Women artists

Self-portrait with two pupils, by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1785, the two pupils are Marie Capet and Carreaux de Rosemond

Women have been involved in making art in most times and places, despite difficulties in training and trading their work, and gaining recognition. In the West the Middle Ages were arguably the best period for women artists; the later introduction of drawing from life models made it far harder, for reasons of decorum, for women to obtain the specialised training required for a professional artist. The replacement of illuminated manuscripts, in their final period apparently largely painted by women, with printing and printmaking also represented a setback for women's working as artists.

In the latter part of the 20th Century, historians have endeavored to rediscover the artistic accomplishments of women and to give these their due place in the narrative of art history.

Ancient and classical periods

There are no records of who the artists of the prehistoric eras were, but the studies of many early ethnographers and cultural anthropologists indicate that women often were the principle artisans in the cultures considered as Neolithic, creating their pottery, textiles, baskets, and jewelry. Collaboration on large projects was typical. Extrapolation to the artwork and skills of the Paleolithic follows the same understanding of the cultures known and studied through archaeology. Cave paintings exist that bear the handprints of women and children as well as those with the handprints of men.

In the earliest records of western cultures, few individuals are mentioned, although women are depicted in all of the art, some showing their labors as artists. Ancient references by Homer, Cicero, and Virgil mention the roles of prominent women in textiles, poetry, and music and other cultural activities, without discussion of individual artists in the culture. The case for men is the same among their writings.

Among the earliest historical records of Europe concerning individual artists, Pliny the Elder wrote about a number of Greek women who were painters, including Timarete, Eirene, Kalypso, Aristarete, Iaia, and Olympias. While none of their work survives, there is a caputi hydria in The Torno Collection in Milan attributed to the Leningrad painter from circa 460-450 B.C. that shows women working alongside men in a workshop where both painted vases.

Medieval era

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"Universal Man" illumination from Hildegard of Bingen's Liber divinorum operum

Artists from the Medieval period include Ende, Diemudus, Guda, Claricia, Herrade of Landsberg and Hildegard of Bingen.

In the early Medieval period, women often worked alongside men. Manuscript illuminations, embroideries, and carved capitals from the period clearly demonstrate examples of women at work in these arts. Documents show that they also were brewers, butchers, wool merchants, and iron mongers. Artists of the time period, including women, were from a small subset of society whose status allowed them freedom from these more strenuous types of work. Women who were artists, often were of two literate classes, either wealthy aristocratic women or nuns. Women in the former category often created embroideries and textiles. Those in the later category often produced illuminations.

There were a number of embroidery workshops in England at the time, particularly at Canterbury and Winchester; Opus Anglicanum or English embroidery was already famous across Europe - a 13th century Papal inventory counted over two hundred pieces. It is presumed that women were almost entirely responsible for this production. One of the most famous embroideries of the Medieval period is the Bayeux Tapestry, of cloth embroidered with wool that is 230 feet long and which narrates the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England. The Bayeux Tapestry may have been created in either a commercial workshop, by a royal or aristocratic lady and her retinue, or a workshop in a nunnery. In the 14th century, a royal workshop is documented, based at the Tower of London, and there may have been other earlier arrangements.

Manuscript illumination affords us many of the named artists of the Medieval Period including Ende, a tenth century Spanish nun; Guda, a twelfth century German nun; Claricia, twelfth century laywoman in a Bavarian scriptorium. These women, and many more unnamed illuminators, benefited from the nature of convents as the major loci of learning for women in the period and the most tenable option for intellectuals among them.

In many parts of Europe, with the Gregorian Reforms of the eleventh century and the rise in feudalism, women faced many strictures that they did not face in the Early Medieval period. With these changes in society, the status of the convent changed. In the British Isles, the Norman Conquest marked the beginning of the gradual decline of the convent as a seat of learning and a place where women could gain power. Convents were made subsidiary to male abbots, rather than being headed by an abbess, as they had previously.

