PAINTRESSES:
Victorian Women China Painters and Potters

© Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri

Women have been throwing and decorating pots since ancient times; making pottery has always been associated with women’s crafts as part of the sphere of domestic arts. Yet women seldom appear in our standard histories of ceramics. Recent feminist scholarship, however, has made steady progress in bringing to light the previously hidden contributions of women to our cultural heritage. This recognition is only just beginning to move from obscure scholarly journals into the mainstream of popular awareness. The products of the nineteenth-century potteries are widely collected and admired. Yet the women who often produced them are still generally unknown and unrecognized. This article is a first step in re-dressing the balance.

Women in Society
During the late eighteenth century, there were a few women who broke with the traditional and restrictive male view that women should stay at home and learn only “genteel” forms of creativity (such as needlework or sewing). In Victorian times, it was considered unfeminine and often “outrageous” for a woman to speak in public. Social pressures continued to assure that women had few life choices other than marriage, working as a governess (look at Jane Eyre), or to be forced into a convent. Even by 1899, women’s career choices had only slightly expanded to include teaching, dressmaking, or running a boarding house.
These Victorian restrictions were always, of course, imposed under the guise that women wanted to be “protected” within the home sphere. This restrictive femininity applied across the board, from fashions and painful corseting (where women often underwent surgery to remove ribs, so they could have an “hour-glass” figure) to the latest, elegant “fainting” couches (now highly collectable) where they could collapse, unable to breathe, from being tightly corseted. None of this was accidental.
In mid-century, however, courses that expanded their horizons did become available for middle class young women. Schools were still segregated by gender. William Morris’s pioneering vision of the Arts and Crafts Movement and his daughter May’s central position in his firm, Morris and Company, encouraged the public to see the importance of the beauty of craft as an art. (Editor’s Note: See Dr. Perlingieri’s cover story on Morris, NEAJ, March 2006.) The creative art process in the nineteenth century had been arranged by men into a hierarchy where history painting held the highest place of importance, while “crafts” (considered a “minor” art within this biased system) and the women who made them were disregarded.
Slowly, Victorian attitudes began to change. For women, however, it remained an uphill struggle. With few exceptions, women functioned in a hierarchical system where men were at the top and made decisions based upon “masculine” and “feminine” skills, though in reality women often carried 75-pound bags of clay.
When women sought to expand their horizons because of financial needs or the desire to explore more intellectual and creative areas, barriers remained high. Women were not permitted to attend most universities. Until there was a demand to train women in the field of pottery in which they were already working, even art schools were closed to them.
After all these barriers, if women did find employment, their wages were abysmally low. This was done deliberately so they would not be competing with men who did the same work. So, young women were earning often half to two-thirds of a man’s wage. The only slight modification of this biased pay scale was a woman’s social class.
Cheryl Buckley in her 1990 book, Potters and Paintresses. Women designers in the pottery industry 1870-1955, noted that during the Victorian era, “many products were decorative and worn or used by women or they were produced by them for an essentially domestic purpose. Pottery design fell into both these categories.”

The English Potteries, a Brief History
In the late eighteenth century, pottery was still an individual craft, and young boys were apprenticed for three to five years to a local master potter. This apprenticeship (as with painters) excluded girls. Industrialization came quickly and by 1800 the area around Staffordshire became the British center for what was rapidly developing into a major industry. Over the next 100 years, this area employed two-thirds of all British pottery workers. In 1861, women and young girls comprised 31 percent of the workforce. By 1901, there were 19,000 women working in the potteries out of a total of 41,000.
Despite the societal view that women should stay at home and tend exclusively to family matters, economic reality was quite different. Many young children (from age seven on) and teenage girls worked long weeks, often of 60 or 80 hours, in unhealthful surroundings to help their families make ends meet. The 1903 book, I Was A Child. By an Old Potter, relates that children age nine began working at 7 a.m. and were paid “one or two shillings.”
In some instances, employers exploited young girls and women in “virtual servitude for one year.” There were no health or sanitary codes, and all working conditions (as Charles Dickens frequently wrote) were abominable. Lung diseases (one known as “potter’s rot” or “potter’s asthma”) and lead poisoning were prevalent. Lead poisoning affected everyone. It made men sterile, and caused a high rate of spontaneous abortions and infant deaths. It was common knowledge that a young man should not marry any girl who worked in the potteries, as they would never have children. The highest rate of infant mortality was in the pottery cities. The conditions were harsh for everyone who worked in the potteries: hauling heavy loads, working with toxic materials, and a production process where glazing and firing pieces (first with coal fires, then with electric and gas) made entire counties unhealthful. Safe working conditions and environmental protection for the worker were almost unknown. British laws protecting these workers did not become mandatory until 1947.
Men held on tenaciously to their traditional position and beliefs. Women’s “retiring and modest nature” made them particularly well suited for semi-skilled, repetitive work. The male trade unions, early on, were powerful and “maintained and reinforced the craft and gender-based labor divisions between 1870 and 1955.” After new technology was introduced in the 1920s, women joined the workforce in even larger numbers, but the craftsmen still continued to demand their traditional gender roles.

