training a thousand rebels to fight against the Chinese. When her brother tried to discourage her, Trieu famously said:

“I will not resign myself to the lot of women who bow their heads and become concubines. I wish to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. I have no desire to take abuse.”

Before the age of 21, Lady Trieu successfully fought over 30 battles against the Chinese with her rebel army. According to legend she was over 9 feet tall, with a voice which sounded like a temple bell, and rode into battle on an elephant, wearing golden armor and carrying a sword in each hand. The Chinese were said to be afraid of her fierce gaze, and said it would be easier to fight a tiger than to face Lady Trieu in battle.

Early Vietnam

Prehistoric Vietnamese culture is thought to be matriarchal. They had numerous female gods and national heroines like Trieu Thi Trinh, such as the Trưng sisters.

Lady Trieu, fighting with her small rebel army against the huge occupying Chinese forces, could not last in her success. In 248 CE, the Chinese finally won against Lady Trieu. It’s said that she despaired so much at the loss that she committed suicide by throwing herself into a river.

Even after her death, she inspired her people to fight against the Chinese. For centuries she was said to have appeared in the dreams of Vietnamese revolutionaires offering support and guidance.

Today, Lady Trieu is a national hero in Vietnam. A national holiday honors her bravery, and many streets are named after her in Vietnamese cities.

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Katharine McCormick, biologist & millionaire philanthropist

Keri — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Katharine Dexter McCormick is a name that every woman today should know, because your life would probably be very different today if it wasn’t for her. Katharine funded what The New York Times called the “most sweeping sociomedical revolution in history. . . [whose] impact on the United States and other nations [is] almost too vast to analyze.” She was responsible for funding the reseach that discovered the birth control pill.

At 1913 National American Woman Suffrage Association convention (left)

Before the feminist movement, arguments about birth control centered around family planning for married couples, population control and eugenics, not an individual woman’s control over her own body. Beginning in 1914, activist Margaret Sanger was the first to popularize the term “birth control”, which placed emphasis on a woman’s right to choose. At that time, suppositories and douches were the main methods of birth control in the US, with diaphrams being used in Europe.

Margaret Sanger, an American nurse and sex educator, believed that women needed to be able to decide when to have children in order for them to lead healthier lives and have more equal footing in society. Like today, birth control was a hotly contested issue, making Margaret’s work very difficult. She was prosecuted for teaching about birth control in her clinics, and later for illegally smuggling diaphragms into the United States from Europe. Given this atmosphere it was impossible to get funding for research into safer and more effective means of birth control.

Katharine McCormick met Margaret through her involvement in the women’s suffrage movement. Katharine was vice president and treasurer of the National American Woman Suffrage, and became vice president of the League of Women Voters after the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.

In the early 20th century, Katharine’s attention and family fortune were largely focused on her husband, Stanley, who was suffering from schizophrenia (which was poorly understood at the time). Katharine, a biologist and the second woman to graduate from MIT, was convinced that a hormonal imbalance—a defective adrenal gland—had caused Stanley’s illness, but she had little say in his care. (A few years after his death, her theory was proven correct—research psychiatrists conclusively linked schizophrenia to a chemical imbalance.)

Stanley died in 1947, leaving the family’s vast fortune to Katharine. Even after paying more than 85% on inheritance taxes, she was now a millionaire with free reign over her wealth.

Katharine McCormick funded the research necessary to develop the first birth control pill.

Katharine immediately wrote a letter to her friend Margaret Sanger asking for advice on how she could best put her new wealth to use. Margaret introduced her to Gregory Pincus and his pioneering research on fertilization and hormones. The drug company that had supported him had ended their funding when he had yet to turn a profit. Katharine donated more than $2 million ($23 million today) to his research into the development of the contraceptive pill, first licensed in 1960.

Even after the pill was approved, Katharine continued to provide funding to Pincus’s lab and research into improving the pill.

Today, the pill is the leading form of contraception, used by millions of women around the world.

Katharine is also responsible for funding women’s housing at her alma mater, MIT. At the time, the school had limited funding to provide housing for women, and there was even talk of turning it into an all-male school. Katharine single-handedly solved the problem by funding the building of Stanley McCormick Hall, an all-female dormitory named for her late husband.

Her generous donation had an inestimable impact on women’s education in the sciences: William Hecht, executive vice president of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of MIT said that “the visible presence of women at MIT helped open up the science and engineering professions to a large part of the population that before had been excluded. It demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that at MIT men and women are equal.”

