This book is the first sustained study of a corpus of writings by women art critics active in nineteenth-century France that have all but "vanished" from the historical record. Written by scholars in art history and in literature, the essays employ a variety of interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies to study the women's reception of specific artworks and aesthetic movements in the nineteenth century, the intersections of aesthetics and politics in their essays, and their rhetorical strategies and literary styles.

List of Illustrations
Preface - Wendelin Guentner
Women Writing Art
Reappearing Acts
Introduction - Wendelin Guentner
The Ideology of the Two Spheres
The Education of Girls
The Menace of the Bas-Bleus
The Salon and Its Art Critics
The Golden Age of Art Criticism: Society, Economics, and Culture
Art Criticism as a Literary Genre: Denis Diderot
The Literary Craft of Art Criticism
Chapter 1 - Heather Belnap Jensen
"'C.W. . . . académicienne': Caroline Wuiet and the Emergence of the Woman Art Critic in Postrevolutionary France"
Wuiet and Authorial Voice
What a Woman Wants: Female Spectatorship
Chapter 2 - Heather Belnap Jensen
Amélie-Julie Candeille's Critical Enterprise and the Creation of "Girodet"
Epistolary Art Criticism in Women's Writings
Candeille as Corresponding Critic
Managing Girodet
Fashioning Girodet en publique
Chapter 3 - Véronique Chagnon-Burke
Women Art Critics during the July Monarchy (1830-1848)
Art Criticism and the Paris Salon
Women Art Critics and the Parisian Cultural World
Women as Spectators
Beyond Gender: Issues of Class and Education
Further Questions
Chapter 4 - Véronique Chagnon-Burke
"A Career True to Woman's Nature": Constructing the Woman Artist
in France's Midcentury Feminine Press
Women Artists: Class and Education
The Mission of Women Art Critics
The British Connection
Gender or Class?
The Gender of Genius and the Artistic Genres
Women Art Critics and the (Limited) Contours of an Artistic Vision
Chapter 5 - Wendelin Guentner
Claude Vignon's Salon de 1850-51: Dialogues of Art and Ideology
The Art Critic and Her Readers
Historical Context and Political Ideologies
Spiritual Ideologies
The Author behind the Critic
Chapter 6 - Wendelin Guentner
"Dieu! une plume de femme!": Mathilde Stevens's Impressions d'une femme au Salon de 1859
A Rhetoric of Sincerity
To Feel or to Think: That Is the Question
Playing Favorites: Critics, and Artists at the 1859 Salon
A Voice of Her Own
Chapter 7 - Wendelin Guentner
"Marc" de Montifaud: The "esprit critique" of an esprit fort
Envisioning History Painting
Genre Painting: History Writ Small
Portraits of Degeneration
The Subjective Landscape
Corot, Pagan Poet
Chapter 8 - Véronique Chagnon-Burke
"Tel père, telle fille": Judith Gautier, Artist, Writer, and Art Critic
Judith Gautier, Artist, and the French Art World
Judith Gautier, Author, and the Far East
Judith Gautier, Art Critic
Conclusion - Wendelin Guentner
The Ideology of the Two Spheres, Revisited
Vanishing Genre?
Vanishing Gender?
Final Act
Encores
Appendices:Biographical Sketches
Appendix 1 - Amélie-Julie Candeille - Heather Belnap Jensen
Appendix 2 - Judith Gautier - Véronique Chagnon-Burke
Appendix 3 - Marc de Montifaud - Wendelin Guentner
Appendix 4 - Mathilde Stevens - Wendelin Guentner
Appendix 5 - Claude Vignon - Wendelin Guentner
Appendix 6 - Caroline Wuiet - Heather Belnap Jensen
Appendix 7 - Biographical Intersections - Wendelin Guentner