Women Artists through History
Where to begin?
How to become a woman artist
 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.
Art before the Renaissance
 Much work was largely anonymous
 We do have some artisans who signed their work,
both men and women
Guda,
Self-Portrait,
(Homeliary) 12th Century
Claricia, Self-PortraitGer., 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, 15521614) 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
Judith Lester
 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 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.
Gentileschi
 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.
Artemisia Gentileschi
Self-Portrait (Allegory of Painting)
1630
oil on canvas
38 7/8 x 29 5/8 in.
Artemisia Gentileschi
Susannah and the Elders
1610
oil on canvas
66 7/8 x 46 7/8 in.
Artemisia Gentileschi. Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes. ca.
1625
Angelica Kaufmann
 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 Kauffmann
Mother of the Gracchi
ca. 1785
oil on canvas
3 ft. 4 in. x 4 ft. 2 in.
The Royal Academy
Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun
 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.
Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun
Self-Portrait
1790
oil on canvas
8 ft. 4 in. x 6 ft. 9 in.
Adélaide Labille-Guiard
Self-Portrait with Two Pupils
1785
oil on canvas
6 ft. 11 in. x 4 ft. 11 1/2 in.
Rosa Bonheur
 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, The Horse Fair, 1853-5
Plowing in Nivernais, 1850
Marie Bracquemond
 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.
 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. 1879
Berthe 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 women
Arts & 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 Program
Womanhouse (Womanhouse (Bridal Staircase, Nurturant Kitchen, Sheet Closet)
Los Angeles, California
1971
installation
Feminist CalArts Program
Womanhouse (Menstruation Bathroom)
Los Angeles, California
1971
installation
Judy Chicago
The Dinner Party
1974-79
various media
48 ft. each side
Judy Chicago
The Dinner Party
1974-79
various media
48 ft. each side
Judy Chicago
The Dinner Party
1974-79
various media
48 ft. each side
Judy Chicago
The Dinner Party
1974-79
various media
48 ft. each side
Barbara Kruger
Untitled
1981
Barbara Kruger
Untitled
1983
photostat and red painted frame
6 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 Girls
The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist
1988
poster
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #55
1979
gelatin-silver print
8 x 10 in.
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #54
1980
gelatin-silver print
8 x 10 in.
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #43
1979
gelatin-silver print
8 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!
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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)