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| Artemisia Gentileschi |
There has been a severe lack of women reviewers over the centuries.
I used to wonder why there were no women artists - was it because the were too busy with children!?
A few months ago Amanda Vickery hosted an excellent BBC tv series on Women artists, most of whom many of us will never have heard of while these women were outstanding and wonderful artists.
I studied Art Higher at school and won the art prize in fourth year. I have also visited many art galleries - in Paris, Florence, New York, Washington, Rome, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Barcelona, more. Yet these women artists are all new to me!
Back several hundred years ago, one way for a woman to pursue art was offered
by religion and entering a convent as an escape from 'woman's duties and where
they could learn literature and art. The down side was that their art was
seldom seen!
The privacy of the convent offered protection for female artists, such
as Plautilla Nelli the first female artist in Florence, who was a self-taught
nun-artist, and her large painting of the last supper hung unseen for over 500
years in a monk’s dining room. Could a
woman artist become independent and heading a workshop and battling men for
commissions? There was a very interesting tv show on recently about women
artists down the centuries and I was shocked. Here is just a small sampling of
some of these wonderful women artists you may well never have heard of
before!
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| Sofonisba Anguissola |
Sofonisba Anguissola (1550 Spain) She was a pioneer of painting beautiful conversation pieces
with an informal intimacy. She came from impoverished nobility and her father had
sent one of her drawings to Michelangelo. She was admitted to the Spanish court
of Phillip II, where she painted more formal royal portraits. In her later years the Dutch painter Van Dyke
admired her work and visited her. However she is unknown and was never bought or
sold. Sofonisba Anguissola was an Italian
Renaissance painter born in Cremona. She received a well-rounded education that
included the fine arts, and her apprenticeship with local painters set a
precedent for women to be accepted as students of art
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| Sofonisba Anguissola |
Lavinia
Fontana (1520 Italy) as she was the daughter of an artist in Bologna
Italy, she had access to oils and learned the business side of art. There were
powerful Guilds that barred women. Women commissioned her art and she was the
first professional woman artist. However family art was not as valued as
historical and religious art. Lavinia Fontana was an Italian painter. She is regarded
as the first woman artist, working within the same sphere as her male
counterparts outside of a court or convent.
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| Lavinia Fontana |
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| Artemisia Gentileschi |
Artemisia
Gentileschi (1615 Italy). She painted historical epics and of female
strength and bravery in adversity. Of the triumph of art over ordeals. She had
the patronage of the Medici family. Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter,
today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation
following that of Caravaggio.
Dutch Art offered
greater freedoms with their still life’s and restraint. The Dutch believed that
a well run house meant a well run country.
Clara Peeters (1594) She was
a still life painter of the Flemish school.
Lady
Butler (1846 England) She attended the London School of Design for women and
painted large epic war paintings of the Crimean war and famously the charge of
the Scotsmen. She was the first artist to paint the human side of war - the pathos of war. Elizabeth Thompson, better known as Lady
Butler, was a British painter who painted military battle scenes. Some
of her most famous military scenes come from the Napoleonic Wars and she covered most major 19th-century wars
and painted several works showing the First World War.
Berthe
Morisot (1841 France) She was painted by Edouard Manet eleven times and
exhibited alongside the other impressionists, and later married his brother
Eugene. She painted a fresh version of family life in vivid whites. In 1874, she joined the "rejected"
Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul
Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude
Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred
Sisley. It was held at the studio of photographer Nadar.
Karin
Larsson (1859 Sweden) After she married
she concentrated on using her art, which was fresh and unpretentious, to
decorate her home. Her aim was a more family and children centred interior
design with informal, playful free designs and bold experimentation. Her work had a big impact on how homes were
designed and led to the national identity and bold home designs half a century
later by Swedish giant IKEA. Larsson's work has had more impact on people's
lives than any painting ever has. She
was married to Carl Larsson who painted her designs. Her aim was lifestyle as art for
everyone. Karin Larsson was a Swedish
artist and designer.
Margaret
MacDonald (1864 Scotland) She is celebrated for her panels in Glasgow's famous Willow Tearooms
- The May Queen, and Oh ye,
all ye that walk in Willowood. Along with her husband Rennie Macintosh and Herbert
MacNair, she was one of the most influential members of the collective known as
the Glasgow Four. She exhibited with Mackintosh at the 1900 Vienna Secession,
where she was an influence on the Secessionists Gustav
Klimt and Josef Hoffmann. Macintosh credited her with being an
important part of his figurative and symbolic interior designs. "Remember, you are half if not
four-quarters of all my architectural...Margaret has genius, I have only talent."
Georgia
O'Keefe (1887 America) She is
known as the greatest American artist of her era. She painted large format
magnified dreamy large seductive flowers in very subtle shades. Later she
escaped to New Mexico and painted dramatic landscapes there in vivid, bold and
striking dessert colours. Early on she
was a muse for the photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz..
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Georgia O'Keefe
I notice too how often female artists are referred to as - collaborating
with their partners, or being painted by them - when the reality is that these
women artists were strong independent artists in their own right. On Berthe Morrisot's grave it only says,
widow with no mention of artist, yet she has sold more than any other female
artist (7m for a painting recently). While of course Renoir sells for 20m and Manet 40m.
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Many of
these female artists were trail blazers.
Female art
- so much is hidden and unsung in dark corners of houses and museums....
I studied Art Higher and won the art prize in fourth year. I have also visited many art galleries - in Paris, Florence, New York, Washington, Rome, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Barcelona, more. Yet these women artists are all new to me!
THE STORY OF WOMEN AND ART, Amanda Vikcery -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/womenartists
Today goggling the artists I found this
website - National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) http://nmwa.org/
The National Museum of Women in the Arts
(NMWA) is a gender specific museum, located in Washington,
D.C. is the only museum solely dedicated to celebrating women’s achievements in
the visual, performing, and literary arts. Since opening its doors in
1987, the museum has acquired a collection of more than 4,500 paintings,
sculptures, works on paper and decorative art. Highlights of the collection
include works by Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo,
and Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun.
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