Painted by a Woman

If I asked you to name great five great artists from the 15th to the 20th century I suspect the majority of you would name men such as Michelangelo; Rembrandt; Turner; Whistler and Picasso. Now see if you can name five women from the corresponding periods? Are you having difficulty? I did when I posed the question why there has been a lack of great women artists. However, I had no problem when it came to a list of great women writers.

The question of greatness among women artists is one that has been asked by many over the years, including the feminist art historian Linda Nochlin in an essay written in 1971.

One of her conclusions was “The miracle is, in fact, that given the overwhelming odds against women, that so many of them have managed to achieve so much sheer excellence, in those bailiwicks of white masculine prerogative like science, politics, or the arts.”

One of the women who painted against overwhelming odds was Artemisia Gentileschi, the daughter of well-known Roman artist, Orazio Gentileschi. Born in Rome in 1593, she received her early training from her father but after the art academies rejected her she continued to study under Agostini Tassi, a friend of her father’s, a man who cruelly raped her. He promised to marry her but went back on his word so that Artemisia’s father was forced to take him to court. The trauma of the rape and the subsequent trial affected Artemisia’s painting.

After her death, she drifted into obscurity and her works were often attributed to her father or other artists. Art historian and expert on Artemisia, Mary D. Garrard notes that Artemisia “has suffered a scholarly neglect that is unthinkable for an artist of her calibre.” Interest in Artemisia in recent years has recognized her as one of the world’s greatest female artists.

In the 1880s, women were not admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts or the painting ateliers, and they had to find private teachers in private studios. In the studios of Carolus-Duran, men paid only thirty francs per month, with discounts if they enrolled for one year, while women were charged one hundred francs per month for mornings only, with no discounts.

Berthe Morisot was taught by Corot and had some success when she became involved in the French Impressionist movement and their struggle for recognition. Morisot has been reclaimed as one of the forgotten women artists of the 19th century and as such has achieved greater fame in recent years than she did in her lifetime. Now she and American artist Mary Cassatt are generally considered the most important women painters of the later 19th century.