Women Artists and Patrons

APAH Study Guide #2

Hatshepsut

• Commissioned Mortuary Temple• First recorded great female ruler

Theodora

• Wife and and empress of Justinian• Portrayed leading a procession and equal to

her husband (San Vitale, Ravenna)

Hildegarde of Bingen (artist)

• Illustrator of Illuminated manuscripts, composer of music, visionary, theologian, Benedictine abbess

Vision of Hildegarde of Bingen, 1150-1179

Isabella D’Este (patron)• MOST important female patron of the Renaissance – supported

painters like Titian, Raphael, DaVinci

Portrait by Titian 1534-1536

Sofonisba Anguissola (artist)

• Considered to be first Italian woman “art celebrity”

• Studied under Michelangelo

• Court painter to Phillip II of Spain

• Mannerist painter

Lucia, Minerva and Europa Anguissola Playing Chess (1555)

Caterina Van Hemessen (artist)

• Flemish artist• Painted FIRST known N. European self-portrait

by a woman

Artemisia Gentileschi (artist)* see Caravaggio

• Baroque painter and follower of Caravaggio

• Best known for her versions of Judith Slaying Holofernes.

Judith and her Maidservant 1613-1614

Marie de’Medici (patron)

• Commissioned Rubens to paint series of 21 HUGE paintings glorifying her!

• Wife of Henry IV, first of the Bourbon Kings

RUBENS, Arrival of Marie de Medici 1622-1625

Judith Leyster (artist)

• Dutch Baroque painter – successful portrait painter

• Influenced by Frans Hals (p. 301 in Gardner’s)

Self-portrait 1630

Rachel Ruysch (artist)

• Dutch Baroque artist• Known for her highly

detailed floral paintings

ca. 1700s

Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun (artist)

• Famous for her portraits of Marie Antoinette

• One of few women admitted to Royal Academy

Marie Antoinette, 1783

Adelaide Labille-Guiard (artist)

• Known for her portraits of French aristocrats

• One of the few women admitted to the Royal Academy

• Contemporary of LeBrun

Self-portrait with two pupils, 1785

Angelica Kauffmann

• Neoclassical painter

• Founding member of British Royal Academy of Arts

Self-portrait Hesitating Between the Arts of Music and Painting 1791

Edmonia Lewis (artist)

• Neoclassical sculptor• African-American

Forever Free, 1867

Julia Margaret Cameron (artist)

• Prominent portrait photographer in England

• Photos are usually slightly blurred for dramatic effect.

Call, I follow, I follow, let me die!, carbon print from copy negative, negative 1867,

Rosa Bonheur (artist)

• Most celebrated female artist of the 19th century!• Famous for her realistic paintings of animals

The Horse Fair 1852

Gertrude Kasebier (artist)

• American photographer• Famous for photos with

symbolic themes

* For similar themes of mother and child, look at Mary Cassatt

Blessed Art Thou Among Women, 1899

Berthe Morisot

• Impressionist painter

• Married to Manet’s brother and sometimes posed for Manet.

Mary Cassatt (artist)• American Impressionist

painter• Influenced by Degas and

Japanese woodblock prints • Known for her portraits of

mothers with children

Gertrude Stein (patron)

• Patron of Picasso, Matisse, and other avant-garde artists living in Paris during the early 1900’s and 1920’s

Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1905-1906

Hannah Hoch

• Dada artist• Known for her

photomontages (collages)

Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919-1920

Kathe Kollwitz

• German Expressionist

• Best known for depictions of grief/loss

• Printmaker (woodcut, etching, lithography)

Woman with dead child, 1903

Meret Oppenheim

• Surrealist• While having tea

with Picasso, Oppenheim ordered her tea with a “little more fur” since it had grown cold!

Object, 1936

Frida Kahlo

• Mexican portraitist (NOT surrealist)

• Known for her symbolic self-portraits

• Married to Diego Riviera (a muralist) see page 402

Self-portrait, 1940

Barbara Hepworth *see Henry Moore

• English Minimalist• Sculpture

attempts to represent the essence of things

Oval Sculpture #2, 1968

Dorothea Lange

• Photographer known for her documentation of the Great Depression

Mississippi Delta Children, 1939

Helen Frankenthaler

• Post-painterly Abstractionist OR Color Field painter

• Known for her large works where paint is poured onto unprimed canvas

Magic Carpet, 1964

Maya Lin

• Minimalist sculptor• Best known for the

Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Wall)

What is missing, 2009

Louise Nevelson

• American Sculptor

• Known for her assemblages – artworks created from existing objects

Sky Cathedral, 1958

Make sure to read pp. 425-429 (Feminist Art)

GUERILLA GIRLS, Do Women have to be naked?, 1989-2005