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Two Boundary-Busting Female Artists

Writer's picture: Andrea Emily StumpfAndrea Emily Stumpf

Updated: Feb 2

The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC just closed its very popular exhibit on Impressionism, which compared two Parisian art exhibits in 1874: the reputable Salon vs. the upstarts of the Société Anonyme. This was also when Sayyida Salme was in Germany, trying to find her footing as Emily Ruete. As she was facing her own tumultuous time in the mid-1870’s, Paris was transitioning out of its wartime and post-war convolutions – literally building a renaissance from rubble. When I refract her experiences against the contemporary art scene next door, a few things are striking, perhaps as signposts of the time.


First, the Société Anonyme was a direct response to the strictures of the Salon. Its small collection of artists was at odds with the establishment view of art. They took issue with what they considered arbitrary and biased judgments within closed circles based on insider standards. As often happens, the tighter the guardrails, the more the resistance. After a few too many rejections, these creatives needed an escape valve – and so, the Salon gave birth to the Société Anonyme.


In a similar way, Sayyida Salme slipped out of the Zanzibari Sultanate when she could no longer see her prospects within the established order. Her case is, of course, different, not least because she was on her own – there was no Zanzibari women’s movement to support her. But her willingness to cross borders and explore new ways took vision, audacity, and self-belief, which were also hallmarks of these emerging Impressionists.


An English speaker could take “Société Anonyme” to refer to an anonymous collective, but that would be mistaken – a faux ami or “false friend,” as it were. It was just the opposite: This group of contrarians sought recognition, not anonymity. The full name was Société anonyme coopérative des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs, in which société anonyme was nothing more than the French term for the corporate structure, like referring to them as the Corporation. But in this way, the label was actually quite fitting. Here in the days before Impressionism was a thing, when these artists were trying to move beyond labels, this non-descript moniker carried no baggage – in contrast to the Salon, which was all baggage – and left the door wide open for their unabashed creativity and individual expression.


Second, this quest for self-expression is, to me at least, most evident in the few women who positioned themselves as career artists, whether participating in the Salon or in the Société Anonyme. As such, the National Gallery exhibit led me to both Henriette Browne (1829-1901) and Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), who offer a fascinating play in contrasts. In the spirit of the exhibit, their juxtaposition reveals similarities as much as differences. Browne stayed a classical painter and found renown through the Salon, especially in the 1850’s and 60’s,[1] while Morisot held her own among the Impressionists, the only woman among the fifteen founding members of the Société Anonyme in 1873.[2] Browne had more fame in her lifetime, but Morisot is better remembered and prized for her innovation today.


Very different in style, Browne tended to the traditional look of detailed realism, while Morisot played with looser, spontaneous strokes that evoked “impressions.” Both, however, set themselves apart by exploring subject matter from the female gaze. They painted with an intimacy that gave their subjects nuance and sensitivity. And in their respective achievements, they led the way for female artists that followed, showing that women could make it in both the conventional and unconventional art worlds.


It is tempting to liken Morisot’s artistic pioneering to Sayyida Salme’s breakthrough authorship, but come to find out, it is actually Browne that seems to have had more in common with Sayyida Salme. Traveling to Turkey, Egypt, and Syria with her diplomat husband, she became known for her Oriental artwork, including, remarkably, two pieces she showed at the 1861 Salon from inside the Turkish harem in Constantinople. These and all her Oriental scenes were true to daily life. They featured domesticity, education, and religion, with images of women as active participants in their social settings, notably without the eroticism, sensationalism, and stereotypes that were so prevalent at the time. In that, Browne shared Sayyida Salme’s effort to dispel “misconceptions and distortions.” Both were ethnographers in their respective ways. As Sayyida Salme says:

Having been born and bred in the East, I am in a position to set down the unvarnished reflection of my Oriental experiences—of its high life and its low life—to speak of many peculiarities, and lift the veil from things that are always hidden from profane eyes. This, I hope, will constitute the main value of my book, and my object will have been fully gained if I have been able to contribute my share, and above all, if I have succeeded in removing many misconceptions and distortions current about the East. (Memoirs, Afterword, p. 229)

They also had more in common, namely a double name. Henriette Browne was in fact the artist pseudonym of Sophie de Bouteiller, apparently a branding choice she made to separate her professional and private lives, so as to maintain her social standing.[3] This was not the same degree of dual identity Sayyida Salme experienced when she became Emily Ruete, but it is interesting nonetheless that social codes and expectations created the conditions that led both women to take on split personalities. Also interesting for today: Where Sayyida Salme was essentially forced to create a second persona, and Sophie de Bouteiller chose hers, today’s society seems to insist on the opposite. The modern woman, myself included, has little room to make distinctions, as we seamlessly integrate work and home to a fault.


