There is an article about Charleston in the new Biannually called 'Always the Bell Rings and the Baker Calls', which is a quote from Virginia Woolf (it's been SO often repeated in our household in recent months). Alas, Charleston is – like so many other arts organisations – in severe financial difficulties and has just launched an appeal, details here.

The new Biannually goes out today and we hope it will be a little beacon of enjoyment and civilised values during these crazy times. It is also going up on our website this week, a new departure for us but we felt that in the age of Zoom and Covid restrictions and generally difficulties we can't rely on hard copy on its own any more. But of course hard copy is sent free on request to anyone in the UK, North America or Europe and for £5 anywhere else. Also, if you have a colour printer you could easily print out from our website and staple it together. This photograph is used to illustrate a superb little short story by Madeline Linford. There is a website devoted to her work here.

The catalogue is on its way from the Prado and, without doubt, we shall be returning to this exhibition. For now, here is the last 'episode' of the week (next week we shall be putting up five images from the Persephone Biannually, which goes out on Monday). This is episode 9 'Shipwrecked Women' and here is what the (highly intelligent and subtle curator has to say):'The term náufragas (shipwrecked women) appears in the titles of two literary texts published in 1831 and 1909 respectively. The first is Las españolas náufragas (The Shipwrecked Spanish Women) by Segunda Martínez de Robles, and the second is a short story by Emilia Pardo Bazán that appeared in the magazine Blanco y Negro. Both texts centre on the marginalisation suffered by many women in the patriarchal culture of the nineteenth century. A lack of specialised training often prevented them from entering a profession and earning a living for themselves, or forced them into modest if not demeaning jobs. Some rebelled against these imposed constraints. In the particular field of art, wives and daughters of painters were on occasions given specific training, but the duties they performed in the ateliers were generally the subordinate tasks of an assistant, and their presence in spaces of male creativity was therefore habitual but invisible. Nor was there any public recognition of the silent work done by many other women in domestic surroundings, a production regarded by elitist art history as belonging to the minor field of handicrafts. The names of the women who made those pieces were thus lost as in a shipwreck.' To explore the exhibition further go to the Prado site here. This is F

lower Stall by María Luisa de la Riva y Callol de Muñoz 1885.

So just to be seen in the act of painting was something of which women had, once, in Spain at least, to be ashamed. Section 16 is called Ladies rather than Painters: 'C19th women artists projected a public image of themselves which largely contrasts with that of their predecessors. With only a few exceptions, they chose not to depict themselves in the act of painting or with the instruments of an activity, which might compromise their social status. This equated their images with those of established women writers with unquestioned reputations, such as Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda or Carolina Coronado, painted by Federico de Madrazo without any attributes to indicate their literary calling [!];  thus the painters Madame Anselma and Julia Alcayde preferred to be immortalised as "society ladies".  Lluïsa Vidal, unusually, made it clear that she wished to be shown as an artist, so breaking away from the archetype.' This is her 1899 Self Portrait. 

This Prado exhibition is absolutely fascinating! Today's 'episode' could well illustrate the book we publish tomorrow, The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins, although in the case of this novel's heroine it's the last sentences that appliy to her not the first. 'The National Exhibition of 1895 saw the triumph of a new sentimentalist sub-genre inspired by serialised fiction, that of prodigal daughters returning home to implore their fathers’ forgiveness after being seduced by a man. These fallen young women, usually from humble backgrounds, were redeemed through a theatrically tearful repentance. They were fleeing from a tragic destiny of abandonment or even death, the consequence of their rebelliousness in daring to question the role assigned to them by the patriarchal society. These images, like the texts which inspired them, were in fact educational warnings for the most wayward young women. In the following years, some works shown at the official exhibitions started to make open denunciations of the prostitution networks and the process of degradation to which their victims were subjected. An unflinching gaze at this problem of public order, which the authorities tried to hide but not eradicate, generally met with unanimous rejection from both the critics and the public. The only images that were tolerated were those which held a moralising message beneath their asperity, and these were the only ones acquired by the State, which thus legitimised their paternalist discourse.' Again, this is so well put. This is The Human Beast 1897 by Antonio Fillol Granell (1870 - 1930). What a great title. And look at the father!

Episode Three at the Prado is 'The Art of Indoctrination' and this is what the curator says: 'Some of the works shown in the official exhibitions were centred on a paternalist notion of the day that women needed men’s restraint to prevent them from being swept away by their uncontrollable emotions. Artists interpreted this supposed emotional nature as part of women’s charm but also as a sign of their weak character, an idea they represented in light-hearted images with titles like Pride, Laziness or Thirst for Vengeance, all clearly critical beneath their inconsequential appearance. The representation of madness or witchcraft was used to explore the same concept, associating woman with states of mental imbalance or some inexplicable connection with the realm of the occult and the irrational. However, other artists preferred to show them enjoying themselves in recreational settings, without any moralising reflection attached to the images, and a few openly denounced the unfavourable position in which the patriarchal institutions had unjustly placed women.' This is very well put and the parallel with reading fiction of the period is important: we can interpret from the vantage point of today's moral values but we can't change the past. The feminism of today is in the understanding of the past. That is why every single Persephone book is feminist, even if the contemporary reader might not have interpreted it thus. And that is why the Prado exhibition (but, to emphasise, we have not seen it and have not read the catalogue yet) seems to be a clever and subtle feminist statement. But it relies on the interpretative intelligence, of the spectator. This is by Baldomero Gili y Roig (1873-1926 ), a 1908 oil on canvas called Pride. 'In the last years of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, women were frequently depicted with certain attributes like the peacock in this painting, a symbol of vanity, that incarnated the defects regarded as specific to their gender. Pride is an extraordinary example of the pictorial expression of the so-called "female character", a reduction of woman’s essence to an archetype that was paradoxically brought about through a discourse of gallantry' (Prado curator again). The complexity of this painting would make an excellent accompaniment to a reading of Madame Solario (set in 1906). In fact the woman in Pride could be Madame Solario, with all her complexity.

A very very interesting show has just opened at the Prado, how we wish we could get to it. (A weekend away! A hotel breakfast! A delicate little lunch of fish and something! An art gallery! Cobbled streets! Will it ever happen again...). The show, called Uninvited Guests, Episodes on Women, Ideology and the Visual Arts in Spain (1833-1931) has already caused controversy (according to the Guardian here) but it seems that they are not doing something very different from us – linking feminism, domesticity and realism ie. how life really was. Rather than trying to rewrite history. This is such a tricky issue and of course some people don't get it. Anyway, we need time to explore what the Prado has actually done by getting hold of the catalogue but on the Post this week we can make a start. The exhibition is rather cleverly divided into seventeen 'episodes' or sections and here, for example, is what the curator has to say about Section 13 Lady Copyists: "For much of the 19th century, women’s artistic activity consisted essentially of copying the works of the old masters. Regarded at first as an appropriately decorous activity for a lady, it also helped to alleviate the restriction of being barred from an academic training, and it eventually became a pursuit with lucrative possibilities that led to calls for professional status. Women thus showed their replicas at the public exhibitions, and it became common to see them copying works in museums, although it was to be some time before they went unaccompanied. When they signed the register at the Museo del Prado, most of them added the word copianta after their names. This is a feminised version of copiante, or copyist, showing their desire for professional recognition. Only a few referred to themselves as ‘painters’ or ‘artists’." This is The Spinners (an 1872 copy of Velázquez) by Madame Anselma (Alejandrina Gessler de Lacroix).