2 - Opening Young Minds to Art and Knowledge: Art Training in Mid-Nineteenth-Century London and Paris

Summary

THIS CHAPTER PLACES INTO context the art educational experiences of Joanna Mary Boyce, Henry Tanworth Wells and George Price Boyce. The different opportunities and ambitions of the three are reflected in the individual courses they steered at a crucial time when educational ideals and institutions were evolving at an ever-quickening pace in response to the professionalisation of the art world in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was now acceptable for middle-class men to become artists. While women continued to be encouraged to pursue art for recreational purposes, many women desired to become professional artists themselves and though conditions were largely unfavourable, as Pamela Gerrish Nunn argues in this volume, opportunities were developing. The Boyces were sufficiently well off financially to be able to support such ambitions, with a £400 annual income from the family businesses in 1857, to cite one year in particular. Wells was similarly placed, socially, albeit less wealthy as the son of a landowner of the same name who failed as an investor. Joanna Boyce's application to her art training not only tells us of her assiduousness but is no doubt indicative of the supportive attitudes of both her brother, George Price Boyce, and future husband, Wells. She pursued every type of learning activity available at the time, aware of her own talents and potential, and the impediments that married life would impose on her professional ambitions as an artist. The following discussion, therefore, explores the experiences of these three young artists, in order to better understand the opportunities and limits contemporary art students faced in London around the middle of the nineteenth century.

FAMILIAL ENCOURAGEMENT, PRIVATE TUITION, AUTODIDACTICISM AND INDEPENDENT STUDY

The Boyce family gave artistic encouragement to their children. George John Boyce, for example, took his daughter Joanna Boyce to lectures and exhibitions. He also provided access to networks of important friends for artistic introductions and knowledge. Spencer Hall (1805–75), the librarian at the Athenaeum Club from 1853, displayed his ‘kindly interest and desire to open his young friends’ minds to Art and Knowledge’ in his letters to the Boyce siblings.