In this respect, husbands and children inevitably played a role as well. Berthe Morisot married the younger brother of the famous Édouard Manet and raised a daughter, which naturally took her time and attention. Henriette Browne also married, but had no children and thus also fewer constraints on her time and travel. Sayyida Salme, too, was somewhat freer as a widow, even if her three children kept her busy. I doubt she would have written her Memoiren manuscript had her husband Heinrich survived. To the contrary, he probably would have insisted that she “not work”:

In the past, whenever I had undertaken something here or there in the household simply to pass the time, or engaged with the children too much, I was sure to hear reproaches from my dear husband, who never liked to see me working. He was always saying: “Bibi, you are not supposed to work!” Or also: “Do not always carry the children on your arm, take a seat instead, we have enough people to take care of the children!” And the like. (Letters, pp. 72-73)

We also see traditional roles in her daughter Rosa, my direct ancestor, even though she took up painting in her younger years. Rosa learned from Max Rabes (1868-1944),[4] and several of her lovely Zanzibar paintings are shown in my book (Memoirs, pp. 54, 65, 151). But art was never a professional pursuit for her; she did the usual when she married and settled down to raise a family. I cannot complain, though, since I otherwise would not be here.


Rosa surely knew about Henriette Browne as a pioneering female figure in Oriental art. Is it possible that Sayyida Salme and Sophie de Bouteiller also knew of each other? If they had ever met, what a good conversation they could have had – about harems, Oriental exoticism, diplomacy and colonial powers, literary and artistic expression, and double names. But what I really wish is that history had overlapped – that both artists, Browne and Morisot, the realist and the impressionist, could have painted Sayyida Salme, each in her own way. That would have been a sight to see, those two views, to go along with so much of Sayyida Salme’s own duality! [5]


Let history surprise you; let her story inspire you – let her authentic voice speak to you!


(c) Andrea Emily Stumpf, January 31, 2025


* Photo credits: (left) Une visite (intérieur de harem), Constantinople, (Visit Inside a Harem, Constantinople), 1860, réduction shown by Sotheby’s; (right) Jour d’été (Summer’s Day) by Berthe Morisot, 1879, located in the National Gallery, London.


[1] While Browne fit well within established circles, she was nevertheless celebrated for her unconventional approach to Oriental depictions. Her prominence as a female artist was also unusual for the time, but harkens back to her mother, who did much to nurture her daughter's artistic interest and talent. The new Comtesse de Bouteiller had been a young widow with a son to raise before she remarried. She thus wanted to ensure sure her own daughter would always have the means to sustain herself.

[2] Morisot’s prolific output masks her tragically short life. She appears to have been a very determined young woman who, although not commercially successful, still outsold her more famous Impressionist contemporaries. She was well-positioned in high society and said to have great culture and charm, with ancestry on her mother's side that included the Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Her training in the arts was within the realm of the “gentle” accomplishments that were suitable for young ladies of her time. Fate dealt a severe blow when she died of pneumonia after contracting it from her daughter.

[3] I have read that the original Henriette Browne was Sophie de Bouteiller’s maternal grandmother.

[4] Max Rabes, now known as a German Impressionist, was just two years older than Rosa and based in Berlin during the time Rosa was learning to paint as part of a respectable upbringing. He earned a reputation as an Orientalist painter after repeated travels to North Africa and the Middle East. Judging by the Rabes landscapes we have in the family, he and Rosa must have had a close association, and he likely influenced her landscape paintings from the second trip to Zanzibar with her mother in 1888.

[5] Memoirs, p. ix.

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