18 July
LIBRARY
Sladey ladies
[private view card]
London: Bohn,
1838
London: Michael
Parkin Gallery, 1986
While Hamo
Thornycroft was a student at the Royal Academy and
reading Flaxman's lectures, the Slade School of Fine Art opened
(1871) and, unusually for its time, admitted women to study
there. On
this card Germaine Greer tells us that 'the intention was to
provide
a less conservative and dreary approach than the Royal Academy
schools' with life drawing classes. When I visited the Slade last
year they had this card on display with other material telling
the
story of the Slade's development. I had recently discovered the
card
in our own library and was highly amused by the title of the
exhibition and the hats worn by the women in the main photograph.
It
was produced by a private gallery for an exhibition in 1986 of
work
by women artists at the Slade, although many works are lost.
