Women in the 19C United States of America: The Formula

Monday, August 1, 2022

The Formula

This American artist loved to paint summer women in white dresses with skirts & scarves blowing in the wind surrounded by blue skies. (It should be noted that they are wearing "sensible" shoes.) His formula worked. Prolific & popular, Charles Courtney Curran (1861–1942) from Hartford, Kentucky, was only 23, when he received artistic recognition by exhibiting at New York’s National Academy of Design.

Curran’s style & skill in portraying light were honed by 2 years at Paris’ Academie Julien. On his return, Curran kept studios in New York City & Cragsmore, New York. Curran taught at the Pratt Institute, Cooper Union, & the National Academy. The cliffs & clouds he painted were the landscape of Cragsmore, a community of artists.

He liked to inject just a little bit of whimsical tension into his paintings of fragile, innocent women in white dresses by precariously perching them atop craggy hilltops & ledges engulfed in a perfect backdrop of blue sky & fluffy white clouds. But only a little bit of tension, mind you. At least I think it was whimsy. The women standing alone remind me of early 20th century Lady Liberties.

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) Summer Clouds 1917

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) The Boulder 1919

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) On the Heights

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) Summer 1906

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) Sunlit Valey 1920

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) Noonday Sunlight

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) On the Cliff 1910

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) The Veiled Cloud 1926

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) Faraway Thoughts

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) Ragged Clouds 1922

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942)

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) Sunny Morning

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) High Country 1917

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) Sunshine and Haze

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) The Green Jacket 1917

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942)

Charles Courtney Curran (1861-1942) Cliffs at Cragsmor
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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.”