{"id":2264,"date":"2021-12-17T19:28:35","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T19:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/?post_type=britartuncanon&#038;p=2264"},"modified":"2022-01-17T10:36:49","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T10:36:49","slug":"a-mainly-female-studentship","status":"publish","type":"britartuncanon","link":"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/britishartuncanon\/a-mainly-female-studentship\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cA mainly female studentship\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\"><strong>Annette Wickham<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>This meticulous figure drawing offers insights into the experience of a young woman studying art in London during the First World War.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Winifred Edge enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools to study painting in 1913 and produced this drawing four years later. Life drawing was still a crucial part of the curriculum and Edge made every effort to show her skill in draughtsmanship, paying great attention to detail, from the bow in the model\u2019s hair to the drapery on which she sits. The inscription on the corner of the sheet reveals exactly how much time it took her to complete: 30 hours. This would have been done over several weeks of life classes, the model resuming the same pose for each session. The artist signed her study and it is also initialed by her teacher (J.B.C. for J.B. Clark) to verify it as her work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Edge was a student at the Royal Academy for the duration of the First World War. The social upheaval created by hostilities was felt at the Academy as elsewhere and, by 1916, most of Edge\u2019s fellow students were women as the young men had been conscripted. In addition to their studies, the women took on part-time \u2018war work\u2019, such as assisting the Red Cross or colouring designs for \u2018Dazzle\u2019 camouflage. Just a couple of months after Edge was working on this drawing, the conflict was brought even closer to home when a Zeppelin bomb landed on Burlington House damaging the exhibition galleries and the School\u2019s studios below, which were subsequently closed for several months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A mainly female studentship was a dramatic change for the Royal Academy Schools which, like many similar institutions, had been exclusively male from its foundation in 1769 until 1860. There was resistance to the \u2018female invasion\u2019, as one Academician described it, when women first joined, and their number was strictly managed for decades. Even in 1914, just a year after Broughton Edge enrolled, a moratorium was placed on vacancies for women because they were \u2018outnumbering the male\u2019. Admission proved to be the first of many hurdles as women at the Schools and elsewhere were still excluded from life drawing on moral grounds. A life class for women was provided at the Royal Academy from 1893, thirty years after it was first requested. While male and female models sat for the class, the latter were nude (as in this example) but the men initially wore bathing trunks with a length of fabric wrapped around them, later replaced by a more minimal covering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Winifred Edge fades from the record after graduating and her finely wrought drawing is a reminder that this was quite common for women art students at the time. Despite \u2018carrying off the prizes\u2019 at the Royal Academy Schools, such successes did not always lead to professional careers. Edge won two prizes as a student but did not exhibit at the Academy after 1918 and, following her marriage and the birth of two children, seems to have worked mainly as an amateur. Social pressures and institutional barriers meant that for many aspiring women artists, art school was often the peak of their artistic output and visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>January 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2266,"template":"","artistormaker":[180],"period":[157],"medium":[181],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>\u201cA mainly female studentship\u201d - British Art Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/britishartuncanon\/a-mainly-female-studentship\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cA mainly female studentship\u201d - British Art Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Annette Wickham This meticulous figure drawing offers insights into the experience of a young woman studying art in London during the First World War.&nbsp; Winifred Edge enrolled at the Royal [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/britishartuncanon\/a-mainly-female-studentship\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"British Art Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-01-17T10:36:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Edge-714x1024.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"714\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/britishartuncanon\/a-mainly-female-studentship\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/britishartuncanon\/a-mainly-female-studentship\/\",\"name\":\"\u201cA mainly female studentship\u201d - British Art Network\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/britishartuncanon\/a-mainly-female-studentship\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/britishartuncanon\/a-mainly-female-studentship\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Edge.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-12-17T19:28:35+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-01-17T10:36:49+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/britishartuncanon\/a-mainly-female-studentship\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/britishartuncanon\/a-mainly-female-studentship\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/britishartuncanon\/a-mainly-female-studentship\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Edge.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/britishartnetwork.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Edge.png\",\"width\":1394,\"height\":2000,\"caption\":\"Winifred Broughton Edge (1896-1977), Life drawing of a seated female nude, pencil on paper, July 1917 564 mm x 384 mm. \u00a9 Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London. 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