‘Placed Under No Disqualification’: Women Artists in She-Town

For most of the period that this study day covers, Dundee was known as a women’s town. Thanks to the nature of the jute industry, more married women were in employment there than any other Scottish city – almost a quarter at one stage. The city was an important centre of the female trade union movement, the women’s suffrage movement and the First World War rent strikes. We might expect, therefore, that it would become an important centre for women artists as well.

This paper explores the role of women in the city’s rapidly developing art scene in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It looks at those artists who gained a national or international reputation, such as Jane Spindler and Anna Douglas, as well as those who worked without credit in the city’s growing commercial art business. It also explores the role women played as art teachers (and students) in Dundee, and their role in art societies in the city.