Women Artists through History

Where to begin?

I can point to a few striking characteristics of women artists generally: they all, almost without exception, were either the daughters of artist fathers, or generally later, in the 19th and 20th centuries, had a close personal connection with a stronger or more dominant male artistic personality. Neither of these character* tics is, of course, unusual for men artists, either, as we have indicated above in the case of artist fathers and sons: it is simply true almost without exception for their feminine counterparts, at least until quite recently. From the legendary sculptor Sabina von Steinbach, in the13th century, who, according to local tradition, was responsible for the South Portal groups on the Cathedral of Strasbourg, down to Rosa Bonheur the most renowned animal painter of the 19th century, and including such eminent women artists as Marietta Robusti (daughter of Tintoretto), Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi, Elizabeth Cheron, Mme. Vigee Lebrun, and Angelica Kauffmann--all, without exception, were the daughters of artists.

How to become a woman artist

Much work was largely anonymous We do have some artisans who signed their

work, both men and women

Art before the Renaissance

Guda, Self-Portrait,

(Homeliary) 12th Century

Claricia, Self-Portrait-Ger., Plaster, C.1200

Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614): Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna, Italy, was the daughter of the artist Prospero Fontana who trained her. A painter of portraits and mythological works she was a prolific painter despite being the mother of eleven children. She was summoned by Pope Clement VIII where she painted The Martyrdom of St. Stephen for the basilicaaa of San PaoloFuori. She was the first woman to receive commissions for public paintings and was elected to the Roman Academy.

Lavinia Fontana (Italian, 1552-1614) Portrait of a Noblewoman, ca. 1580. Oil on canvas 45 ¼ x 35 ¼ in. National Museum of Women in the Arts

Sofonisba Anguissola

Studied under two masters, and continued to paint after her marriage which was highly unusual

She was friends with Michelangelo and court Painter to Phillip II

She advised the young Flemish painter Van Dyck

The image is one of her sisters and brother

Sofonisba Anguissola, Portrait of the Artist’s Sisters & Brothers

A follower of Frans Hals, Judith Lester’s work was often included as his work by early art historians (because women didn’t paint!)

Later scholarship has separated her work, which focused mostly on images of men and women together in taverns, or playing music

The image shows you the artist at work, and proclaims her status as a master, able to take in apprentices and fully equal with her male contemporaries.

Judith Lester

Judith Leyster. Self-Portrait. ca. 1633

Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi (July 8, 1593 – c.1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation after Caravaggio. In an era when female painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community or patrons, she was the first female painter to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.

Daughter of a less skilled painter, Orazio (friend of Caravaggio) One of the few women painters of her day, internationally

famous, bur felt she was discriminated against because she was a woman

Her personal life was turbulent and seems to be reflected in her portrayal of herself as the biblical heroines she painted

Her works are dramatic, like frozen moments in time, or a movie stills

Like other skilled painters of the Baroque she uses light to enhance the story and communicate emotion

Also typical of the Baroque style is the contorted poses of her figures.

Gentileschi

Artemisia GentileschiSelf-Portrait (Allegory of Painting)1630oil on canvas38 7/8 x 29 5/8 in.

Artemisia GentileschiSusannah and the Elders1610oil on canvas66 7/8 x 46 7/8 in.

Artemisia Gentileschi. Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes. ca. 1625

Her father was a painter Acquired friends in high places – Lady

Wentworth - who introduces her to Sir Joshua Reynolds

Becomes an accomplished history painter One of the establishing members of the

Royal Academy (only two women – Mary Moser was the other)

Angelica Kaufmann

Angelica KauffmannMother of the Gracchi ca. 1785oil on canvas3 ft. 4 in. x 4 ft. 2 in.

The Royal Academy

Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun (1755-1842): Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun was born in Paris in 1755. She was perhaps the most successful woman painter of her time enjoying the patronage of Queen Marie-Antoinette as well as that of other European nobility. She painted many portraits of the ill-fated Marie-Anoinette including one of the queen and her children which was commissioned as a desperate effort to salvage the queen's bad reputation. Vigee-Lebrun left France just before the revolution but returned later to continue her career. Despite her royalist associations, she was able to garner continued acceptance as an artist by the post-revolutionary regime and to be elected to the Academie Royale.

Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun

Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LebrunSelf-Portrait1790oil on canvas8 ft. 4 in. x 6 ft. 9 in.

Adélaide Labille-GuiardSelf-Portrait with Two Pupils1785oil on canvas6 ft. 11 in. x 4 ft. 11 1/2 in.

Her father, Raymond Bonheur who was landscape artist of some note himself, continued her artistic education. He was also to play a major role in shaping her feminist and radical ideas regarding androgyny and clothing.

Her works are mainly of animals. She maintained her own menagerie of animals and honed her animal anatomy skills by visiting slaughter houses.

By the age of thirty, Bonheur was already a critical success. She became the first woman ever to win the Legion of

Honor Bonheur was in many ways a woman much ahead of her

times: besides wearing pants, she cut her hair short, smoked, and rode astride .

At a time when most women were financially dependent, Bonheur earned her own living and became wealthy enough to own a chateau in Fontainebleu.

Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur, The Horse Fair, 1853-5

Plowing in Nivernais, 1850

In 1860, Marie Bracquemond, a promising young student of the celebrated painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, noted, "The severity of Monsieur Ingres frightened me... because he doubted the courage and perseverance of a woman in the field of painting... He would assign to them only the painting of flowers, of fruits, of still lifes, portraits and genre scenes." Although she was speaking of her experience within Ingres's private Parisian studio, Bracquemond's observations reflect the general limitations of women's artistic training in France throughout most of the nineteenth century.

Marie Bracquemond

In a letter to the mother of Edma and Berthe Morisot, their private art instructor expressed the implications of the two girls' burgeoning talents: "Considering the characters of your daughters, my teaching will not endow them with minor drawing room accomplishments, they will become painters. Do you realize what this means? In the upper-class milieu to which you belong, this will be revolutionary, I might say almost catastrophic." While amateur talents in drawing and watercolor were encouraged as part of a good bourgeois education, professional careers for women who did not need to work were considered detrimental as they were thought to divert women from their prescribed roles as wives and mothers.

Young Woman Seated on a Sofa, ca. 1879Berthe Morisot

Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh. She was born into favorable circumstances: her father, Robert Simpson Cassat (later Cassatt), was a successful stockbroker and land speculator, and her mother, Katherine Kelso Johnston, came from a banking family.

Even though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the early age of fifteen, and continued her studies during the years of the American Civil War

Even though her family objected to her becoming a professional artist, Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the early age of fifteen, and continued her studies during the years of the American Civil War

The Cup of Tea, ca. 1879 & Mother and Child (The Oval Mirror), ca. 1889

Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt. The Child’s Bath. 1893

Too many womenArts & Crafts and the women’s movement

Women were the leaders in applying Arts and Crafts principles to social reform, creating many organizations to teach or market pottery and other media for philanthropic purposes.

Revived interest in craft led to a proliferation of art potteries, concentrated in Ohio, Massachusetts and New York. Ohio led the country in the art pottery revolution, beginning in the progressive city of Cincinnati. There, Maria Longworth Nichols experimented with ceramic paints as early as 1871. The following year, a china painting class was offered to society women at the Cincinnati School of Art. Of the class, one student remarked that "tidings of the veritable renaissance in England under the leadership of William Morris and his associates had reached this country." Mrs. Nichols continued her investigation of clay and established Rookwood Pottery in 1880. Rookwood was at the forefront of ceramic development in this country; in 1883 it introduced its velvety-glazed "Rookwood Standard," created through the innovative use of spray apparatus.

In the United States, as women sought to better their education and employment opportunities, the suffrage movement became inseparably intertwined with the Arts and Crafts movement. Women had a profound influence on the spread of Morris ideals. That both the Rhode Island School of Design and the Cincinnati School of Design were founded by women is hardly coincidental.

Paul Revere Pottery The vision that culminated in the Paul

Revere Pottery was a combination of the talents and passions of a number of progressive Bostonians in the first decade of the 20th century.

A young librarian named Edith Guerrier worked at the Boston North End branch in 1905. The North End was gritty, crowded with Jewish and Italian immigrants, and poor.

Miss Guerrier established the Saturday Evening Club with the support of Mrs. James Storrow to provide girls and young women with opportunities sorely lacking in their day to day lives.