Though the name of Katharine McCormick is little-known today, she had a profound impact on our society and women’s rights. The world would be a very different place for women today without her passion and generosity.

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Rose Schneiderman, labour union pioneer

Keri — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

This post is by guest author Natalie Alner.

“The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 140-odd are burned to death.” Rose Schneiderman

Rose Schneiderman flyer

Rose Schneiderman was a prominent labour union leader, who dedicated her life to the effort of improving the working conditions of the women labour workers and achieving for them fairness and equality throughout the various industries. She was one of the most important women in the history of labor union movement and her ideas changed and improved the working conditions for millions of workers.

Rachel Rose Schneiderman (1882–1972) had a difficult childhood. She was born in the village of Sawin in Russian Poland but her parents, who worked in sewing trades, immigrated to New York in 1890. Two years later her father died leaving behind three children and a pregnant wife. Young Rose was forced to stop school at nine in order to take care of her brothers while her mother was out working. A while after her sister was born, her mother was forced to leave the baby with an aunt and send her brothers to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. Rose was free now to return to school where she stayed until the age of 13. To her disappointment she had to quit school to help her mother support the family. Despite the lack of education she self-educated and remained an avid reader all of her life.

Her first job was as a cash girl in retail stores, a job she held for a little over two and a half years. The miniscule pay and the inexistent chances of advancement forced her to look for a job in the cap making industry. Her first job averaged her $5 a week and a portion of that money was held to pay for the sewing machines, which the girls had to provide. This job was a minimum of 10 hours per day without any kind of insurance.

Rose Schneiderman at work

After three years on the job, Rose became aware that the girls needed organisation similar to the one the men had, in order to stand against bad pay, continuous pay cuts and very long hours. With two other women they requested from the National Board of United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers to help them organise the girls. Their request was accepted and the first 12 girls were organised into the union. Soon after, every girl in the factory were Rose was working entered the organisation.

The first strike she took part and organised happened when the bosses tried to enforce pay cuts in five out of the thirty factories in the city and it ended with a win for the union. The recognition however, for both Rose and the union, came in 1905 during a citywide cap maker’s strike, over an organised effort to turn the factories to the open shop system, something that would undermine the unions and allow the bosses to hire child labour and immigrants willing to work for even smaller wages. During the long strike, Rose emerged as a capable organiser, public speaker and leader.

During that same year Rose joined the New York Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) an organisation that was morally and financially supporting the organising efforts of women workers. She stayed with WTUL for 45 years and was amongst the most active leaders of the organisation. She served it as president from 1926 until 1950 when it was disbanded. She organised the strike of women waistmakers in 1909 and the same year she participated in the organisation of the garment workers.

Rose speaking at a union meeting

Rose lobbied and worked diligently for many of the worker’s rights that today we take for granted: eight hour workday, a national minimum wage and improved workplace safety standards. She became close friends with Eleanor Roosevelt who joined the WTUL in 1922 and her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt. This gave her great access to increasing political power as Eleanor’s husband, became Governor of New York in 1929 and President in 1933. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation was based on Rose’s ideas, including the Fair Labour Standards Act, the national Labour Relations Act and the Social Security Act. As part of the FDR’s National Recovery Administration she wrote much of the regulations for industries with predominately female workers and she also served for six years as Secretary of Labour for the state of New York.

As an active feminist she campaigned for women’s right to vote as a member of the National American Women Suffrage Association and helped pass the New York state referendum in 1917 that gave women the right to vote. She always saw suffrage as part of the fight for economic rights. In 1912 a state legislator speaking about women’s right to vote said: “Get women into the arena of politics with its alliances and distressing contests – the delicacy is gone and you emasculate women.” Rose’s reply showed the fallacy of his words:

“We have women working in the foundries, stripped to the waist, if you please, because of the heat. Yet the Senator says nothing about these women losing their charm. They have got to retain their charm and delicacy and work in foundries. Of course, you know the reason they are employed in foundries is that they are cheaper and work longer hours than men. Women in the laundries, for instance, stand for 13 or 14 hours in the terrible steam and heat with their hands in hot starch. Surely these women won’t lose any more of their beauty and charm by putting a ballot in a ballot box once a year than they are likely to lose standing in foundries or laundries all year round. There is no harder contest than the contest for bread, let me tell you that.”

