China painting

DEFINITION

A handicraft activity popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the decoration of chinaware and provided a creative outlet for women, who, in that period, had little encouragement for their art talents. China paint was applied with special brushes on white porcelain, and then was fired in a kiln. China Painting was not only a popular hobby diversion for females of that era but was also a source of income because of the public demand for hand-painted porcelain. This interest stemmed from the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati, where a group of female students organized in 1874 an exhibition of exquisitely over-glazed hand-painted china pieces for the Cincinnati Room of the Women's Pavilion at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Nineteenth century women artists who did China Painting include Cecilia Beaux, Celia Thaxter, Margaret Overbeck, Margaret Cantwell and Ellsworth Woodward. Judy Chicago greatly expanded the creative potential of China Painting in the late 20th Century. Sources: Alice A. Carter, "Cecilia Beaux, A Modern Painter in the Gilded Age", p. 63; Ralph Meyer, "A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques". AskART biographies