Women in the 19C United States of America: American Folk Art - Quaint Portraits of Early 19C American Women

Saturday, March 6, 2021

American Folk Art - Quaint Portraits of Early 19C American Women

attributed to John Usher Parsons (American artist, 1806-1874) Woman in Pink c 1835-38

Several New England artists shared a unique painting style during the 1820s-30s. Women depicted by these artists exhibit several similar characteristics - pale, sculptural faces; prominent thin, delicately arched eyebrows; small bowed mouths; & elaborate classical Greek hairstyles of tight curls intertwined with jewelry, flowers, & other adornments. The paintings are usually watercolors. The artists paint strong features, sharply defined, with arched, curved eyebrows. The watercolors are similar to fashion plates appearing in magazines such as Ackerman’s Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions & Politics, published in London in 1809 through 1829.

attributed to John Usher Parsons (American artist, 1806-1874) Porcupina Van Allen

Parsons received his early education at Latin schools in Parsonsfield, Maine, where he was born, and in nearby Effingham, New Hampshire. Parsons graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. He was ordained in New York City in 1831, & became a preacher traveling to Indiana, Wisconsin, & Kansas. A dozen or so paintings by Parsons date to the period just after his return to the East Coast. Most are of subjects who lived in the area around Parsonsfield & in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Parsons was minister for several years. The works appear to have been executed during a four-year span from 1834 to 1838.

About this blog

In colonial America, men were considered superior to woman in all ways. In a strict patriarchal hierarchy, men controlled not only wealth & political power but also how their children were raised, religious questions, & all matters of right & wrong.

In the early part of the 19Cy, however, many Americans experienced a revolution in gender. The doctrine of “separate spheres” maintained that woman’s sphere was the world of privacy, family, & morality while man’s sphere was the public world -– economic striving, political maneuvering, & social competition. But women were interested in equality.

In 1848, New York passed the Married Woman’s Property Act. Now a woman wasn’t automatically liable for her husband’s debts; she could enter contracts on her own; she could collect rents or receive an inheritance in her own right; she could file a lawsuit on her own behalf. She became for economic purposes, an individual. By 1900, every state has passed legislation modeled after this, granting married women some control over their property and earnings.

In 1870 after the Civi War, the 15th Amendment was ratified, saying, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” African-Americans could vote, but women could not.

But it was not until 1920, that the 19th Amendment was ratified granting women the right to vote. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”