Why Women Fail in Painting.

Hokitika Guardian, 1 August 1922, Page 4

Why Women Fail in Painting.

AND SUCCEED IN LITER ATI’RI-

|!\ \Y. L. Geoigc, the well-known Novelist). As a bird is known by its song, so is the success of a rising painter known by the fact that his works alone occupy a gallery lor a fortnight. Every successful painter I can think of has been honoured in this way, lint it is interesting to note that hardly ever is the work of a woman shown by itself.

It is true that such a tribute has been paid to "Lady Butler, to Mrs Liijira Knight, and to Mrs Stanhope Forbes, hut, all the same, London galleries every year devote* eighteen or nineteen exhibitions out of twenty to the work of men. It is therefore interesting to ask ourselves why women so seldom attain in painting the reputation they to-day easily achieve ill literature.

r suspect that in part the old tic' tion of feminine inferiority is here at wAirk. Painting is an art which requires long training. T do not mean that all the art schools in the world will make an artist where there is none, hut painting means study abroad, time and money for experiment.

Also it requires considerable apparatus, easel, canvas, paints. The gill who wants to paint needs a studio, or, at least, a favourably placed room, reserved for her. Until very recently parents have refused to their daughters these facilities, which they grant In their sons. As a painter woman has not had a chance. That is in part why she has succeeded so much lietter in the novel, why to-day writers such as Miss Sheila Nave-Smith, Miss G. li. Stern, and Miss Rebecca West enjoy such high reputation. A gild can write in her bedroom, on a chest of drawers, and all the capital involved is the cost oi ink and a pen. Rut to my mind there arc other reasons. Something deeper hides in the question: “Why do women tail in painting?” It does mean something that we. have had a Mrs Drowning and a Mrs George Eliot, hut no Mrs Rembrandt. Literature suits woman’s temperament better than painting, because it expresses easily, directly, completely, the individual feelings of a woman. This is obvious when we recall that a large proportion of the novels written by women fifty years ago were in the first person. That enabled the authoress to say, “I felt” and “My heart was broken.”

Painting is more austere; one’s emotions are not given such a good chance of coining out. Women have tended tb paint less than to write because nearly all seem to have an intense desire to express themselves. They confide more easily than men and confide even to their own sox. which men avoid, perhaps out of reserve, perhaps out oi prudence. We see this clearly in many feminine novels to-day. The authoresses develop large portions of their lives; they oxpuso themselves without any reserve, and, according to old-fashioned people, without any decency. For my part T do not object, considering as I do that reserve is the enemy of good literature, hut when 1 reflect on the work of women in painting I am convineed that ho re is tho roason \\li> women fail. Whether they will always fail is another question. Woman to-day is more intelligent than she was yesterday.- She lias closer codes of behaviour, she holds herself better in hand and so it mav well he that she will learn how to subject herself to the remote and limited expression which she can find in a tube of paint.