“Paintresses”
There were, however, signs of change. In the mid-nineteenth century production techniques improved; the newly organized factories later in the century were planned around various stages of production. The basic shapes of pottery were limited. It was the hand-decorative qualities of a piece that made the difference, and the decoration was typically women’s work. Women became more important to the industry. Class, as well as gender, became influential. A young woman (often still in her teens) with some education (reading and writing skills) who came from a middle-class background had some access to designing pottery. Some of them also had an educational benefit by attending the few art schools. These women decorators became known as “paintressess” – a word still in use.
In 1842, Fanny McIan (c.1811-1897) became the first superintendent of London’s Female School of Design. Men had been able to train as both designers and ornamenters since 1837 when, “a government school of design was established in London.” The French were ahead of the British, as the French Female School of Design has been in existence in Paris since 1815. McIan’s new school was specifically established by men for wealthy young British women and for an emerging middle class. Another school, The Stoke-on-Trent Art School, was opened in 1847. This school was used by 25 percent of Minton’s factory staff to enhance their skills.
For McIan, problems arose from the very beginning, for many government officials resented her vision for female equality. She was an artist in her own right, and was quite ahead of her time. In 1841, she exhibited her painting, “Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way,” at the Royal Society of Artists. Her paintings showed women as heroic, at a time when social conventions portrayed women as helpless. Her paintings also focused on history subjects; this was considered the highest form of the art cannon, and thus a masculine genre. In1836, McIan exhibited at London’s prestigious Royal Academy. She remained the school’s head until 1857. Two years after McIan left, it was turned into a “finishing” school for middle and upper-class women.
Most especially after William Morris established his firm, Morris and Company, women china painters contributed significantly to the field. Even here their capabilities were tied to what was considered natural. A woman’s skills were considered part of her gender. To the Victorian male mind, she could more easily be sedentary and do meaningless jobs, her “decorative” feminine abilities and meticulous attention to detail resided in her sex.
As educational opportunities increased for women, many of them chose the creative direction of decorating individual pieces of china. It was here that numerous women stood out.

Women Excel as Paintresses
Hannah Barlow (1861-1916) came from a large family with nine children. When her father died unexpectedly in 1866, the 15-year-old Hannah had to figure out how to financially help her widowed mother. Without formal training, Hannah already had shown artistic talent at an early age. Her sketchbooks were filled with hundreds of nature drawings. This, combined with her interest in pottery – when she was seven, she saw an itinerant potter working at his wheel—led her to become a china painter, a Victorian paintress.
Her childhood in the English countryside instilled in her a deep love of animals and nature. Her love of animals was not abstract, and for much of her life she kept a menagerie (with up to 16 animals), including a donkey, Shetland pony, and goose. Barlow’s artistic facility was later refined when she saw the 1862 International Exhibition with its Japanese prints. As the Impressionists were so deeply inspired by Japanese prints, so too were many ceramic artists. The Victorians had a passion for Japanese art.
In 1868, Barlow began her studies at the Lambeth School of Art and Design. By the early 1870s, she had been hired by Doulton and became one of their most outstanding ceramic artists. At one time Doulton hired four of the Barlow siblings: Hannah, her brother Arthur; and, in 1873, her sister Florence. Lucy (another sister) worked there from 1881-85. To avoid duplicating work, Hannah focused on animal motifs, while her sister Florence devoted her skills to painting birds.
Hannah excelled in incised pieces, and she also designed Doulton’s range of faience, impasto, marqueterie, and Carrara ware. Her work became celebrated and was featured in numerous magazines. In 1881, Hannah Barlow exhibited her work at London’s prestigious Royal Academy. She retired from Doulton’s after a highly rewarding 40-year career.

