Running away to paris: expatriate women artists of the 1900 generation, from Scotland and points south

Abstract

This article concerns women who crossed a frontier both literally, by travelling to Paris – the art centre of the world in about 1900 – and symbolically, by training to be artists in ways which were not open to earlier generations. Paris provided a cosmopolitan environment and the article includes references to women of several nationalities, but gives particular prominence to Scottish women artists as a doubly marginalised group. By considering both their relation to academic training and to the avant-garde, it seeks to explain the comparative obscurity of these first-generation artists and suggests that they often became professionals, but without making the breakthrough to fame.