In Germany, however, under the Ottonian Dynasty, convents retained their position as institutions of learning. This might be partially because they were often headed and populated by unmarried women from the royal and aristocratic families. Therefore, it is in Germany where the greatest late Medieval period work by women emerges, as exemplified by that of Herrade of Landsberg and Hildegard of Bingen.

Motherhood from the Spirit and the Water, 1165, from Liber divinorum operum by Hildegard von Bingen, Benediktinerinnenabtei Sankt Hildegard, Eibingen (bei Rüdesheim)

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) is a particularly fine example of a German Medieval intellectual and artist. She wrote The Divine Works of a Simple Man, The Meritorious Life, sixty-five hymns, a miracle play, and a long treatise of nine books on the different natures of trees, plants, animals, birds, fish, minerals, and metals. From an early age, she claimed to have visions. When the Papacy supported these claims by the headmistress, her position as an important intellectual was galvanized. The visions became part of one of her seminal works in 1142, Scivias (Know the Ways of the Lord), which consists of thirty-five visions relating and illustrating the history of salvation. The illustrations in the Scivias, as exemplified in the first illustration, showing Hildegarde experiencing visions while seated in the monastery at Bingen, differ greatly from others created in Germany during the same period. They are characterized by bright colors, emphasis on line, and simplified forms. While Hildegard likely did not pen the images, their idiosyncratic nature leads one to believe they were created under her close supervision.

The twelfth century saw the rise of the city in Europe, along with the rise in trade, travel, and universities. These changes in society also engendered changes in the lives of women. Women were allowed to head their husbands' businesses, if they were widowed. The Wife of Bath in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is one such case. During this time, women also were allowed to be part of some artisan guilds. Guild records show that women were particularly active in the textile industries in Flanders and Northern France. Medieval manuscripts have many marginalia depicting women with spindles. In England, women were responsible for creating Opus Anglicanum, or rich embroideries for ecclesiastical or secular use on clothes and various types of hangings. Women also became more active in illumination. A number of women likely worked alongside their husbands or fathers, including the daughter of Maître Honoré and the daughter of Jean le Noir. By the 13th century, most illuminated manuscripts were being produced by commercial workshops, and by the end of the Middle Ages, when production of manuscripts had become an important industry in certain centres, women seem to have represented a majority of the artists, and scribes, employed, especially in Paris. The movement to printing, and of book illustration to the printmaking techniques of woodcut and engraving, where women seem to have been little involved, represented a setback to the progress of women artists.

Renaissance era

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Self-Portrait, by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1554

Artists from the Renaissance era include Caterina dei Vigri, Maria Ormani, Sofonisba Anguissola, Lucia Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Barbara Longhi, Fede Galizia, Diana Scultori Ghisi, Esther Inglis, Marietta Robusti (daughter of Tintoretto), Properzia de' Rossi, Levina Teerlinc, and Catarina van Hemessen

This is the first period in medieval history in which a number of secular female artists gain international reputations. The rise in women artists during this period may be attributed to major cultural shifts. One such shift was a move toward humanism, a philosophy affirming the dignity of all people, that became central to Renaissance thinking and helped raise the status of women.

Two important texts, On Famous Women and The City of Women, illustrate this cultural change. Boccaccio, a fourteenth century humanist, wrote De mulieribus claris (Latin for On Famous Women) (1135-59) which was a collection of biographies of women. Of the 104 biographies, he included Thamar (or Thmyris), an ancient Greek vase painter. Curiously, among the fifteenth century manuscript illuminations of On Famous Women, Thamar was depicted painting a self-portrait or perhaps, painting a small image of the Virgin and Child.

Christine de Pizan, who was a remarkable medieval writer, rhetorician, and critic, wrote City of Women in 1405 about an allegorical city in which independent women lived free from the slander of men. In her work she included real women artists, such as, Anastaise, who was one of the best Parisian illuminators, although none of her work has survived. Other humanist texts led to increased education for Italian women.

