At Large  September 2, 2025  Amy Funderburk

Jennifer Dasal’s New Book on The American Girls’ Club for Artists

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Detail of Frances Cranmer Greenman, Self Portrait, 1923.

Art historian Jennifer Dasal crafts a window into France’s "Beautiful Age” with her sophomore book, The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Époque Paris. With silky prose, Dasal weaves a detailed tapestry of Belle Epoque society (1871 to 1914), first describing “the lure of Paris” before focusing on The American Girls’ Club for Artists and those young women who once found safe, affordable accommodations within its walls. 

Courtesy Jennifer Dasal

Cover of The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Époque Paris, based on Anne Goldthwaite's painting of The Club grounds, 4 rue de Chevreuse, Paris, 1908.

In addition to studying with expat James McNeill Whistler, whose studio was behind The Club’s garden, budding creatives could seek instruction nearby from noteworthy artists including William-Adolphe Bouguereau and preeminent sculptor Auguste Rodin, along with a host of prestigious private art schoolsPaul Cezanne’s studio was located across the street.

Dasal shares with Art & Object that those who participated in Club life flocked to Paris to pursue their studies toward professionalization in the visual arts. She describes the prototypical American Girl, Anna Lester, as “definitely an upper-middle-class young woman from a family that was supportive of her educational goals and career wishes.” Yet, for these women to fulfill their dreams would have been “an affront to the white, middle- and upper-class” that nearly all of them represented. 

Faced with a choice between the expectation to be a “good woman” as a wife and mother, or being a “great artist,” some promising Club artists succumbed to the “Cult of Domesticity.” Dasal relates how American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens wept when he learned that one of his favorite former students was engaged to be married, “[…] saddened by what he viewed as an automatically wasted talent.”

Yale University Art Gallery.

Anne Goldthwaite, Portrait of Katherine S. Drier (1877-1952), 1915-1916. 

Since The Club was a single-gender residence, Dasal feels that it provided “a safe(r) refuge” for queer or lesbian women, especially given that “[a] handful of artists had long-term ‘intimate friendships’ or partnerships with other women.” Dasal reports that Paris was likely a more “tolerant” society for queer artists, since the city was also a famous haven for Black Americans.

Library of Congress.

Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, a cofounder of The Club. Undated photograph, Bain News Service.

As a Black woman, however, Meta Vaux Warrick (Fuller) was denied lodging at the Club upon her arrival but was mentored by Rodin after the sculptor immediately recognized her talent. “[S]he had flourished in Paris beyond her dreams not because of the Club but in spite of it,” writes Dasal, who makes the important distinction that the racism initially encountered by Warrick was from “American women at the American Girls’ Club in Paris.” The author has not yet identified any other minority artists who participated in Club life. 

Dasal considers Warrick’s career, which the artist continued after marriage and children, “an example of how much women could achieve during this era, and how much the social mores of the U.S. might hold them back. Women truly had more freedom in Europe.” 

Photo by Shannon Johnstone

Jennifer Dasal

Dasal thinks that Club members would be frustrated to see how little has changed in the last 110 years, but her favorite anecdote is about Anne Goldthwaite, who taught a young Stanley Kubrick at the Art Students League. “It is a great little example of how Anne’s generation helped to form the artistic visions of the next generation, and it’s fascinating to see that it was that newer generation who ushered in midcentury modernism in America—and made it the center of the art world.” 

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Jennifer Dasal is the creator and host of the ArtCurious podcast. Formerly a curator of modern and contemporary art with the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, she previously authored ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History.

About the Author

Amy Funderburk

Amy Funderburk is a professional artist and freelance arts writer based in Winston-Salem, NC, specializing in visionary works in which she explores the intersection of the physical with the more fluid, spiritual and emotional realms. She works out of the Sternberger Artists Center in Greensboro, NC, and maintains a blog, Drinking from the Well of Inspiration, to provide deeper insight into her creative process. Follow her on Youtube: @AmyFunderburkArtist and on Instagram: @AmyFunderburkArtist.

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