Until the Slade School of Fine Art opened its doors in 1871 to both female and male students on almost equal terms, women's access to public art education had been highly limited, and strongly fought for. While the Slade still required the male life model to be lightly draped for female students, the Royal Academy Schools excluded women entirely until 1860, and continued to bar them from life classes until 1893.

The Government School of Design and the Royal Female School of Art, while admitting women, focused on training students in vocational design, with those interested in careers as professional artists still unable to access the life room.

The removal of this final educational barrier for women art students was reflected in female students regularly outnumbering men at the Slade and claiming a significant proportion of the scholarships and annual prizes – a valued and highly sought-after form of recognition. However, the barriers women still faced upon leaving the School would impact their careers, retention of their work in public collections and their place in historical records.

Female Figure Standing with an Artist Painting in the Background

Presumption of women's amateur status, lack of creativity and intellect and lack of value; inequality and exclusion from exhibiting opportunities; societal limits imposing surname changes and restrictions on women working after marriage have created a legacy of women's work remaining hidden. Curator Tabitha Barber, in her catalogue essay for the recent Tate exhibition, 'Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920', observes that women's erasure from art history began in the twentieth century with the introduction of the subject as a discipline, and that the question of how best to integrate their stories now remains complex.

From the opening of the Slade in 1871 until the prize system changed in 1966, the prize categories reflected key components of the curriculum: Figure Drawing, Head Drawing, Drawing of Drapery, Head Painting, Painting from Life and the prestigious Summer Composition prize. Between 1871 and 1966, women received 47% and 41% of first prizes for Figure Painting and Summer Composition respectively. This article brings together eight women who won multiple Slade prizes in the early twentieth century, including the Summer Composition and Life Painting prizes, but whose lives and work remain little known.

In 1910, Elsie McNaught (1886–1987) won both joint first prize for Figure Painting, for her seated female figure, and the Summer Composition prize.

A Frieze of Figures Standing in a Landscape (1910) demonstrates the consolidation of key aspects of the curriculum. Art historian Mengting Yu has observed that this painting, together with Ruth Humphries' prize-winning work of 1913 (illustrated later), demonstrates 'a shift away from the Slade's tradition of student history paintings toward aestheticism (form) and intellect (content)', both students drawing on a number of artistic influences while adhering to the academic expectations of the School.

McNaught was one of six Slade students, including her contemporary and friend Dora Carrington (1893–1932), who created murals for Bishop Creighton House, Fulham, in 1911. In 1918, she created memorial murals to the East End reformer Samuel Barnett on either side of the entrance hall of the Whitechapel Art Gallery. McNaught exhibited with the New English Art Club (NEAC) from 1910 to 1920, and worked as a designer for textile manufacturer Tootal, but little else is known. Her work is held by UCL Art Museum, Central St Martins, the University of Leeds and the V&A.

In 1913, Ruth Humphries (1891–1962) won the Summer Composition prize with A Group of Figures Standing in a Landscape (1913). The set subject was 'The Seven Ages of Man' and UCL Union Magazine records that the work was commended for its design and use of colour.

Joint second prize was shared between Gilbert Spencer, Thomas Tennant Baxtor, Nora Cundell and Dorothy Meyer, who also won joint first prize for Head Painting with Margaret Dalgliesh in 1912, with her Portrait of a Girl.

The same year, Humphries shared joint first prize for both Figure Painting and Painting from the Cast with Carrington, joint first for Head Painting with Colin Gill and second prize for Figure Drawing.

Humphries exhibited with the NEAC and is recorded among the circle of Carrington, Augustus John and Virginia Woolf. While some works under her married name (Selby-Bigge) have appeared in private auctions, A Group of Figures is the only known work in a public collection, with none of her other prize-winning works retained by the School.

In 1915, the last Summer Composition prize until after the war was won by Violet Hamilton Bradshaw (1890–1964) for her contemporary interpretation of the biblical subject The Flight into Egypt, which depicts the Holy Family's escape from Herod's intent to kill the infant Jesus. Bradshaw exhibited with the Chenil Galleries, Goupil Gallery and the NEAC, and her works are held by UCL Art Museum, Manchester Art Gallery and the National Trust, but little else is known.

In 1918, the first prize for Life Painting was awarded jointly to three female students: Alice Joyce Smith, Dorothy Coke and Ida Knox. Alice Joyce Smith, known as Joyce Smith (1896–1974), swept the prizes in 1918, winning joint first for Painting from Life (with Coke and Knox) and Drawing of Drapery (with Coke), first for Figure Drawing and joint first for Head Painting with Rita Nahabedian.

