1. Pollock, Griselda, “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity,” in Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and the Histories of Art (London: Routledge, 1988)Google Scholar. For the gendering of subject matter in art, see also Pollock, and Parker, Roszika, Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology (New York: Pantheon, 1981)Google Scholar. Pollock, 's more recent work, particularly in her latest book, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art's Histories (London: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar, argues, as I do, for a less essentializing, more comprehensive view of gender issues and the role of feminism in our understanding of art history.

2. Herbert, Robert L., Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 47–50Google Scholar.

3. See Blanchard, Mary W., “The Soldier and the Aesthete: Homosexuality and Popular Culture in Gilded Age America.” Journal of American Studies 30 (1996): 25–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Her article focuses almost exclusively on Wilde, and thus does little to convince the reader of just how widespread acceptance of male effeminacy was in the 1890s. Nonetheless, the public nature of Wilde's effeminacy, along with that of other aesthetes during the period, does suggest a more broad play with gender identities that I hope to contribute to readings of visual arts of the same time period. See also Kasson, John's Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990)Google Scholar for more on the continual refinement of manners with the encroachment of the middle class.

4. See Burns, Sarah, Inventing the Modern Artist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 159–86Google Scholar.

5. As, Sarah Burns has argued, Cecilia Beaux did (see ibid., 172–86). See also Pollock and Parker (Old Mistresses), who point out that this strategy may have been used by many women artists throughout art history, as for example Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, who “was acceptable only in so far as her person, her public persona, conformed to the current notions of Woman, not artist” (96).

6. Burns, , Inventing the Modern Artist, 277–99Google Scholar.

7. I will refer to the artist as Fairchild to avoid confusion with her two husbands, Frederick MacMonnies and Will Hicok Low.

8. The title Dans la nursery is that given by Fairchild when she exhibited the painting at the Salon National des Beaux-Arts in 1899.

9. For more in-depth analysis of this painting, see Ringelberg, Kirstin, Risking the Incoherence of Identity: Locating Gender in Late Nineteenth-Century Paintings of the Artist's Home Studio (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000)Google Scholar; and Cartwright, Derrick R., “Beyond the Nursery: The Public Careers and Private Spheres of Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low,” in An Interlude in Giverny, exh. cat. (University Park: Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University; and Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Terra Foundation for the Arts, Giverny, France, 2000)Google Scholar. See also Gerdts, William H. et al. , Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France 1865–1915 (Evanston, Ill.: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992), 182 (entry by Jochen Wierich)Google Scholar; Musée municipal Poulain, Alphonse-Georges, Frederick William MacMonnies, Mary Fairchild MacMonnies: deux artistes américains à Giverny, exh. cat. (Evanston, Ill.: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992)Google Scholar, 97 (note that Gordon attributes the painting to Frederick MacMonnies). For information on Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low, see Smart, Mary's “Sunshine and Shade: Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low,” Woman's Art Journal 4 (Fall 1983–Winter 1984): 20–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and her A Flight with Fame: The Life and Art of Frederick MacMonnies (1863–1937) (Madison, Conn.: Sound View, 1996)Google Scholar.

10. In Gordon, E. Adina's catalogue entry for Frederick William MacMonnies, 97Google Scholar; and in Gerdts, William H.'s Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony (New York: Abbeville, 1993), 136Google Scholar.

11. In Wierich, Jochen's commentary in Lasting Impressions, 182Google Scholar.

12. This study was recently unearthed and attributed by Derrick R. Cart-wright, formerly the director of the Musée Americain at Giverny (see Cartwright, “Beyond the Nursery”).

13. Mary Smart and William Gerdts have previously argued that the painting was probably made in the MacMonnies' home in Giverny. I found this attribution vexing, as the clearly indicated skylight in the image seemed to suggest the only likely site on that property to be the separate painting studio. However, according to Smart, correspondence between MacMonnies and Fairchild suggests this building had not been transformed into a studio at the time of the painting (most likely 1897–98, due to the age of Berthe Helene in the picture), even though the proportions of the space and the placement of the studio window in the painting are strongly similar to those of that studio as seen both in a photograph given to me by the current owners and my own experience of the interior space. It is possible that the painting needs to be redated slightly; however, as the painting was submitted to the Salon Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1899, Smart's date for the building, based on correspondence between MacMonnies and Fairchild, would still not match up with the painting. When I corresponded with Smart on this issue, she agreed that the skylight did not then make sense. My research eliminated the Villa Bêsche, which the MacMonnies had rented in Giverny, as it did not appear to have ever contained such a skylight. Smart then suggested their winter home in Paris, 44 Rue de Sevres. That building's façade does not currently include a skylight, but it has been renovated. Derrick Cartwright suggested to me in conversation that perhaps the information Smart has for the studio building is in fact for the renovation of MacMonnies' large sculpture studio.

14. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and Berthe Morisot are the two women artists most commonly thought to use this strategy, although even Mary Cassatt (a single woman with no children) has been said to choose her subject matter with an eye to establishing and legitimating her role as a proper woman with appropriately maternal and domestic interests (see Pollock and Parker, Old Mistresses, and Garb, Tamar, Sisters of the Brush: Women's Artistic Culture in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994]Google Scholar). A more complex reading of Vigée-Lebrun's self-imaging is undertaken by Sheriff, Mary D. in The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

15. Cole, Helen, “American Artists in Paris,” in Brush and Pencil 4 (07 1899): 199–202; quote, 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. I wish to make it clear that when I am speaking of overt representations of the studio, I mean those images in which viewers can tell they are looking at a studio rather than a mere room. Although we may very well be looking at a female artist's studio when she depicts her mother and sister sitting on overstuffed chairs, serving from a silver tea service, if we cannot distinguish that space from any other domestic space, then we do not know that we are in fact seeing her studio. The majority of male painters' studio representations during the late 19th century clearly referred to art making, displaying, and/or purchasing. The images contain lounging models or patrons, various works of art both original and copied, and an easel or other apparatus. Even when they do not, as in Chase, William Merritt's A Friendly Call (1895, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)Google Scholar, a critic leaps to the rescue, ensuring that the viewer will see that space as a studio first and as a domestic space second, or the sheer number of other studio images by male artists provide that reading as an omnipresent possibility. There are almost no such overt images by female artists of this time, and none by artists considered significant in current 19th-century art history.

17. Bashkirtseff, Marie's Self-Portrait with a Palette (ca. 1883, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nice, France)Google Scholar depicts the artist in a frontal, half-length pose, holding the nominal palette down by her waist. The area behind her is almost entirely opaque, except for a rectangle of gray that offsets a harp placed before it (see Konz, Louly, Marie Bashkirtseff (1858–1884): The Self-Portraits, Journal, and Photographs of a Young Artist [Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997], 56–59Google Scholar). Perry, Lilla Cabot's Self-Portrait (1891, Terra Museum of Art, Chicago)Google Scholar offers slightly more detail, as behind Perry we can see what appears to be a window through which one can see a figure in a landscape of grass and a tree, shading his eyes as he looks at the artist. Meredith Martindale suggests that the figure “possibly represents Perry's husband making ineffectual attempts to divert her from her art,” although she does not say why she arrives at this interpretation (Martindale, , Lilla Cabot Perry: An American Impressionist [Washington, D.C.: National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1990]Google Scholar).

18. Gerdts, William H., Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915 (Evanston, Ill.: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992), 64Google Scholar. William Gerdts and Mary Smart agree on this reattribution, contrary to E. Adina Gordon (Gerdts, , Monet's Giverny, 237 fn. 48Google Scholar). The misattribution is upheld in all published works before 1992.

19. Christine E. Finkelstein, who wrote Fairchild's biography and catalogue raisonné for her master's thesis in museum studies at City College of New York in 1989, simultaneously credits MacMonnies with the two paintings, discusses another nearly identical painting as probably attributable to Fairchild, and lists the works shown by Fairchild at the Salon Nationale des Beaux-Arts (SNBA) (Finkelstein, , “Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low” [Master's thesis, City College of New York, 1989], 45–49Google Scholar). William Gerdts and Mary Smart noted that MacMonnies did not start painting in earnest until approximately 1900, which point made the connection to Fairchild's SNBA entries more persuasive. Furthermore, Betty, the MacMonnies daughter pictured in the painting, made an inventory of all the works still in the Giverny house in 1927, long after Fairchild had moved out and taken her paintings with her. These two paintings were not among those listed in the inventory, suggesting that they were taken with Fairchild, and ended up in Marjorie's joint collection only after Fairchild's death.

