The Plastic Club: Advancing Women Artists for 125 Years

Violet Oakley designed the poster for the Plastic Club Special Exhibition of the Work of Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Violet Oakley, held February 3–16, 1902.
Collection of Patricia Likos Ricci

In 1898 The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America noted an unusual development in Pennsylvania. “There are in America many clubs for the furtherance of art interests — painters’ clubs, sculptors’ clubs, illustrators’ clubs — from which women are excluded. Philadelphia possesses an art club that excludes men. The Plastic Club, formed in the spring of 1897, has on its list of one hundred and twenty-five members all the women artists of any prominence in the Quaker City.”

Until the end of the 19th century, the belief that biological differences corresponded to innate differences in the abilities of men and women justified their relegation to “separate spheres.” Women’s natural capacity for childrearing determined that their domain was the home, while men’s realm was the considerably larger sphere of the world outside of the home. Because participation in virtually all of the professions was determined by gender rather than individual ability, women’s access to higher education was restricted. If a woman was naturally inclined toward the fine arts, she could draw and paint within the home, but regardless of the quality of her work, she would be defined as a hobbyist or an amateur. An exception was made for the well-trained daughters of established artists who were entitled to professional status as a birthright and a courtesy to their fathers.

Educating Women Artists

The professionalization of women artists evolved gradually by extending the female domain into schools and clubs in the second half of the 19th century. In 1848 Sarah Worthington Peter founded the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art & Design) by arguing that the burgeoning design industries were “suitable” employment for women with the need or desire to support themselves.

Amid controversy, women students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts were permitted by 1879 to draw from nude female models, as documented in this engraving by Alice Barber Stephens for Scribner’s Monthly.
From Scribner’s Monthly, September 1879

The School of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), established in Philadelphia in 1805, gradually expanded access to training for women after the Civil War, but it was only in 1876 that they were admitted as full-time students. Nevertheless, classes were segregated by gender, and the propriety of genteel women drawing from nude models in the life class, a standard part of the fine arts curriculum, was an ongoing source of controversy. Eventually women were permitted to draw from female models, a newsworthy innovation in the PAFA curriculum that was illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens for “The Arts Schools of Philadelphia” in Scribner’s Monthly in 1879.

Art Clubs for Men

Meanwhile men were establishing clubs to further their professional networks, to exchange ideas, and to enjoy the pleasures of camaraderie outside of work and home. The Sketch Club of Philadelphia, organized by the male students at PAFA in 1860, was the first art club in the nation. When the PAFA instructors Thomas Eakins and Thomas Anschutz and other prominent artists such as Thomas Moran and Joseph Pennell joined the Sketch Club, membership had the status of a professional credential. The Sketch Club soon became a lively men’s club of artistic activity with exhibitions, lectures, workshops and social events.

In 1887 the Art Club was formed to extend club membership beyond painters and sculptors to architects, musicians, patrons of the arts and other members of the cultural elite. The affluent Art Club hired architect Frank Miles Day to design their Venetian Gothic–style clubhouse on Broad and Chancellor streets in 1890 (demolished 1975). Although only men were eligible for membership, women were permitted to attend the opening receptions of the exhibitions. The Art Club tallied attendance at these events in three categories: “Members,” “Ladies,” and “Ladies accompanied by a Gentlemen.” According to their statistics, more of the ladies who attended were unaccompanied by gentlemen; apparently, these ladies did not require an escort to view an art exhibition.

Another form of association was the informal Charcoal Club, a gathering of kindred spirits seeking a new direction in art who met in the studio of the painter Robert Henri after he began teaching at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women in 1892. The Charcoal Club was the catalyst for Henri and the painters John Sloan, George Luks, William Glackens and Everett Shinn, who were then working as illustrator-journalists for the Philadelphia newspapers, to create the urban realist movement known as the Ashcan School.

