Even though the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts was founded in London in 1768 with the help of two women, no woman was ever enrolled to the Royal Academy Schools for the study of academic art until 1860-- and the two founding female members were scarcely referenced or formally recognized by the other founders ("Women Artists"). Laura Herford made history by being the first woman to be enrolled as a student to the Royal Academy Schools in 1860. The official public allowance for the admittance of women to the Royal Academy was not officially recognized until 1861, despite petitions for women to be accepted to the Royal Academy being submitted since the 1840s. Even though her career as an artist was short-lived due to her death in 1870, Laura Herford made history by being admitted to the Royal Academy Schools by signing her drawing applications with the vague initial, "L. Herford." It was assumed that the ambiguity of her signature helped mask her gender from the admissions tutors, but she was offered a position regardless based solely on the merit of her artistic rendering ("Laura Herford"). Published in 1848, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte directly addressed some of these long-standing issues of respecting women's' representation in the field of professional art by Bronte writing a female artist character named Helen Graham who challenged the cultural taboo of women making a profession out of art-- especially as a means to live independently (Bronte). Helen Graham had to use similar tricks to the real-life Laura Herford, such as misconstruing her name/gender and sending her works away to be sold for compensation through a third party. Although movements towards professional female artists being culturally acceptable didn't flourish until after the death of Anne Bronte in 1849, women like Laura Herford helped female artists alike get their foot in the door and begin to be recognized as equal-- changing the problematic threshold of conventional art culture as Bronte criticized throughout The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Works Cited

Bronte, Anne. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 1848. The COVE. https://studio.covecollective.org/anthologies/frankenstein-or-the-modern.... Accessed 29 Nov 2020.

"Laura Herford." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 May 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Herford. Accessed 29 Nov 2020.

"Women Artists." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Nov 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Herford. Accessed 29 Nov 2020.