20. Young Normande and Her Cat (ca. 1909, Musée Municipal A. G. Poulain, Vernon, France), an ivory miniature, shows Fairchild's skill with detail, more than one medium, and a more academic style of painting. La brise (1895, Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Foundation for the Arts), a decorative image in an Art Nouveau style, depicts a swirling female figure swathed in draperies painted en grisaille against a blue background covered in silver lines. Fairchild exhibited this painting at the 1895 Salon Nationale des Beaux-Arts and won a bronze medal for it in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

21. For example, La repriseuse (Woman Darning) (1897–1898, private collection), is clearly painted by the same artist at the same time as the other two images and, although also unsigned, is dedicated to Madame Baudy, owner of the Hotel Baudy in Giverny, to whom Fairchild dedicated several of her paintings in the same manner (MacMonnies never did). Finkelstein, in “Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low,” dismissed this issue by pointing out that Will Low, in his essay recounting a year spent at the “MacMonastery,” talks of how he, Fairchild, and MacMonnies all painted the same view side by side on several occasions, albeit in different styles. Thus, the similarity of other paintings to Dans la nursery must mean that Fairchild and MacMonnies were painting the same scene simultaneously. However, it is clear from reading Low's writings that the group only rarely painted together and always outdoors. Furthermore, the date of the painting coincides with a period during which MacMonnies was often traveling abroad or otherwise away from home, as Smart mentions in A Flight with Fame.

22. See Boime, Albert, “The Case of Rosa Bonheur: Why Should a Woman Want to Be More Like a Man?” Art History 4 (12 1981), 384–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Garb, Tamar, “‘L'Art Féminin’: The Formation of a Critical Category in Late Nineteenth-Century France,” Art History 12 (03 1989), 39–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Garb Sisters of the Brush. See also Ashton, Dore, Rosa Bonheur: A Life and a Legend (New York: Viking, 1981)Google Scholar.

23. See Van Hook, Bailey, Angels of Art: Women and Art in American Society, 1876–1914 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, or for that matter nearly any 19th-century art criticism that touches the subject.

24. Greatorex, Eleanor. “Mary Fairchild MacMonnies,” Godey's Magazine 126 (05 1893): 630Google Scholar.

25. Derrick Cartwright and I both came to this conclusion independently, giving credence to the painting's call for such an interpretation.

26. For more on domestic servants in the 19th century, see O'Leary, Elizabeth, At Beck and Call (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Strasser, Susan, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Pantheon, 1982)Google Scholar; and Filene, Peter, Him / Her / Self: Gender Identities in Modern America, 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

27. Fairchild also played several musical instruments, including the harp and the piano. Will Hicok Low painted his first wife Berthe and future second wife Fairchild playing these two instruments together at the Giverny house.

28. See Pollock, “Modernity,” and Herbert, Impressionism.

29. Berthe Morisot used the painting-within-a-painting tack to refer to herself in several publicly displayed paintings, as Higonnet, Anne points out in “The Other Side of the Mirror,” in Perspectives on Morisot, ed. Edelstein, T. J. (New York: Hudson Hills, 1990)Google Scholar. These references are not immediately obvious to the eye, however, and the public would have known only one at the time.

30. Burns, Sarah, “The Price of Beauty: Art, Commerce, and the Late Nineteenth-Century American Studio Interior,” in American Iconology: New Approaches to Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature, ed. Miller, David C. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 230Google Scholar.

31. Duret, Théodore, Histoire de Edouard Manet et de Son Oeuvre avec un Catalogue des Peintures et des Pastels (Paris: Bernheim-Jeune, Éditeurs d'Art, 1926), 255–56, 261Google Scholar. Duret was a friend of both Manet's and Morisot's, and his catalogue groups other images of Morisot by Manet that seem intended as portraits in comparison to these. Therefore, I feel his titles and understanding of these images are most trustworthy.

32. Weinberg, H. Barbara, Curry, David P., and Bolger, Doreen, American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 41Google Scholar.