The most notable of these was Il Cortegiano or The Courtier by sixteenth century Italian humanist Baldassare Castiglione. This enormously popular work stated that men and women should be educated in the social arts. His influence made it acceptable for women to engage in the visual, musical, and literary arts. Thanks to Castiglione, this was the first period of renaissance history in which noblewomen were able to study painting.

Sofonisba Anguissola, shown at left, was the most successful of these minor aristocrats who first benefited from humanist education and then went on to recognition as painters.

Minerva Dressing, by Lavinia Fontana, 1613, Galleria Borghese, Rome

self-portrait by Catarina van Hemessen, 1548

Artists who were not noblewomen were affected by the rise in humanism as well.

While producing the paintings including those shown to the right, women such as Lavinia Fontana and Catarina van Hemessen, began to depict themselves in self-portraits, not just as painters, but also, as musicians and scholars, thereby highlighting their well-rounded education.

Along with the rise in Humanism, there was a shift from craftsmen to artists. This change is evidenced by the fact that there were more named artists from the period of the Renaissance than in all of the periods prior to the Renaissance. For craftsmen, training entailed seven years of apprenticeship. Artists, on the other hand, were expected to have a solid liberal arts training, along with knowledge in perspective, mathematics, ancient art, and study of the human body.

Study of the human body required working from male nudes and corpses. This was considered essential background for creating realistic group scenes. Women were barred from training from male nudes so, therefore, they were precluded from creating the realistic group scenes that were required for the large-scale religious compositions that received the most prestigious commissions.

Although many aristocratic women had access to some training in art, without the benefit of figure drawing from nude male models, most of those women chose marriage over a career in art. This was true for example, of two of Sofonisba Anguissola's sisters. The women who are recognized as artists in this period, were either nuns or children of painters. Of the few who emerge as Italian artists in the fifteenth century, all who are known today, are associated with convents.

These artists who were nuns include Caterina dei Virgi, Antonia Uccello, and Suor Barbara Ragnoni. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the vast majority of women who gained any modicum of success as artists, were the children of painters. This is likely because they were able to gain training in their fathers' workshops.

Examples of these women who were trained by their father include, painter Lavinia Fontana, miniature portraitist Levina Teerlinc, and portrait painter Catarina van Hemessen. Women artists during this period in Italy, even those trained by their family, seem somewhat unusual.

In certain parts of Europe, particularly northern France and Flanders, however, it was common for children of both genders to enter into their father's profession. In fact, in the Low Countries, where women had more freedoms, there were a number of artists in the Renaissance who were women. For example, the records of the Guild of Saint Luke in Bruges show that, not only did they admit women as practicing members, but also, that by the 1480s twenty-five percent of its members were women.

Baroque era

Still-Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums by Rachel Ruysch, oil on canvas, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Artists from the Baroque era include: Mary Beale, Rosalba Carriera, Élisabeth Sophie Chéron, Isabel de Cisneros, Josefa de Ayala better known as Josefa de Óbidos, Giovanna Garzoni, Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster, Maria Sibylla Merian, Louise Moillon, Maria van Oosterwijk, Clara Peeters, Luisa Roldán known as La Roldana, Rachel Ruysch and Elisabetta Sirani.

As in the Renaissance Period, many women among the Baroque artists came from artist families. Artemisia Gentileschi is an excellent example of this. She was trained by her father, Orazio Gentileschi, and she worked alongside him on many of his commissions. Luisa Roldán was trained in her father's (Pedro Roldán) sculpture workshop.

Judith Beheading Holofernes, by Artemisia Gentileschi, c.1612, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Women artists in this period began to change the way women were depicted in art. Many of the women working as artists in the Baroque era were not able to train from nude models, who were always male, however, they were very familiar with the female body. Women such as Elisabetta Sirani created images of women as conscious beings rather than detached muses. One of the best examples of this novel expression is in Artemesia Gentileschi's, Judith beheading Holofernes, seen to the left, in which Judith is depicted as a strong woman determining her own destiny. While other artists, including Botticelli and the more traditional woman, Fede Galizia, depicted the same scene with a passive Judith, in her novel treatment, Gentileschi's Judith appears to be an able actor in the task at hand. Action is the essence of it and another painting by her of Judith, leaving the first scene, which is shown to the right.

