(Frances Matilda McIan née Whitaker)

Artist, illustrator, Superintendent of Female School of Design.

c. 1814 – 7 April 1897

A Personal Reflection on the Work of Fanny McIan by Ellie Chick

Fanny McIan was the superintendent of the Female School of Design from 1842-57. However, she was constrained by accepted ideas about ‘feminine art’. The Committee of Council on Education supported women focusing on traditional ‘female’ practice and awarded design prizes for work in chintz, lace and painting from ornament and wood engraving. The Council pressed for these techniques to be included in the curriculum.  

But the women artist was held back by societal limits. After marriage she was expected to leave her studies. Nevertheless, the Council’s approval of McIan’s training in porcelain painting supported female students’ independence. It opened up the possibility of an industrial career.

Official resistance came when McIan wanted to teach her students fine art at the Government School of Design. This included oil painting, large scale canvases and the portrayal of the nude. McIan had to find clever ways or circumnavigating the exclusion of the female student from these areas. She argued that large scale works were a preparation for the smaller scale. While their male peers at the Government School of Design were routinely drawing naked models, students at the Female School of Design, were not allowed even to draw ‘the clothed figure’. Instead, they had to use plaster casts. When it was discovered that McIan resorted to teaching her students to draw from nude models in her own home, she lost her position.The job went to her husband who, ironically, lacked her artistic expertise and had, in fact, gained his training from her. He went on to become a popular and well-established painter.

An art school that catered exclusively to girls was a progressive enterprise. However, girls and women faced economic discrimination also. Tuition fees meant that the School was open only to girls of wealthier families. Male students enjoyed free education. Young men from poorer families were given opportunities denied to their sisters. 

Popular opinion was in opposition to this misogyny.  A Wolverhampton gentleman, for example, wrote to McIan, expressing the view that women were likely to outdo men in the art field. This was, however, because he believed that the artist’s job was sedentary and ideally suited to ‘women’s capabilities’. Such preconceptions about female weakness were so deeply ingrained that even some women absorbed them.

In her own art, McIan consistently puts the female experience in the foreground. Her painting of the Battle of Prestonpans, for example, shows not the battle itself but the aftermath. In her interpretation of the battle, the experience of the women is the focus: it is they who carry the burden of having to struggle on alone after their men have fallen in combat.

https://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/a/mcian-1/nachderschlachtbeipreston.html

We also have a picture (by an unidentified artist) that gives us a glimpse into the day-to-day running of the Royal Female School of Art (as the Female School of Design went on to be called from 1885). Titled “Life Class at the Royal Female School of Art, 1868”, it shows women nonchalantly painting from a life model. The importance of female painters confidently representing society is a vital element that has been missing in nineteenth century art and is an area of debate that continues into the 21st century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Female_School_of_Art

Bibliography

Chalmers, F.G. (1995) ‘Fanny McIan and London’s Female School of Design, 1842-57: “My Lords and Gentlemen, Your Obedient and Humble Servant”?’, Woman’s Art Journal, 16(2), pp. 3–9. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/1358568.Colville, D. (2011) UCL Bloomsbury Project. Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-project/institutions/female_school_of_art.htm (Accessed: 28 August 2022).

MINI BIOGRAPHY

Education

Not known

Some Key Achievements & Interests

Taught her husband, Robert, Ronald McIan to paint, enabling him to develop a successful career as an artist.

1836 Showed her first exhibit, a portrait Red Star of the Evening and Diving Mouse, at the Royal Academy.

1837 Exhibited The Escape of Alaster Macdonald at the Society of British Artists.

1842-1857 Made first Superintendent of the Female School of Design, London. The London Female School of Design* opened in 1842 in Somerset House but moved to Gower Street in 1852 and in 1861 to 43 Queen Square, Bloomsbury. Its aim was to train women in artistic skills that would enable them to find employment and, with an income, independence eg as porcelain painters.

Supported art students to pursue their work despite male dominance in the art world.

7 April 1854 Elected Honorary Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy.

1857 She, and students from the School, exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of Female Artists.

In her work she specialised in Scottish historical scenes showing a romantic view of Scotland to a wide Victorian audience.

Issues

Eloped while a teenager with Robert McIan who was 11 years older than her.

Suffered from ill health.

When considering McIan for the position of superintendent, the matter of her husband’s profession was that of actor, was raised as an objection.

The governors of the School were all men causing her to come into conflict with their views on what women should learn and prepared for in the working world. While the governors agreed with women being trained in ornamenting and japanning, they disagreed with them being taught fine are and oil painting so they could pursue a career in painting, considered in their eyes to be a male profession.

1848 The School was moved to a very inappropriate location for young females with McIan forced to push for its removal to a respectable location.

From 1853 She nursed her first husband who suffered from mental illness until his death.

She allowed women to learn figure drawing from nude models which was criticised by those with traditional outlooks.

Widowed in 1856 by death of first husband R R McIan and again by death of second husband Richard James Unwin in 1864. On the death of Unwin, she did, however, inherit a fortune and property.

Connection to Bloomsbury

Lived in Great Coram Street.

The Female School of Design in Queen Square.

Works include

1836 Red Star of the Evening and Diving Mouse

The Escape of Alaster Macdonald

1845 Highland Refugees from the ‘45

1849 After the Battle of Prestonpans

1851 Highland Emigration

 Soldiers’ Wives Awaiting the Results of Battle 

Further Reading

Search Results for Fanny McIan | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (oxforddnb.com)

*The Female School of Art was also known as- the Female School of Design, the Gower Street School, 13 the Queen Square School of Art, and the Government District School of Art for Ladies.