The "triumph of perception and taste": Women, Exhibition Culture, and Henry James

Henry James was a critic aware of the importance of taste and fashionability in London and Paris during the late nineteenth century, and his reviews attest to exhibition venues as important sites for modern women. Women featured in his reviews as spectators, sitters, and occasionally as artists. This article will consider this visual and textual interplay in James's reception of contemporary exhibitions but will also explore his reviews in the context of female participation in these cultural arenas as artists and critics.