One of the most memorable phrases of the women’s movement came from Rose in 1912 with a textile strike of immigrant and women workers in Lawrence Massachusetts:

“What the woman who labours wants is the right to live, not simply exist – the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.”

Rose’s long-time partner and companion was Maud O’Farrell Swartz, another prominent labour activist who served as President of the WTUL from 1922 to 1926 and later as a high-level official at New York’s Department of Labour under Frances Perkins until her death in 1937. In 1950 Rose retired from public life and completed her autobiography, All for One, written in collaboration with Lucy Goldthwaite. The book was published in 1967. Rose Schneiderman died at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged in New York City on August 11, 1972, at age ninety.

Despite the poor and difficult childhood and the lack of formal education, Rose emerged as one of the most influential women in the history of American Labor movement. She fought prejudice and abuse always believing in the power of the union movement and in equality regardless of social casts. Her life’s work, most of the time at the cost of her personal life, shaped the workplace standards and helped women labour workers gain recognition, support as well as education and better life conditions.

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Esther Howland, the Mother of the American Valentine

Keri — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Artist Esther Howland (1828–1904) was the first to publish and sell Valentine cards in the United States. Before Esther, many Valentine cards were hand made with paper, lace, and ribbons and handwritten poetry. By the end of the 19th century, most Valentines were mass-produced by machine, many based off Esther’s designs.

Esther was inspired by an English Valentine she received from a friend of her father’s when she was 19. By this time, mass-produced Valentines of paper lace were already popular in the U.K., with almost half the population spending money on cards, flowers, chocolates, and other gifts for their Valentines.

Esther loved her Valentine so much, she began importing the paper lace and other materials she needed from England to make her own cards. She made a dozen samples and gave them to her brother, a salesman for their father’s stationey store.

Shocked when her brother return from his sales trip with over $5,000 worth of orders for her cards, Esther started hiring friends for her new business in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Esther’s Valentines grew famous around the country, and she began to be called “The Mother of the American Valentine”. In 1881 when Esther was 53 she eventually sold her business, which had grown incredibly successful, grossing over $100,000 per year.

Valentine by Esther Howland

Esther Howland Valentine, circa 1850: "Weddings now are all the go, Will you marry me or no"?

Madam C. J. Walker, self-made millionaire

Keri — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:00:46 +0000

“I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations….I have built my own factory on my own ground.” Madam Walker, National Negro Business League Convention, July 1912

Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, the first child in her family born into freedom after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Her parents and five older siblings were slaves on a plantation in Louisiana. By the time of her death in 1919, Madam Walker was the wealthiest black woman in America and the first self-made female American millionaire.

Sarah’s parents died when she was only 7 years old, and she moved in with her sister and brother-in-law and soon began working to help support their family. She married when she was 14 to escape her brother-in-law’s abuse. Her husband died when Sarah was 20, leaving her to raise their 2-year-old daughter A’Lelia by herself.

Sarah began experiencing hair loss at a young age. Hair loss was a very common problem at the time: people found it difficult to bathe and wash their hair as often as we do today because most lacked access to things like indoor plumbing, central heating, and electricity. Sarah began experimenting with different products and home remedies, eventually creating her own shampoos and hair treatments.

She named her company after her husband at the time, Charles Joseph Walker, and began selling products such as “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower” and “Madam Walker’s Vegetable Shampoo”. Designed specifically for black women, her hair products were completely unique at the time. She began selling her products door-to-door, and teaching the women she met all about hair and scalp treatments.

Her business was so successful that she was soon selling her products across the United States. Sarah’s daughter A’Lelia ran a mail-order business from Denver while Madam Walker travelled the states, finally settling in Indianapolis where she opened her own factory. After establishing her headquarters there, she expanded her company internationally to Jamaica, Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama and Haiti. Her company employed thousands of people, including many African-American women, and was the largest African-American owned business in the nation.