33. Betsky, Celia, “In the Artist's Studio,” Portfolio (01–02 1982): 39Google Scholar.

34. Higonnet, Anne, Berthe Morisot (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1990), 78Google Scholar.

35. Betsky, “In the Artist's Studio,” 38.

36. Higonnet, , Berthe Morisot, 34–35Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., 89.

38. Ibid., 77.

39. Ibid., 88–89. Instead, the room was merely “a light, cool place devoid of self-consciously laborious or artsy trappings.” In this statement, Higonnet seems to consider Morisot's lack of a studio a sign of her genuineness; that is, by avoiding the kind of showplace studio full of “artsy trappings” that Chase and others were known for or the garret whose focus is kept strictly on the artist's struggles, Morisot can be seen as serious but not superficially so. Higonnet's remark here seems to contradict her earlier waxings on the necessity of a nondomestic space “consecrated to work” for “intellectual independence,” but the very language that Higonnet uses in both cases shows the importance of the studio space in Morisot's development as a dedicated, professional artist.

40. Scott, William P., “Morisot's Style and Technique,” in Berthe Morisot: Impressionist (New York: Hudson Hills, 1987), 197–98Google Scholar.

41. Higonnet, , Berthe Morisot, 171Google Scholar. Jean Dominique Rey considers this home studio evidence that Morisot made “no distinction between work and everyday life” (Rey, , Berthe Morisot, exh. cat., trans. Jennings, Shirley [Naefels, Switzerland: Bonfini, 1982], 10Google Scholar).

42. Higonnet, , Berthe Morisot, 202Google Scholar.

43. Rouart, Denis, ed., The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, trans. Hubbard, Betty W. (London: Camden, 1986), 197Google Scholar.

44. For more on this painting, see Konz, , Marie Bashkirtseff, 233–41Google Scholar; and Havice, Christine, “In a Class by Herself: Nineteenth-Century Images of the Woman Artist as Student,” Woman's Art Journal (Spring/Summer 1981): 35–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. There remain a fair number of photos of women sculptors, as well as a photo of Fairchild when she was working on the lunette for the Women's Pavilion; in other words, when large-scale projects were involved and there might be some doubt as to the actual physical ability of women to complete such projects. In Greatorex's 1893 article on Fairchild (“Mary Fairchild MacMonnies”), much is made of the relative size of her palette and canvas in comparison to her slight figure, suggesting that the incongruity of the female artist's body with the greatness of her ambition (both actually and metaphorically) was a subject of remark at the least, if not also humor.

46. Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One's Own (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929)Google Scholar.

47. Toth, Emily, Kate Chopin (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

48. See ibid.; see also Toth, Emily's Unveiling Kate Chopin (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999)Google Scholar.

49. Although the book was not banned, as previously believed, it fell out of publication at the turn of the century and was not revived until 1953, when a French translation appeared. It was first reprinted in the United States in 1964 and has gradually gained popularity through the support of feminist scholars in particular (see Culley, Margo, preface to the Norton Critical Edition of Kate Chopin's The Awakening: An Authoritative Text, Biographical and Historical Contexts, and Criticism, ed. Culley, Margo, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994)Google Scholar.

50. Ibid., 3–5.

51. Ibid., 5.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid., 69.

54. Ibid., 76.

55. Ibid., 61.

56. Mr. Pontellier's only reaction is a concern that her move might prompt Creole society to think his finances are not in good shape — he immediately sends off a note for print in the local paper stating he and his wife are making substantial renovations to their home and may go abroad soon (ibid., 89).

57. Ibid., 59.

58. From Culley, Margo, “Edna Pontellier: ‘A Solitary Soul’,” in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, 251Google Scholar.

59. Wolkenfeld, Suzanne, “Edna's Suicide: The Problem of the One and the Many,” in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, 246Google Scholar.

60. It is possible that the difference between public reactions to these works lies in their different media — Chopin's work would certainly be easier to access and thus more influential than Fairchild's painting. Fairchild did exhibit the majority of her paintings at various key institutions in the United States, however, and Dans la nursery was shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) at the very least (it was her tendency to send her most significant works to the PAFA, Chicago, sometimes New York City, and occasionally St. Louis — in this case we know only that she sent it to the PAFA), so the lack of commentary it received in all of the journals and catalogues of the time is still suggestive. A further difference, the cultural difference between the United States and France, may be relevant as well — the benchmark for a work's “immoral” or otherwise scandalous content was significantly lower in the American public taste than in the French. As many American art historians have pointed out, this accounts for the greater number of nudes by French artists than American artists in the last decades of the century. However, as Dans la nursery was exhibited in both countries and its creator was equally or perhaps even more well known in the United States, this difference seems debatable.