Still-life, by Josefa de Ayala (Josefa de Óbidos), c.1679, Santarém, Municipal Library

Still Life emerged as an important genre around 1600, particularly in the Netherlands. Women were at the forefront of this painting trend. This genre was particularly suited to women, as they could not train from nudes, but could access the materials for still life readily. In the North, these practitioners included Clara Peeters, a painter of banketje or breakfast pieces, and scenes of arranged luxury goods; Maria van Oosterwijk, the internationally renowned flower painter; and Rachel Ruysch, a painter of visually-charged flower arrangements. In other regions, still life was less common, but there were important women artists in the genre including Giovanna Garzoni, who created realistic vegetable arrangements on parchment, and Louise Moillon, whose fruit still life paintings were noted for their brilliant colors.

Eighteenth century

Portrait of Marie-Antoinette, by Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun, 1783

Artists from this period include, Rosalba Carriera, Giulia Lama, Anna Dorothea Therbusch, Angelica Kauffmann, Mary Moser, Maria Cosway, Anne Vallayer-Coster, Adelaide Labille-Guiard,and Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun.

In many countries of Europe, the Academies were the arbiters of style. The Academies also were responsible for training artists, exhibiting artwork, and, inadvertently or not, promoting the sale of art. Most Academies were not open to women. In France, for example, the powerful Academy in Paris had 450 members between the seventeenth century and the French Revolution, and only fifteen were women. Of those, most were daughters or wives of members. In the late eighteenth century, the French Academy resolved not to admit any women at all.

The pinnacle of painting during the period was history painting, especially large scale compositions with groups of figures depicting historical or mythical situations. In preparation to create such paintings, artists studied casts of antique sculptures and drew from male nudes. Women had limited, or no access to this Academic learning, and as such there are no extant large-scale history paintings by women from this period. Some women made their name in other genres such as portraiture.

Other women were innovative in their ability to compensate for their lack of training. Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun used her experience in portraiture to create an allegorical scene, Peace Bringing Back Plenty, which she classified as a history painting and used as her grounds for admittance into the Academy. After the display of her work, it was demanded that she attend formal classes, or lose her license to paint.

Literature and Painting, by Angelika Kauffmann, 1782, Kenwood House.

In England, two women, Angelica Kauffmann and Mary Moser, were founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768. Kauffmann helped Maria Cosway enter the Academy. Cosway went on to gain success as a painter of mythological scenes, however, these women remained in a somewhat ambivalent position at the Royal Academy, as evidenced by the group portrait of The Academicians of the Royal Academy by Johan Zoffany now in The Royal Collection. In it, only the men of the Academy are assembled in a large artist studio, together with nude male models. For reasons of decorum given the nude models, the two women are not shown as present, but as portraits on the wall instead. The emphasis in Academic art on studies of the nude during training remained a considerable barrier for women studying art until the twentieth century, both in terms of actual access to the classes and in terms of family and social attitudes to middle-class women becoming artists. After these three, no woman became a full member of the Academy until Laura Knight in 1936.

By the late eighteenth century, there were important steps forward for artists who were women. In Paris, the Salon, the exhibition of work founded by the Academy, became open to non-Academic painters in 1791, allowing women to showcase their work in the powerful annual exhibition. Additionally, women were more frequently being accepted as students by famous artists, such as, Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

Nineteenth century

L'Enfant au Tablier Rouge, by Berthe Morisot

Artists from this period include, Constance Mayer, Marie Ellenrieder, Rosa Bonheur, Elizabeth Butler, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Camille Claudel, Suzanne Valadon, Anna Boch and Lucy Bacon.

Women such as Marie Ellenrieder and Marie-Denise Villers worked in the field of portraiture in the beginning of the century, and Rosa Bonheur excelled in realist painting and sculpture.

Women artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement include Barbara Bodichon, Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, Kate Bunce, Evelyn De Morgan, Emma Sandys, Elizabeth Siddal, Marie Spartali Stillman, and Maria Zambaco.