Not only was Madam Walker create incredibly successful business against all odds, she also used her wealth to oppose racism and support institutions to assist African-Americans. She said that she wanted to be a millionaire not for herself, but for the good she could do with it. Besides lecturing on these issues at various conventions, Sarah also:

Made the largest contribution to save the house of Frederick Douglass
Donated money to the NAACP, the YMCA, and to black schools, organizations, individuals, orphanages, and retirement homes
Spent $10,000 every year for the education of young black men and women
Encouraged political activism in her employees
Joined the leaders of NAACP in their efforts to support legislation to make lynching a federal crime, even going herself to the White House to petition in favor of anti-lynching legislation

Madam Walker Building in Indianapolis (used with permission)

Today there are two National Historic Landmarks associated with Madam Walker: her New York estate called Villa Lewaro, and the Madam Walker Theatre Center, built in Indianapolis in 1928, which is now a cultural arts center. She also appears on a commemorative United States Postal Service stamp as part of its Black Heritage Series.

Much of what we know today about Madam Walker is due to the efforts of her great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles, author, journalist & public speaker who runs the official Madam C. J. Walker website and is her official biographer. Images in this post are used with her permission. Check out her Madam Walker Facebook pages below:

Carmen Amaya, Queen of the Gypsies

Keri — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:00:41 +0000

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)

“Carmen Amaya is hail on a windowpane, a swallow’s cry, a black cigar smoked by a dreamer, thunderous applause; when she and her family sweep into town, they cause ugliness, torpor and gloom to evaporate just as a swarm of insects strips the trees of their leaves.”

Thank you to @Lulihar99 on twitter for suggesting I write about Carmen!

Carmen Amaya (1913–1963) was a Romani dancer who performed around the world and had a huge impact on the art of flamenco. During her lifetime she was called the greatest of dancers, and Queen of the Gypsies.

Carmen called herself a Gypsy, but today this term is considered offensive by many Romani people for its negative history and connotations. She was what we would now call Romani, or more specifically, Gitano. The Gitano people are a Romani-descended people in the Andalusian region of Spain, who long ago emigrated from Northern Indian. Their culture and music greatly influenced the entire region.

Flamenco music grew out of Andalusia, and there is some controversy regarding its exact origins and various influences (even the etymology of the word “flamenco” is unknown for certain), but there is no doubt that it grew with the local Romani people at the helm. Though flamenco is at the heart of Romani culture, it is also a mixture of Indian, Persian, Greek, Moorish, and Arabic elements.

Flamenco is known for its energetic, stacatto style, and as a cultural art it has many parallels to American blues. As a people the Romani had been oppressed and abused for hundreds of years. Flamenco emerged as a very private and ritualistic dance, performed with hand clapping because they could not afford musical instruments.

In Spanish culture and especially in Flamenco there is a word called duende, usually translated as spirit, soul, or fire. It is a difficult concept to translate but it is meant to convey the heart, soul, and emotion of flamenco. Different styles of flamenco dancing convey different emotions, but they all have duende. As a folk music, flamenco embodies the hopes, joys, and sorrows of the Romani people, and expressing this in dance is duende.

Carmen was said to have great duende in her dance. In the videos of her dancing, you can see the trance-like look on her face and the great emotion she expressed in her dance:

“I saw her dance and it seemed like something supernatural to me… I never saw anyone dance like her. I don’t know how she did it, I just don’t know!” Sabicas (Agustín Castellón Campos)

Carmen Amaya in her preferred matador clothing

Carmen forever changed the art of flamenco with her dancing. Though she never studied dance formally, she started dancing at a very young age, travelling around to taverns and halls and performing with her father. By her teens she was known around Spain and as far as Paris. In the 1930s, Carmen began to travel the world, and became famous especially in the Americas, mesmerizing audiences from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, to Mexico and the United States, where she danced in several films. She was invited by Franklin Roosevelt to dance in the White House in 1944, and also by Harry Truman in 1953.

A pioneer in flamenco, Carmen combined traditionally feminine and masculine flamenco dance into her own unique style full of duende. Her heavy, stomping, lightning-fast footwork had been reserved for male flamenco dancers before, but she combined her intricate footwork with a feminine grace and style. She often danced in matador pants- in fact, she preferred the pants and jacket to a dress. She made shockwaves with her unusually passionate and fiery dance while wearing traditionally masculine clothing, but today these styles are taken for granted in flamenco.

“Rhythm, sensuality, drama were part of her arsenal of magic. Serious, sultry and unpredictable, she commanded instant attention. Alternately appearing in flamboyant gowns and her preferred tight matador pants, she exuded the pansexual, virtually demonic charisma of a rock star. Her lightning footwork, faster than the eye could comprehend, made audiences dizzy”. Conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957)

“She was from the race of the rebels, of those people who stray from the beaten track and ordinary rules, who only show that there is suffering in their dancing, like there is suffering in existence, and a rage for living. It is a dance that is marked by fire, whose thirst could only be quenched through death”. Patrick Bensard, director and founder of the Cinémathèque of Dance in the French Cinémathèque.

