Victorian Women Muralists

A recent zoom lecture from the Morse Museum in Winter Park, Florida, on Victorian Women Muralists, showed the work of nine women painters including Mary Cassatt. She was one of several women who painted a mural, Modern Women, for the Women’s Building at the Columbian Exposition. The mural, 14 feet x 58 feet, was painted in a greenhouse she turned into a studio with an improvised movable scaffold (easier to maneuver wearing Victorian garb than on a ladder) and then installed it on site. Other women muralists painted the ceiling and walls of Edinburgh Catholic Apostolic Church, other churches, and a 37-foot x 57-foot library ceiling. Many of these artists were trained in interior decorating and illustrating narratives. ~ Dorothy Mikuska