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How did the Victorian idea of "separate spheres" determine how women artists created their art? The Victorian period was an era of constantly shifting and contradicting ideologies concerning women, which extended over many areas of society and culture including politics and the media, the family and domestic field as well as the contemporary and traditional beliefs within the art institutions. The body of the belief systems about women and the feminine ideal that are present …

…ideologies of society and especially men, that the basis for viewing 19th century women as artists parallels the ideas concerned with femininity and their subsequent association with the domestic sphere. For this reason women's subject matter was limited to themes that were accessible within the home environment, but also considering the later constraints in the context of the institutions women's employment, subject matter and education was also limited by their exclusion from male dominated spheres.