Carmen Amaya, Spanish Flamenco Dancer

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Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux, French painter, composer, and musician

Keri — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:00:36 +0000

Though the art world of the 18th century was dominated by men, quite a few women were trained as artists and held their own in exhibits and sales. One of these women was Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux, whose portrait of herself tuning her harp is a gorgeous and historically fascinating work of art.

Rose was born in Paris in 1761, the daughter of the painter Joseph Ducreux (whose own self-portrait is now part of an internet meme…), a successful portraitist at the court of Louis XVI of France. Coming from a wealthy family, Rose received a well-rounded education, and was accomplished as a composer and performer as well as a portraitist.

Rose’s paintings were displayed in several exhibits, beginning in the Paris Salon of 1791, the first year in which members of the public were permitted to display their own paintings. Her work was displayed in Paris in several exhibits for the rest of the decade, where they were received favorably.

Self portrait with a Harp at the Salon is a remarkable painting not only for its beauty but for the historical insight it provides. Rose stands, not playing the harp, but seemingly interrupted from the middle of tuning (she holds the tuning key in her right hand). Obviously painted by a someone intimately familiar with the instrument, the harp is depicted with red strings for C and dark strings for F, and with nearly photorealistic pedals. The strings are tied to the top of the harp in a slighty untidy, realistic way — how Rose must have tied her own instrument’s strings. The song laying on the table, “Tender Love”, suggests she also sings as she plays.

Rose relocated to Saint-Domingue in Guyane (a.k.a. French Guiana) in South America after marrying Francois-Jacques Lequoy de Montgiraud, where she sadly died of yellow fever at the young age of 41, in 1802.

Image Credits

Self-portrait with a Harp by Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux from Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain.

Special Mention…

…to @willbrooker for guessing the subject of this post from my hint on twitter!

willbrooker sees right through my brilliantly cryptic hint.

Follow @womeninhistory

Follow @willbrooker

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Suzanne Valadon, self-taught artist of Bohemian Paris

Keri — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:00:57 +0000

Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) was a successful, self-trained artist of Montmartre in Paris. She began her career modelling for such artists as Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, and was close friends with Degas and the composer Erik Satie (who proposed to her immediately — but she turned him down). Watching how the artists painted her, she taught herself how to paint and rose from the background of a poor, uneducated street child to become one of the most notable artists of the period.

Self Portrait, 1883

The daughter of an unmarried laundress, Suzanne grew up working a variety of jobs to support herself and her family: waitress, nanny, funeral wreath maker, vegetable seller, etc. She even performed in the circus for a year until a fall from a trapeze at age 16 ended her career.

Suzanne began working as a model for several important artists. Unable to afford formal lessons, she carefully watched as they painted her and began creating her own paintings using the artists’ techniques. Degas (who she didn’t model for, but he was a close friend and mentor) and Toulouse-Lautrec encouraged her in her art and gave her some lessons. Degas was impressed with her work and bought several of her pieces.

In 1894 Valadon became the first woman to show at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, a major French artistic accomplishment. She held her first exhibitions in the 1890s, and by 1909 she was able to fully support herself and her family with her artwork. Her first one-person show in 1911 was a huge success and garnered her many new patrons.

Suzanne Valadon, though she was well aware of current avant-garde artistic trends from her social circles at Montmartre, didn’t commit to any particular style of movement but chose an independent path based on a several different styles. She painted still lifes, portraits, flowers, and landscapes (noted for their strong composition and bright, vibrant colors) but her most famous subjects are her female nudes.

Portrait of Erik Satie, 1893

While the Symbolist avant-garde avoided any reference to class in their work, Suzanne painted her nudes as members of the working-class, recognizable to Victorians by their unidealized bodies, heavy features, relaxed postures, and ease displayed toward their nudity. Many critics interpreted the lack of idealization in Valadon’s nudes as ugliness and lack of charm and accused Valadon of hating women, as well as stereotyping her for her own background in the working class and her “un-feminine” bravado and feistiness. The coarse form, bright color, and loose brushstrokes of her artwork were considered a very “masculine” style and critics of the time just didn’t know how to categorize her.