Newcomb Pottery

The emergence of new design schools afforded other opportunities for women, particularly at places such as Newcomb College in New Orleans, which had established a pottery to provide employment for young women who had trained in its art program.

The Arts and Crafts commitment to decoration inspired by local plants and flowers is clearly seen in Newcomb pottery, where the primary motifs are magnolias, live oaks, hanging moss, and cypress trees.

Candace Wheeler In 1877, Candace Wheeler

founded the New York Society of Decorative Art, a combination school, workshop, exhibition gallery, and sales outlet.   Many women had grown up with the practice of needlepoint and other craft work, and she believed that, if properly trained, this work was good enough for sale, and not as an act of charity. 

Famous friends (?)

The Society of Decorative Art offered “the beginning of self help among educated women.”  By selling painted china or little works of embroidery, women were able to earn their own wages and broaden their lives without making themselves societal outcasts, for the work they were doing remained appropriate, and did not compromise their femininity.  

Tiffany taught at her school

In 1879, frustrated with his teaching post at the Society, Tiffany resigned, and invited Wheeler to join him in creating a professional decorating firm, which would become (after several incarnations, including the Louis C. Tiffany Co. and Tiffany & Wheeler,) Louis C. Tiffany and Company Associated Artists.   The firm was a partnership between four artists who each controlled their own separate departments: Louis C. Tiffany was in charge of glass, Lockwood de Forest had carvings and wood decoration, Samuel Colman was the color man, and Wheeler’s field was, of course, textiles and embroideries.

Wheeler went on to establish her own firm, also called Associated Artists.  This new Associated Artists was more directly interested in moving commercial art in a direction that would benefit women.  As Amelia Peck wrote, “Designing textiles and encouraging women in their quest to become self-supporting professional designers and artists would be the two most important activities of Associated Artists.”   The firm would find a fair amount of success and win numerous awards;  its most visible commission would be to decorate the Woman’s Building for the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.

Feminist Art

Feminist CalArts ProgramWomanhouse (Womanhouse (Bridal Staircase, Nurturant Kitchen, Sheet Closet)Los Angeles, California1971installation

Feminist CalArts ProgramWomanhouse (Menstruation Bathroom)Los Angeles, California1971installation

Judy ChicagoThe Dinner Party1974-79various media48 ft. each side

Judy ChicagoThe Dinner Party1974-79various media48 ft. each side

Judy ChicagoThe Dinner Party1974-79various media48 ft. each side

Judy ChicagoThe Dinner Party1974-79various media48 ft. each side

Barbara KrugerUntitled1981

Barbara KrugerUntitled1983photostat and red painted frame6 ft. 1 in x 4 ft. 1 in.

GuerRiila girls Check out their website An anonymous feminist art activist group who

produce thought provoking images like this

Guerrilla Girls

Guerrilla GirlsThe Advantages of Being a Woman Artist1988poster

Cindy ShermanUntitled #551979gelatin-silver print8 x 10 in.

Cindy ShermanUntitled #541980gelatin-silver print8 x 10 in.

Cindy ShermanUntitled #431979gelatin-silver print8 x 10 in.

Shirin neshat – “Rebellious silence”

Neshat is Iranian, and came to the West in 1973 to study, when she returned she found her homeland changed. She felt her own identity was besieged by the politics

Her images are nuanced and ambiguous

What is she saying about the Islamic world? About women there and in the West?

Her work addresses Western stereotypes about the Orient, and oriental women, and our failure to understand another culture.

Her work speaks of gender, religion, violence, and stereotypes

Petah coyne Website One of MY all time favorites to transform quotidian matter

into works of resolute poetry. Combining both figurative and abstract traditions and deploying a diverse range of materials, her sculptures constitute a complex language -- decidedly individualistic and yet surprisingly accessible. She has persistently transformed spaces into palpable environments, each context determining the work's dynamics -- its character, associations, and metaphorical significance.

Institute for figuring The Institute’s

interests are twofold: the manifestation of figures in the world around us and the figurative technologies that humans have developed through the ages.

From the physics of snowflakes and the hyperbolic geometry of sea slugs, to the mathematics of paper folding, the tiling patterns of Islamic mosaics and graphical models of the human mind, the Institute takes as its purview a complex ecology of figuring.