Photography was a new medium in this era and several woman became well-known in the field such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Gertrude Kasebier.

Later in the century, many women became involved in the French Impressionist movement of the 1860s and 1870s including Berthe Morisot and the Americans, Mary Cassatt and Lucy Bacon.

Many younger artists were inspired by the Impressionist movement and flourished in the later decades of the nineteenth century. American Impressionist Lilla Cabot Perry was influenced by her studies with Monet and by Japanese art in the late nineteenth century. Cecilia Beaux was an American portrait painter who also studied in France.

In 1894, Suzanne Valadon was the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in France. Laura Muntz Lyall, a post-impressionist painter, exhibited at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, and then in 1894 as part of the Société des artistes français in Paris.

Twentieth century

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The Musician, by Tamara de Lempicka, 1929

Artists from this period include, Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, Mary Cassatt, Elizabeth Catlett, Camille Claudel, Sonia Delaunay, Dulah Marie Evans, Bracha L. Ettinger, Helen Frankenthaler, Françoise Gilot, Natalia Goncharova, Grace Hartigan, Eva Hesse, Malvina Hoffman, Käthe Kollwitz, Lee Krasner, Frida Kahlo, Barbara Kruger, Marie Laurencin, Tamara de Lempicka, Dora Maar, Maruja Mallo, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O'Keeffe, Verónica Ruiz de Velasco, Anne Ryan, Charlotte Salomon, Ángeles Santos, Zinaida Serebriakova, Sr. Maria Stanisia, Suzanne Valadon and Nellie Walker. Some of these began practicing their craft at the end of the earlier century.

The twentieth century brought many new opportunities for women in the arts and they flooded into the openings that arose in all media. The new century also saw an array of new movements and rapid transitions.

Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills, by Georgia O'Keeffe, 1935

Georgia O'Keeffe was one of the leading painters in modernist art. Although she was born in the late nineteenth century, she entered the twentieth century in her teens. She would become one of the leading painters of her age and was renowned for her works featuring flowers, bones, and landscapes of New Mexico.

Sr. Maria Stanisia was able to overcome the patriarchal attitudes both within early twentieth century Chicago and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church to become acclaimed as one of the greatest painters in the field of religious art.

There were several noted women in abstract expressionism. Helen Frankenthaler was an important figure in the movement and worked with Jackson Pollock. Lee Krasner was married to Pollock and was a key figure in abstract art. Elaine de Kooning was a student and later the wife of Willem de Kooning who was a realistic painter also. Anne Ryan was a pioneering collagist. Jane Frank, a student of Hans Hofmann, developed a unique approach to mixed media works on canvas. In Canada, Marcelle Ferron was a key exponent of automatism.

In the Art Deco era, Hildreth Meiere became known for her large-scale mosaics and was the first woman honored with the Fine Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects. Tamara de Lempicka, also of this era, was a noted Art Deco painter from Poland.

This photograph, known as Migrant Mother, by Dorothea Lange is probably her most famous photograph

Women made significant contributions in the world of twentieth century photography. Lee Miller who rediscovered solarization and became a high fashion photographer of international renown. Dorothea Lange documented the Depression. Margaret Bourke-White created the industrial photographs that were featured on the cover and in the lead article of the first Life Magazine. Diane Arbus became noted for her photography of outsiders. Graciela Iturbide's works dealt with Mexican life and feminism while Tina Modotti's captured the country's revolutionary spirit. Annie Leibovitz was noted for her photography of rock and roll and other celebrity figures.

There were also art movements founded or co-founded by women. Aleksandra Ekster was a Constructivist, Cubo-Futurist, and Suprematist artist who was a founder of Art Deco. Sonia Delaunay and her husband were the founders of Orphism. Helen Frankenthaler of abstract art was a founding figure in the Color Field movement. More recently, Mary Caroll Nelson founded the Society of Layerists in Multi-Media (SLMM), whose artist members follow in the tradition of Emil Bisttram and the Transcendental Painting Group, as well as Morris Graves of the Pacific Northwest Visionary Art School. In the 1970s, Judy Chicago created The Dinner Party, one of the most important works of feminist art.

