Rebecca Fortnum: Les Praticiennes

This display of paintings and drawings by artist Rebecca Fortnum emerges from her ongoing interest in the women surrounding the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) in turn-of-the-century Paris.

Fortnum’s paintings depict sculptural works by fifteen women who were associated with Rodin’s studio, shining a light on these often-overlooked sculptors.

Fortnum conducted part of her research during her 2021-22 Henry Moore Institute Research Fellowship, which she spent searching for little-known portrait sculptures produced by women who worked in, or visited, Rodin’s Paris studio.

As they were not able to enter the École des Beaux-Arts until 1897, women aspiring to become professional artists often studied at a private academy before apprenticing with a ‘master’, and, for the most part, encountered prejudice as women working in a male-dominated profession.

Rodin devoted significant time to training women to sculpt, and sometimes went on to employ them in his studio as an assistant or  praticienne. As women determined to make art against the odds, each of the artists that Fortnum has selected to make work from has an extraordinary, and in many cases unpublished, life narrative.

Through the works in  Les Praticiennes, Fortnum seeks to shed light on this web of friendship, association and influence from all over the globe, including England, Scotland, France, Russia, Germany, America and Finland.