It is often assumed that female Slade students were from middle-class backgrounds, however records show that Smith's father worked as a Scavenging Superintendent and, following his death, her mother as a Lavatory Attendant. Born in Hackney, Smith left school in 1911 with a scholarship for the Bloomsbury Trade School, moving in 1913 to Messrs. Val d'Estrange, a photography studio in Sloane Street. Enrolling at the Slade the following year, Smith also had her first miniature accepted to the Royal Academy's Annual Exhibition and between 1915 and 1922 six of her works, including an oil painting, were shown.

Smith received a travelling art scholarship in 1919 and was runner-up in the Prix de Rome in 1922 for Winter.

An Associate Member of the Society of Women Artists, Smith exhibited with them in 1917, 1923, 1924 and 1925. She is also recorded as exhibiting with the Royal Society of Artists, Birmingham. Smith married Gwilym Jones in 1924, and is recorded in the 1939 register in Stroud, her occupation listed as 'unpaid domestic duties'.

Dorothy Coke (1897–1979) studied at the Slade from 1914 to 1918, winning numerous prizes, including joint first for her Female Figure Standing (1918).

In 1918 Coke was one of three women artists commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee, alongside Slade alumna Anna Airy and Flora Lion. Subsequently, the War Artists Advisory Committee commissioned her, with Evelyn Dunbar and Slade alumna Ethel Gabain, to record women on the home front during the Second World War.

1940, watercolour by Dorothy Josephine Coke (1897–1979)

Coke exhibited at the NEAC, where she was a member from 1919, the Grosvenor Gallery, the Royal Academy, the Society of Women Artists and the Royal Watercolour Society, where she was elected an Associate in 1935 and a full member in 1943. In 1941, her work was included in the exhibition 'Britain at War' at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A memorial retrospective was held in Brighton in 1981 and an exhibition of her work at the Art Workers' Guild in 2014.

During the 1930s, Coke produced a series of wood engravings, ranging from biblical subjects to observations of the landscape around Sussex. She also worked in oil, but her main output was watercolour. Her colleague and friend, Norman Clark, recounts how nearly all her work began in small, dated sketchbooks and through these it is possible to trace her changing interests and ideas, as well as observe her attention to and mastery of line. From 1939 until retirement in 1967, Coke taught at the Brighton School of Art. The Imperial War Museum, Brighton and Hove Museums, Worthing Museum and Art Gallery and the Aldrich Collection at the University of Brighton hold her works.

The third of this prize-winning trio from 1918 is Ida Knox (1897–1993), whose Male Figure Seated was included in the Tate 'Now You See Us' exhibition. Knox won joint second prize for Painting from the Cast the following year. Research is ongoing into her life during and after the Slade.

Viewing Knox's work alongside Amy Nimr's first prize for Painting from Life in 1919 creates a wonderful connection, placing them in different places in the same life room.

Male Figure Seated on the Edge of a Stool

Nimr (1898–1974, married name Amy Smart) was an Egyptian of Syrian-French descent and, on leaving the Slade, exhibited in Paris and London and with the European Surrealists before moving to Cairo as a leading figure in the Art Et Liberté group. Maintaining a studio in Paris, and with her Cairo home providing a local meeting place, Nimr was key in facilitating the group's local and international cultural and intellectual exchange. Following the 1952 revolution, Nimr returned to Paris, where she remained, working until she died in 1974.

View of the Farm at Nashart, in the Fayoum, near Cairo, Egypt

Mabel Greenberg (1889–1933) was awarded joint second to Nimr's first prize for Life Painting in 1919. Born in Kings Norton, Greenberg studied at the Slade from 1918 to 1921, where she won multiple prizes, including first prize for Head Drawing in 1918 – for a distinctive line drawing of a young man – and joint first for Antique Drawing with Hilda M. Watkinson.

Greenberg exhibited at the NEAC, the Royal Society of Artists Birmingham, Redfern Gallery, and the Society of Women Artists, becoming an Associate of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1928 and a full member in 1930. Alongside her Slade contemporary Clara Klinghoffer (1900–1970) and Lena Pillico (1884–1947), Greenberg's work was shown in the 1923 and 1927 exhibitions of Jewish Art at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and, in 1932, her oil painting Summer Day was included in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. UCL Art Museum, the Laing Art Gallery and Birmingham Museums Trust hold her works. Her death, aged 43, was registered in 1933, in Chelsea.

Following highly successful Slade careers, these artists continued to practice, exhibit and teach, but their histories, influence and legacies remain little known. Ongoing research continues to reveal their lives, art practices and the context and networks within which they worked. Selecting which women to include in this piece was a challenge – there are many, many more.

Helen Downes, art historian and researcher

This content was supported by Jerwood Foundation