In 1996, Catherine de Zegher curated a pioneer historical exhibition of 37 great women artists from the Twentieth Century. The exhibition, Inside the Visible, that travelled from the ICA in Boston to the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, the Whitechapel in London and the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, included artists from the 1930s as Claude Cahun, Louise Bourgeois, Carrie Mae Weems and Charlotte Salomon; from the 1960s as Eva Hesse, Nancy Spero, Francesca Woodman and Lygia Clark; and from the 1990s as Bracha L. Ettinger and Mona Hatoum. The book dedicated to the exhibition includes monographical essays on each artist, written by different art theory experts.

Contemporary artists

Women artists have achieved increased prominence since the 1980s. In 1993, Rachel Whiteread was the first woman to win the British Turner Prize. Gillian Wearing later won the Turner Prize in 1997. Tracey Emin's entries have often dominated media coverage.

In 2001, a conference called "Women Artists at the Millennium" was organized at Princeton University. A book by that name was published in 2006, featuring prominent art historians analysing significant women artists such as: Louise Bourgeois, Yvonne Rainer, Bracha Ettinger, Sally Mann, Rachel Whiteread and Rosemarie Trockel. Prominent contemporary women artists also include, Kiki Smith, Jenny Saville, Sarah Lucas, Tomma Abts (Turner Prize winner 2006), Kara Walker, Carolee Schneeman, Yayoi Kusama, Lynda Benglis, and Shazia Sikander among others.

In August 2006, the British art magazine Latest Art polled thirty experts to compose a list of the thirty greatest women artists ever. Artists on the list range from the well known (Tracey Emin, Paula Rego, Frida Kahlo, Annie Leibovitz) to relatively unknown artists.

Twenty-first Century Artists

For information pertaining to any women artists after the year 2000, wikipedia is not a reliable source as it is dominated by editors who do not value the difference between this century and the last or the contributions made to art by any woman exclusively in this new millenium. The repeated deletion of this topic reveals the ignorance of the editors on this subject and their belief that the last eight years of women's art are not even worthy of encyclopedic mention.

Issues in constructing a history of women artists

Self-portrait, by Judith Leyster, 1630, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

1. Scarcity of biographical information about all artists. While this is true of males, and that it is presumed that there were fewer females who were artists, this dearth of information is even more problematic.
2. Anonymity. Women artists were often most active in artistic expressions that were not typically signed. This includes many forms of textile production, including weaving, embroidery, and lace-making as well as manuscript illumination. During the Early Medieval period, manuscript illumination was a pursuit of monks and nuns alike. While occasional artists of this period are named, the vast majority of these illuminators remain unknown. This leaves researchers with whole groups of artists for whom no information is available.
3. Impermanence of the media. Textiles in particular are fashioned of media that have strong susceptibilities to light, temperature, and moisture. Additionally, these products are usually functional objects and as such subject to wear. This means that only a tiny fraction of the textile work created by women is extant.
4. Painters' Guilds. In the Medieval and Renaissance periods, many women worked in the workshop system. These women worked under the auspices of a male workshop head, very often the artist's father. Until the twelfth century there is no record of a workshop headed by a woman, when a widow would be allowed to assume her husband's former position. Often guild rules would forbid women from attaining the various ranks leading to master, so they remained "unofficial". As with all workshop production, the works produced would be signed by the workshop master, with the signature signifying a level of quality, rather than singular authorship. It is hard to differentiate the elements created by the various artists of any workshop, and until the late Renaissance few works were signed at all.
5. Naming Conventions. Another problem is the convention whereby women take their husbands' last names. This obviously impedes research, especially for example, in some cases where a work of unknown origin may be signed only with a first initial and last name. Furthermore, most reference works on artists, even those online, allow searches by last name only, but not by first name only (although some such as Askart.com [www.askart.com] allow this). Clarity of identity is central to the western notion of the artistic genius who creates masterpieces which may be clearly situated and studied in relation to the contributions of other artists.