Advice to young artists! Dear Young Friends, It has come to my attention that some of you, engaged in the excellent pursuit of visiting art museums, have posed the question, "Why aren't there more women artists represented on

these walls?" This is a good question. This is, in fact, the same question women of my generation - and my mother's - and hers - have asked. Mind you, I'm no expert on gender studies, but I do have a few thoughts gleaned through decades of being an artist and a lifetime of being female.

If you'll permit me my opinion, the reasons there aren't more female artists in art museums are threefold: It's a reputation thing. We're not taken seriously enough. We tend to multitask. A lot. Too much. About reputation. To be fair, "artist" wasn't exactly a respectable profession for anybody (male or female) until the Italian Renaissance made it cool. Even then, most parents would've chosen anything but

"artist" as a great job for Junior. (Artists are a puzzlement to people who do not realize that art is hard, noble work.) Still, long after "artist" was an acceptable career choice for men, it remained outside the sphere of Nice Girls. I don't know if it was the occasional nudity (as in figure studies) or the

occasional partying, but art was considered an unsuitable pursuit for women. The end result was that males got a huge head start on becoming famous artists. Now, in regards to women artists being taken seriously. Forgive me, but there's an axe to be ground here. For too many centuries, women who've endeavored to make art have been seen as "odd" or (that irritating patronizing word) "eccentric." Being taken seriously as an artist often meant that whomever-She-was could not be taken seriously as a woman. The sort of woman who did the so-called right thing: managed a pleasant

hearth and home for her man and procreated like crazy. It was all right if a gal wanted to keep herself busy doing needlework or even painting some flowers. Those things made the house look better. And it's no accident that some of the first female artists we know by name illustrated children's books. Women + Children = Acceptable.

But, as far as Serious Art went, that was the exclusive domain of men. Women - and everybody knew this - were not capable of artistic genius. This is both wrong and wickedly unfair, but that's the way it went down.

Then there is multitasking. This is the crux of the matter, in my book. Art is fabulous; one of the most rewarding endeavors a human being can pursue. But (and this is huge), you burn with it. Art consumes the artist

deliciously, but it is a harsh discipline in terms of time and concentration. To create it spectacularly a person needs to eat, sleep and breathe art - which means a lot of other things must be neglected (temporarily or totally) by default.

Facts are, Ladies, it's us who bear the live young, and usually us who keep them alive. Raising children, in case you're wondering, takes a phenomenal amount of physical labor and attention. Parenting is important, rewarding work in its own right, but it doesn't leave a ton of free time, let alone free time during which the brain is bursting with creativity.

Wait! There's more! Women are so good at this nurturing thing, it often extends to our partners. Name me one famous male artist who was successful in his lifetime, and I'm going to point you toward either his wife or some trusted assistant as the person who made it possible for him to concentrate on art.

Michelangelo had somebody to cook his food. Rubens' wives darned his stockings so he looked good getting all those commissions. Gauguin had females taking care of him in two hemispheres. Rosa Bonheur? No children, no husband, and one companion who ran the house. Mary Cassatt: no children, no husband, and an independent source of income with which to hire servants. Georgia O'Keeffe didn't have children, and her husband actively promoted her career. Lee Krasner's career took off after Jackson Pollock self-destructed.

See where I'm going with this? It's a matter of choices. A female artist can concentrate on art or take care of other people, but it's nearly impossible to do both at the same time. Please trust me here, and never again wonder why Grandma Moses came so late to art.

So how can we rectify this? We can't do anything about the past. My advice to you, today, is: Create art. Support women artists. Women who are alive and struggling, not the long-gone ones we hold up as examples. Help each other. Strength in numbers, Ladies. Make the right choices for you. If you burn to create art, it's OK not to raise a family. If you want to raise a family and make art, marry wisely, learn how to be really patient and surround

yourselves with like-minded friends who'll co-op with you occasionally. I'm glad you asked about this, and hope to have helped answer your excellent question. As I tell my own young, talented daughter, I see great things for women artists if your generation

scrutinizes this issue with a level-headed gaze. And remember to work together! Together, you can make up a lot of lost ground. With fond wishes for your futures, An Elder Sister (Shelley Esaak)