American Women
The lure of decorating pottery and china was not confined to the British Isles. American and Canadian women, too, were captivated by it. As Anthea Callen has written in her important book, Angel in the Studio: “The American women were from the start more seriously professional; they had much to teach the English women in their decorative treatment of china painting. They had ‘proved that under glaze painting is not out of the reach of the amateur.’”
It was Mary Louise McLaughlin (1847-1939), daughter of Cincinnati’s most prominent architect, who led the way. As one of the city’s pioneering china painters, she wrote (at age 33) one of the most influential books on the subject: China Painting: A Practical Manual for the Use of Amateurs in the Decoration of Hard Porcelain (published in 1877).
McLaughlin experimented with under-glaze painting because she was trying to find the secret technique that made Haviland china so famous. Mixing her mineral colors, she eventually came up with a similar process: applying colors to an unfired clay slip on a damp body. The under-glaze she developed worked; and in1878, McLaughlin showed her china pieces at the Women’s Art Museum Association Loan Exhibition. By the following year, McLaughlin had founded the Cincinnati Pottery Club. As the founder of American’s china painting, her influence is considered pioneering. China painting became a cottage industry; by 1900 more than 25,000 women were employed in it. It was all the rage.
Celia Laighton Thaxter (1835-1894) has long been noted as New Hampshire’s famous hostess salonière and outstanding gardener for Appledore, her home and one of America’s first artist colonies. Her home on the Isle of Shoals (between the coasts of Maine and New Hampshire) gave her an artistic canvas to paint seascapes of delicate beauty. They were filled with details of seaweed, plants, and flowers. Her hand-painted china was unique in its inclusion of verses. Poetry and prose both found a home in her elegant china pieces.
The olive branch was one of her favorite designs and she used it on many dishes, planters, pots, serving pieces, and even an exquisite oil lamp. These original pieces had tremendous popular appeal for the American woman. She capitalized on the importance of a home’s decorative arts. Working with the national pottery firm of Cooley’s in Boston, Thaxter purchased European “blanks” (see glossary), painted them, and then sent them to Cooley’s for firing.
Thaxter’s china-painted pottery became so popular that she was able to support herself from her artistic endeavors. Her pieces, now more than 100 years old, have a timeless quality that looks ever fresh and inviting. Her interest in nature and her wonderful ability to design and paint leaves, flowers, and plants on china in a harmonious fashion follow in the footsteps of her pioneering predecessor, botanical artist and naturalist, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), whose story will be told in our May issue.
In Canada, Alice Egan Hagan (1872-1972) had a long and productive career as a china painter. Self taught, living in relative isolation from any artistic community, she paid for her own ceramic studies. Working with the various pottery techniques and the clays indigenous to Nova Scotia, she began her china-painting career at the age of 60. She was so successful that she taught others how to make and fire pottery. Setting up kilns around her area, she continued to teach and paint her own pieces into her 90s. In recent years, both Hagan (2006) and Thaxter (2002) have had their first museum exhibitions.
Despite the significant male cultural biases against Victorian women working as artists, these women represent a growing number who bucked traditions to follow their own artistic muse. Since women comprised 50 percent of the pottery industry’s creativity, their noteworthy and often groundbreaking contributions deserve wider recognition. When we have a better balance of all artists’ contributions, we can have a broader and far clearer understanding of our collective story and the magnificent world of art.

©Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri
Dr. Perlingieri is the author of the critically acclaimed Sofonisba Anguissola: The First Great Woman Artist of the Renaissance (also in French translation). She is the author of NEAJ’s March 2006 cover story, The Timeless Designs of William Morris.