Painter and engraver Emily Sartain saw the necessity for burgeoning female artists to be part of a professional association. As women were excluded from male art clubs in that era, Sartain called for a planning session in 1897, which led to the foundation of the Plastic Club.
From A Woman of the Century (Charles Wells Moulton, 1893)

An Art Club for Women

Since social norms dictated that women live within the protective cocoon of their families and practice their art at home, they lacked the opportunities to mature into professional artists. Laura R. Prieto has noted that “even the rental of a studio seemed to violate the emerging dictates of domesticity for middle-class women.” Emily Sartain (1841–1927), principal of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, had hired Henri and other progressive male artists to update the curriculum, but she concluded that her students’ careers would be thwarted without the benefits of belonging to a professional art association. As the daughter of the printmaker and publisher John Sartain, a pillar of the Philadelphia art world, and the sister of painter Will Sartain, Emily was recognized as an artist in her own right; yet she was still barred from membership in Philadelphia’s art clubs because she was a woman.

Nevertheless, there were clubs for women but not specifically for artists. The great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin, Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, and suffragist Eliza Sproat Turner, both organizers of the Women’s Pavilion at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, inaugurated a new approach to promoting women’s rights through female associations. Joined by Sarah Fraley Hallowell, editor of the Centennial’s New Century for Women newspaper, they founded one of the first women’s clubs in the United States in 1877. The purpose of the New Century Club was “to create an organized centre of thought and action among women, for the protection of their interests and the promotion of science, literature and art.” It was also an incubator of women’s suffrage and social reform.

By 1891 the New Century Club had amassed funds to hire Minerva Parker Nichols (1862–1949), the first woman architect in the United States with an independent practice, to design the elegant New Century mansion (demolished 1973) on the corner of 12th and Sansom streets. “Although the New Century Club did not explicitly address the concerns of professional women,” Kirsten Swinth writes, “it was a crucible for a rising female professionalism.” For Emily Sartain, who had been a founding member, it was a model for an art club for women.

Blanche Dillaye, art educator and prominent figure of the etching revival movement at the turn of the 20th century, was the first president of the Plastic Club.
From A Woman of the Century (Charles Wells Moulton, 1893)

The Plastic Club Begins

In March 1897 Emily Sartain took the decisive step and announced a planning session for women interested in forming an art club. The response was overwhelming. Fifty-seven women showed up at the meeting held at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. “Nearly all of our most successful professional workers are represented in the initial clientele,” the Evening Bulletin reported on May 10 of that year. Educated in Philadelphia art institutions and Parisian ateliers and now teachers themselves, these renowned women were a magnet for aspiring women artists. The mezzotint engraver Sartain was an administrator; the illustrator Alice Barber Stephens (1858–1932) was an instructor at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women; portraitist Cecilia Beaux (1855– 1942) was the first woman to teach at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; and etcher Blanche Dillaye (1851–1931) taught art at the Ogontz School for Young Ladies. Taking on the role of mentoring the rising generation of women artists was an extension of their positions as art educators. They planned to provide a life drawing class and workshops and assemble a library with exhibition catalogues and art magazines so that members could remain au courant with international trends in art.

In the founding years of the club, identification with Paris was conspicuous. Dillaye, whose paternal grandfather was French, was elected club president. She is credited with choosing the club’s distinctive name, which may have been suggested by the French term arts plastiques. In English, “plastic” implied a malleable medium, a work in progress, that aptly conveyed the current social status of women artists. During the Parisian craze for Japonisme, the club held the first exhibitions of Ukioy-e woodblock prints (1898) and kakemonos, hanging scrolls (1899), in Philadelphia. The Japanese aesthetic appealed to American artists and designers who like Plastic Club member Wuanita Smith (1866–1959) made “white-line” woodcuts inspired by Ukioy-e prints.

The club’s motto was an inspiring verse from L’Art by the French poet Théophile Gautier, as translated by the English poet Henry Austin Dobson in 1895:

All passes. Art alone
Enduring stays to us:
The Bust outlasts the throne,
The coin, Tiberius.

Botanical artist Elisabeth Moore Hallowell (1861–1910) designed the club’s seal and bookplate, which inscribed the motto on a shield surrounded by bees symbolizing cooperative effort. Like worker bees who are all female but labor for the benefit of the hive, the founders’ mission was “to promote a wider knowledge of art and to advance its interest by means of exhibitions and social intercourse among artists.” By not referring specifically to women in the mission statement, the members may have made a strategic decision to garner the widest possible support of the public.

