ABSTRACT
On 16 July 1860 Laura Herford entered the schools of the Royal Academy after a brilliantly orchestrated campaign to secure the admission of women students to an institution which had excluded them since its foundation. She was, she remembered, greeted by Charles Landseer, the Keeper, ‘goodnaturedly, though awkwardly as if he scarcely knew what would come of it’. 1 What indeed? Increasing numbers of women artists were exhibiting and selling their work, newly visible not just as exceptional or outstanding performers, but as a collectivity to be reckoned with. And as a group they were making new demands and generating debate. A newly organised women’s movement was equally demanding and equally provocative of contention and change. From this moment, women’s art and feminism were inextricably intertwined: speech on the one invariably incited discourse on the other. Women claimed representation: in the world of work, in the profession of art, in civil society. When artists joined the women’s movement, the politics of feminism connected to the practice of art.
