Anna Brownell Jameson 1794 – 1860
(born Anna Murphy)
Novelist, art historian, philosopher.
17 May 1794 – 17 March 1860
Education
Educated at home learning art techniques from her artist father and teaching herself languages.
Was responsible for educating her younger sisters then, at 16, started working as a governess.
Some Key Achievements and Interests
Author of the first systematic study of Christian iconography in the English language.
Predated John Ruskin in establishing the importance of British art as worthy of study.
Made lasting a contribution to art history by championing late-medieval and Renaissance art.
Intrepid and pioneering traveller: in Canada, crossed Lake Huron in a canoe paddled by five Native Americans.
Campaigned for education for women, in particular re for a female school of art: ‘the question now before the public is, whether, in the new edifice to be erected by the Royal Academy of Art on land granted by the Government, it may not be found advisable to include a female school of art? A doubt exists. whether the original-character of the Academy did or did not include lady students, but, gentlemen, we might presume, would give them the benefit of the doubt, and naturally take the chivalrous and the generous side of the question… But it is not pleaded, I believe, even by those most against us, that women were intentionally or absolutely excluded; the more especially that among the original academicians, in 1769, there were 3 ladies. The accomplished and courteous President of the Academy, in his letter-to Lord Lyndhurst, does not plead that women are inadmissible to the privilege of gratuitous instruction extended to students of the other sex, but that-the institution is too poor to afford it, and that the present outlay for schools is as much as the funds of the Academy can meet. A small share of the advantages from the present outlay is all that women ask, as a recognition of the principle of justice and equality...’
Supported the training of women for the working world.
Briefly served as a founding member on the General Committee of Ladies’ College (which opened 1849).
Issues
An unhappy marriage.
Had responsibilities supporting her parents and sisters.
Men put up resistance against women entering skilled and well-paid trades, fearing competition for work.
Suffered from prejudice by male art critics and writers:
Carlyle wrote about her as ‘one of the swarm that came out with the annuals’, and Hawthorne included her in his ‘damned mob of scribbling women’.
Quote: ‘When the idea of a drawing school for women was first mentioned,‘ she wrote, ‘it had to encounter such difficulties, sneers, petty objections, jealous interference…(that) one would have thought half London was to be demoralized [i.e. become immoral] because a class of twenty or thirty girls were taught to use a pencil…‘. The Athenaeum 803 (March 1843) p259
Connection to Bloomsbury
Lived in Chenies Street when first married.
Carried out research at the British Museum.
Founding member of the General Committee of Ladies’ College/Bedford College.
Female Networks
Annabella Byron, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Elisabeth Jesser Reid, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Elizabeth Eastlake, Fanny Kemble, Harriet Martineau, Julia Smith, Lady Byron, Louisa Twining, Mary Sturch, Ottilie von Goethe.
Mentored Emily Faithfull.
Writings / Publications include:
1826 Diary of an Ennuyée (published anonymously with great success).
1829 Loves of the Poets.
1832 Characteristics of Women: Moral, Poetical, and Historical (later known as Shakespeare’s Heroines).
1834 Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad.
1842 Handbook to the Public Galleries.
1844 Companion to the Most Celebrated Private Galleries of Art in London.
1846 Memoirs and Essays Illustrative of Art, Literature and Social Morals.
1848 Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters.
1848 Sacred and Legendary Art (the 1st of her major work Sacred and Legendary Art).
1850 Legends of the Monastic Orders.
1852 Legends of the Madonna.
1854 Commonplaces.
1855 Sisters of Charity.
1856 The Communion of Labour.
1857 The History of Our Lord as Exemplified in Works of Art.
1864 The History of Our Lord (completed after her death by Lady Elizabeth Eastlake).
Further reading:
Holmes, Johanna: “To use our talents and improve them”: Women’s careers in the London art world,1820-1860, PhD Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London
Jameson, Anna | Dictionary of Art Historians
Thomas, Clara: Anna Jameson, Art Historian and Critic, in Women’s Art Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring – Summer, 1980), pp. 20-22
Wikipedia contributors (9 February 2023). Anna Jameson. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:57, 9 February 2923, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Brownell_Jameson