ABSTRACT
In late nineteenth-century France, there were many women who saw their involvement in art as both professional and public, who strove for representation in prestigious exhibition forums, for admission to State art schools, for favourable reviews in press, for rewards from official bodies and sales on the open market. On 3 March 1888 and 29 March 1890 the respected art weekly L'Art francais, a journal which was avowedly eclectic in taste but which still retained a preference for academic and traditional modes of working, reproduced art works by women artists on its front covers. The conservative weekly women's magazine La Famille saw fit to use engravings of art works by women artists on its covers on a number of occasions. Works shown at the Salons des femmes included portraits, flower paintings, landscapes, animals and genre scenes, as the published criticism and the illustrated pages of L'Art francais testify. "Femininity" was most struggled over in fin-de-siecle Paris.
