Women Writing Art History in the Nineteenth Century: Looking Like a Woman

[...]arguably, as a field, we do not yet have a firm grasp of the historical genealogies of art history and art criticism in Victorian Britain and neither have we fully theorized these genres and their complex inter-relationships. [...]conflation between categories may obscure our capacity to undertake the needed study of the origins and formation of these disciplines and genres in Great Britain. Fraser defends her choice to focus only on women writers on the grounds that it enables her to find patterns formerly occluded, but in order for us to grasp more fully what was understood as art history-how this field of knowledge and professional practice emerged over the course of the nineteenth century-we will need to look at both male and female writers; the systems of publication, dissemination, and reception in which they operated; the history of ideas with which they engaged; the international networks within which these actors and concepts circulated; and the context formed by the publishing industry and educational practices and institutions, as well as art museums, exhibitions, and the commercial marketplace.