The Plastic Club’s insignia was created by member Elisabeth Moore Hallowell, a botanical artist and illustrator.
Courtesy of the Plastic Club

The opportunity to exhibit was one of the main advantages of membership but admission to the club was not automatic. To maintain professional standards, the woman artist had to present three examples of her work in any medium and be recommended by two members of the club. Two members’ exhibitions were held annually, one for work in black-and-white media and the other for color media, in the club’s rented gallery at 10 South 18th Street.

To publicize their exhibitions and activities, the club organized a Committee on Design, which became a way to familiarize the public with the idea of the professional woman artist while showcasing the graphic design talents of the members. For the winter exhibition brochure of 1899, Bertha Corson Day portrayed an elegantly dressed Renaissance calligrapher inscribing a manuscript, as if to remind viewers of women’s long but forgotten history. For the fall exhibition that year, Cornelia Greenough brought the image of the female artist up to date with a contemporary woman in a plaid smock painting at an easel in her studio.

Invitations were also extended for one-person and group exhibitions by accomplished artists. Founding member Alice Barber Stephens had a solo exhibition of her paintings and illustrations in 1898. A group show of the illustrators Jessie Willcox Smith (1863–1935) and Elizabeth Shippen Green (1871–1954) and stained-glass designer and muralist Violet Oakley (1874–1961) launched their storied careers in 1902. Oakley designed the poster for the exhibition that alluded to the Red Rose Estate in Villanova, where the women would soon live and work together. Eva Watson and Mathilde Weil, members of Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession, had solo exhibitions at the Plastic Club. The Crystal Globe, an example of Weil’s pictorialist approach to photography, was reproduced in Cosmopolitan’s May 1907 issue.

A remarkable number of early-20th-century Plastic Club members — the illustrators Elenore Plaisted Abbott and Sarah Stilwell Weber, the painters Alice Kent Stoddard and Fern Coppedge, the sculptors Katherine Cohen and Beatrice Fenton, the mural painters Margaretta S. Hinchman and Marianne Sloan, and the stained-glass designer Paula Himmelsbach, to name only a few — became successful professional artists in their fields.

“The Red Roses,” Elizabeth Shippen Green, Violet Oakley and Jessie Willcox Smith are seated holding roses while Henrietta Cozens stands above them with a watering can. In the background is the poster designed by Oakley for the Plastic Club exhibition featuring the works of Green, Smith and Oakley. The photo was taken in their studio on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, circa 1901, before their move to the Red Rose Estate in Villanova.
Violet Oakley Papers, 1841-1981, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

To demonstrate the women’s commitment to gender equality, men were also invited to participate in the Plastic Club’s programs. William Glackens, Maxfield Parrish and Henry McCarter exhibited together as “Three Philadelphia Illustrators” in 1900. In the following years, the American Impressionist William Merritt Chase, the famous illustrator and teacher Howard Pyle, the architect and Rose Valley founder Will Price, the British Arts and Crafts bookbinder T. J. Cobden Sanderson, and the Czech Art Nouveau designer Alphonse Mucha accepted invitations to exhibit and lecture at the Plastic Club.

The Second Annual Report of 1900 gave a frank assessment of the first two years: “We had prejudices to meet and overcome, we had the belittling prejudice against women’s art clubs, and we had to justify that. . . . [But by persevering] we have established ourselves as an art club, as one quoted, recognized, and respected not only in our own city but in other great cities. We have shown that there was room for us, that we were needed, that from us might emanate a new art interest . . . that adds to and aids the art in Philadelphia.”

Postcard-sized prints, such as this one of Philadelphia City Hall from a 1903 original by Paula Himmelsbach, were sold as part of the Plastic Club’s campaign to raise funds for a new building.
Courtesy of the Plastic Club

A Room of Their Own

As the reputation of the Plastic Club grew, its membership increased and in 1905 the club rented a larger facility nearby at 43 South 18th Street until they could afford to purchase their own building. Their fundraising campaign consisted of sales of artwork, card parties, lectures, concerts and theatrical performances. Paula Himmelbach’s impressionistic Philadelphia City Hall was one of the postcard-sized original works of art of local landmarks sold for the building fund in 1903. The good will the women had cultivated with their male colleagues was returned when the men donated their work to the building fund’s art auction.