Suzanne Valadon, though a prolific and successful comtemporary of such famous artists of Renoir and Degas, is often dismissed in art history books and biographies as a mere model or defined as the mother of the her artist son, Maurice Urillo. Her art is often not even mentioned.

Suzanne’s most famous paintings are Summer, After the Bath, and Adam and Eve. (Some of her work is visible on the National Museum of Women in the Arts website.) Adam and Eve was modeled on Valadon herself and her young lover Andre Utter, and was the first piece by a female artist to show a nude man and woman together. All in all, her work totals over 475 paintings, nearly 275 drawings, and 31 etchings (these do not include the many works lost or destroyed over the years).

Gallery

The Blue Room (La chambre bleue) 1923

This video shows some of Valadon’s work. (This is not an endorsement of 1st-art-gallery.com).

Image Credits

Photo of Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), painter and model from Wikimedia Commons

Self-Portrait 1883 from Wikipedia Commons

Portrait of Erik Satie 1893 via Wikimedia Commons

The Blue Room (La chambre bleue) 1923 via Wikimedia Commons

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Ana Nzinga Mbande, fearless African queen

Keri — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:00:52 +0000

Queen Nzinga Mbande was a ruthless and powerful 17th century African ruler of the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms (modern-day Angola). Nzinga fearlessly and cleverly fought for the freedom and stature of her kingdoms against the Portuguese, who were colonizing the area at the time.

Around the turn of the 17th century, the independent kingdoms and states of the Central African coast were threatened by Portuguese attempts to colonize Luanda. (Luanda, today the capital of Angola, was founded in 1576.) Portugal sought to colonize the region in order to control the trade in African slaves, and attacked many of their old trading partners to further this goal.

Unlike many other rulers at the time, Nzinga was able to adapt to these changing circumstances and fluctuations in power around her. By her own determination and refusal to give in to the Portuguese without a fight, she transformed her kingdom into a formidable commercial state on equal footing with the Portuguese colonies.

In 1617 the new governor of Luanda began an aggressive campaign against the kingdom of Ndongo. His troops invaded the capital and forced King Ngola Mbandi (Nzinga’s brother) to flee from the area. Thousands of Ndongo people were taken prisoner.

The king sent his sister Nzinga Mbandi to negotiate a peace treaty in 1621, which she did successfully. But Portugal didn’t honor the terms of the treaty, and King Ngola Mbandi committed suicide, leaving the kingdom to his sister Nzinga. (Other accounts claim Nzinga poisoned her brother, or murdered her brother’s son the heir after Ngola committed suicide, in order to seize power.)

As the new sovereign of Ndongo, Nzinga re-entered negotiations with the Portuguese. At the time, Ndongo was under attack from both the Portuguese and neighboring African aggressors. Nzinga realized that in order to acheive peace and for her kingdom to remain viable, she needed to become an intermediary. She allied Ndongo with Portugal, and was baptised as Ana de Sousa Nzinga Mbande with the Portuguese colonial governor serving as her godfather. By doing this she acquired a partner in her fight against her African enemies, and ending Portuguese slave raiding in the kingdom.

The new alliance didn’t last very long, however. Portugal betrayed Ndongo in 1626, and Nzinga was forced to flee when war broke out. Nzinga took over as ruler of the nearby kingdom of Matamba, capturing Queen Mwongo Matamba and routing her army. Nzinga then made Matamba her capital, joining it to the Kingdom of Ndongo.

To build up her kingdom’s martial power, Nzinga offered sanctuary to runaway slaves and Portuguese-trained African soldiers. She stirred up rebellion among the people still left in Ndongo, now ruled by the Portuguese. Nzinga also reached out to the Dutch and invited them to join troops with her. She told the Dutch she would be happy to ally with them because of their justice and politeness, whereas the Portuguese were proud and haughty.

Even their combined forces were not enough to drive the Portuguese out, however, and after retreating to Matamba again, Nzinga started to focus on developing Matamba as a trading power and the gateway to the Central African interior.

By the time of Nzinga’s death in 1661 at the age of 81, Matamba was on equal footing with the Portuguese colony. The Portuguese came to respect Queen Nzinga for her shrewdness and intransigence.

With Nzinga’s rule, Matamba became a powerful kingdom that long resisted Portuguese colonisation attempts and was only integrated into Angola in the late nineteenth century.

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