7 - A Critical Career: Joanna Mary Boyce’s Art Writings

Summary

MALE ART WRITERS AND reviewers associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement are often cited, while the contributions of their female peers are significantly less well known. However, Joanna Mary Boyce's art writing for the Saturday Review is as worthy of further consideration as her male counterparts John Ruskin, William Michael Rossetti and Frederick George Stephens.

Scholars have recently drawn attention to the pivotal role of women art writers in the nineteenth century. Women produced a diversity of texts including travel diaries, museum guides, articles and volumes dedicated to historical works as well as reviews of contemporary art. There was already considerable precedent for female art writers by mid-century and Boyce's writing fits within the growing category of the professional art writer.

Professional art writing necessitated networks with editors and journalists. Art reviewing by its very nature required travel, visits to exhibitions, the negotiation of gallery spaces and careful examination of works of art. This was followed by the production of regular copy on demand. Boyce's columns and extant correspondence give vital clues about her writing practice and the challenges it entailed. Her personal correspondence attests to the positive reception of her writing. The letters reveal anxiety about her interventions in this new forum, but also her robust and knowledgeable responses to exhibitions. She was assertive about her own views and singled out particular works and artists for criticism and praise. These careful analyses can be related to her own interests in portraiture and landscape.

Boyce's tenure as an art writer came at an intriguing historical point. She not only coincided with Pre-Raphaelitism, but was involved in the very beginnings of The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art. Established in November 1855, the Saturday Review was to become an important and prevailing presence in Victorian mass media. Although Boyce's career was cut short, the newspaper remained a space that was open to women art writers. Boyce was an early and fascinating exemplar in the rapidly expanding realm of mass journalism.

PROFESSIONAL WOMEN ART WRITERS

Art writing was disseminated in a variety of forms by mid-century, from travel guides to historical artist biographies and collection catalogues. As scholars have recently argued there were in fact many women who were working in art writing during the nineteenth century.