By 1909 the Plastic Club was able to purchase two brick rowhouses, circa 1825, on the pedestrian lane of South Camac Street, a few doors from where the Sketch Club had moved seven years earlier. Was the location a coincidence or an expression of the commitment to historic preservation by Plastic Club president Sarah Patterson Mitchell, a member of the Colonial Dames of Pennsylvania? She oversaw architect William Woodburn Potter (1875–1964) in his renovation of the houses into a single unit at No. 247 that preserved the buildings’ original façades.

The club now had a spacious gallery and studio on the second floor, reception and committee rooms on the first floor, a kitchen in the basement, and a garden behind the building. In addition to much-needed space, the new headquarters conferred prestige and permanence on the Plastic Club. In two years, the membership rose to 260 with nonresident members from 13 states and five countries: Canada, England, France, Italy and Japan.

Bohemian Women

One of the club’s goals was to provide a social life for professional women outside of the home. Although the club endeavored to institute the standard practices of the men’s art clubs, they maintained the genteel woman’s ritual of the social “tea.” “The civilized custom of serving tea at openings was regularly observed at the club, as was the practice of having fellow members act as hostesses,” writes Helen Goodman. “The latter custom suggests that members could, and did, count upon one another for moral as well as artistic support.”

Plastic Club members donned costumes related to the theme “House-Boat on the Styx” for the 1909 Rabbit event.
Plastic Club Records (Collection 3106), Historical Society of Pennsylvania

The Wednesday luncheon was popular and became a tradition. Members also entertained each other by posing in living tableaux of masterpieces and performing in original skits and plays. They unleashed their creative energies at an annual costume ball known as the “Rabbit,” a pun on Welsh Rarebit, which was served at the first banquet. To kick off the new year, the women transformed the club rooms and themselves into all of the male and female characters on a theme from literature or history, such as “Alice in Wonderland,” “Twelfth-Night Party,” “Visions of Egypt,” “Montparnasse— The Night of the Beaux-Arts Ball,” “Bull Fight,” “Rabbits on Safari,” and “Houseboat on the Styx.” These zany and raucous gatherings caught the attention of The Philadelphia Inquirer, which described the Plastic Club as a “bohemian organization of well-known women” in 1912.

The Civic Mission

The two-fold mission of the Plastic Club, to advance women artists while promoting the arts in general, was pursued throughout their history. The club joined forces with other advocacy groups, sending representatives to the Fine Arts Federation of Philadelphia and the American Federation of Arts in Washington, D.C. Individual members applied the organizational skills they learned as Plastic Club members to establish new arts organizations in Philadelphia such as the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters (1901), the Philadelphia Art Alliance (1915), the Philadelphia Society of Etchers (1927), and the Color Print Society (1939).

When the nation was in crisis, the Plastic Club responded with service to the community. During World War I, the members designed Liberty Bond posters and contributed funds to the families of deployed servicemen. They endowed a hospital bed for a wounded soldier in France. During World War II, they participated in the USO, held art classes for soldiers, and sketched their portraits. In the 1930s, they sponsored Rotary Club exhibitions and sent group shows to Atlantic City Art Center, Cape May Beach Theater and Playhouse, LaSalle University, and Drexel University. Each Christmas they made donations of gifts to the Children’s Aid Society and organized a Christmas Arts and Crafts Fair for the neighborhood.

The Plastic Club remained committed to historic preservation. During the Sesquicentennial Celebration of 1926, the club and its neighbors had restored South Camac Street to a semblance of its colonial appearance with herringbone brick sidewalks, hitching posts and lampposts along its unique wood-block paved lane. In 1957 the club supported the campaign to preserve Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest residential street in the Old City, from being destroyed by urban development. In 1962, in recognition of its historic significance, the Plastic Club’s building was placed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.

A Pennsylvania Historical Marker for the Plastic Club, dedicated in 2022, stands in front of the club building at 247 South Camac Street, Philadelphia.
Photo, Patricia Likos Ricci

Changing with the Times

The Plastic Club persevered through two world wars and the Great Depression, only to face new challenges in the mid-20th century. By the time the club marked its 75th anniversary in 1972, membership was in decline. Fortunately, loyalty to the Plastic Club was a legacy passed down from the older members to their younger female relatives, many of whom became members themselves, and were determined to keep the club running.

But as the long struggle to break down the “separate spheres” finally succeeded, women had less need for advocacy organizations like the Plastic Club. The wisdom of the founders, who had the foresight to make the promotion of art in society an essential part of the club’s mission, provided a solution. In 1991 the club began admitting men as full members, entitled to participate in the exhibitions, programs and administration of the organization. The men’s interest in joining what was originally a women’s organization is a measure of the club’s realization of its original goal to unite the “separate spheres” of men and women into one art world.

In the 21st century, the leadership of the Plastic Club continued to respond to changing social conditions with creative solutions. Through social media, the club has reached a younger generation and attracted a national audience. During the COVID-19 shutdown, when museums and galleries were forced to close their doors, the club’s website kept the art community engaged with online exhibitions, lectures and films about art and increased the membership to 400.

Making History

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Plastic Club was evolving a “New Woman,” an alternative to the sheltered traditional woman excluded from participation in the cultural and political life of the community. By giving women opportunities to lead, to organize, to achieve, and to express themselves, the club nurtured generations of professional artists whose skills contributed to other organizations.

In recognition of its achievement of equality for American women artists, the Plastic Club received a Pennsylvania Historical Marker from the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission in 2020. The commission’s chair, Nancy Moses, stated, “Pennsylvania is proud of its many celebrated women artists. Now this official historical marker will tell the Plastic Club’s story long into the future.”

Today, the Plastic Club is the oldest art club for women in continuous operation in the United States. Who could have predicted it? “An art club that is destined to become famous has been formed very recently in Philadelphia,” Harper’s Bazaar reported in 1897. How right they were. In 2022 the Plastic Club celebrated 125 years of advancing women and the arts.

Further Reading

Croly, Jane Cunningham. The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America. New York: Henry G. Allen., 1898. / Goodman, Helen. “The Plastic Club.” Arts Magazine 59 (March 1985): 100-103. / Kyriakodis, Harry. “Little Clubs on a Wooden Street.” Hidden City (website), March 7, 2014. / Marley, Anna. Women in Motion: 150 Years of Women’s Artistic Networks at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (exhibition catalog). Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2022. / May, Jill P., and Robert E. May. Howard Pyle: Imagining an American School of Art. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011. / Prieto, Laura R. At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. / Ricci, Patricia Likos. A Grand Vision: Violet Oakley and the American Renaissance (exhibition catalog). Philadelphia: Woodmere Art Museum, 2018. / Swinth, Kirsten. Painting Professionals: Women Artists and the Development of Modern American Art, 1870-1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

To learn more about the Plastic Club, past and present, visit their website, plasticclub.org. The Plastic Club archives are preserved at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (Plastic Club Records: 1888–2007, Collection 3106) and the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington D.C. (Plastic Club Records, 1897–1972).

Patricia Likos Ricci, Ph.D., is distinguished professor of the history of art in the Department of Art and Design at Elizabethtown College. A leading authority on muralist Violet Oakley, Ricci studies Pennsylvania art and architecture of the American Renaissance era. Her previous article for Pennsylvania Heritage, “To Form a More Perfect Union: Violet Oakley’s Murals in the Pennsylvania Senate Chamber,” appeared in the Fall 2019 edition.

The author wishes to thank the following members of the Plastic Club for their assistance in preparing this article: Susan Ploeg, president; Cynthia Arkin, vice president; Jane Wilkie, treasurer; Roberta Gross, exhibition chair; Alan J. Klawans, historic committee; Michael Guinn, membership, building management and archives; and Alice Meyer-Wallace, member.