When one speaks of artists who happen to be women, however, even the simplest biographical statements may be misleading. For example, one might say that Jane Frank was born in 1918, but in reality, she was Jane Schenthal at birth — Jane "Frank" didn't exist until over twenty years later. The changing of women's last names, combined with a research system based on patriarchally transmitted surnames, creates a discontinuity of identity for women, as a class, blurring the view for anyone trying to establish a clear path for the individual artistic careers of women.

1. Incorrect Attribution. Finally, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, work by women was often reassigned. Some unscrupulous dealers even went so far as to alter signatures, as in the case of some paintings by Judith Leyster, seen in a self-portrait at left, which were reassigned to Frans Hals.

By contrast, in the late twentieth century, in a rush to acquire paintings by women, there have been cases of paintings wrongly attributed to women.

Partial bibliography

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• Armstrong, Carol and Catherine de Zegher, Women Artists at the Millennium, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2006. ISBN 0-262-01226-X.
• Bank, Mirra, Anonymous Was A Woman, Saint Martin's Press, New York, 1979. ISBN 0-312-13430-4.
• Broude, Norma, and Mary D. Garrard, The Power of Feminist Art, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York, 1995. ISBN 0-8109-2659-8.
• Brown, Betty Ann, and Arlene Raven, Exposures: Women and their Art, NewSage Press, Pasadena, CA, 1989. ISBN 0-939165-11-2.
• Callen, Anthea, Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1870-1914, Pantheon, N.Y., 1979. ISBN 0-394-73780-6.
• Caws, Mary Anne, Rudolf E. Kuenzli, and Gwen Raaberg, Surrealism and Women, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990. ISBN 0-262-53098-8.
• Chadwick, Whitney, Women, Art, and Society, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990. ISBN 0-500-20241-9.
• Chadwick, Whitney, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, Thames and Hudson, London, 1985. ISBN 0-500-27622-6.
• Cherry, Deborah, Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists, Routledge, London, 1993. ISBN 0-415-06053-2.
• Chiarmonte, Paula, Women Artists in the United States: a Selective Bibliography and Resource Guide on the Fine and Decorative Arts, G. K. Hall, Boston, 1990. ISBN 0-8161-8917-X
• Deepwell, Katy (ed) ,Women Artists and Modernism,Manchester University Press,1998. ISBN 0-7190-5082-0.
• Deepwell, Katy (ed),New Feminist Art Criticism;Critical Strategies,Manchester University Press, 1995. ISBN 07190-4258-5.
• Fine, Elsa Honig, Women & Art, Allanheld & Schram/Prior, London, 1978. ISBN 0-8390-0187-8.
• Florence, Penny and Foster, Nicola, Differential Aesthetics, Ashgate, Burlington, 2000. ISBN 0-7546-1493-X.
• Greer, Germaine, The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work, Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 1979. ISBN 0-374-22412-9.
• Harris, Anne Sutherland and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Alfred Knopf, New York, 1976. ISBN 0-394-41169-2.
• Heller, Nancy G., Women Artists: An Illustrated History, Abbeville Press, New York, 1987. ISBN 0-89659-748-2.
• Hess, Thomas B. and Elizabeth C. Baker, Art and Sexual Politics: Why have there been no Great Women Artists?, Collier Books, New York, 1971
• Marsh, Jan, The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1985. ISBN 0-7043-0169-5.
• Marsh, Jan, Pre-Raphaelite Women: Images of Femininity in Pre-Raphaelite Art, Phoenix Illustrated, London, 1998. ISBN 0-7538-0210-4
• Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists, Thames and Hudson, London, 1998. ISBN 0-500-28104-1
• The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., N.Y. 1987. ISBN 0-8109-1373-9.
• Nochlin, Linda, Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays, Harper & Row, New York, 1988. ISBN 0-06-435852-6.
• Parker, Rozsika, and Griselda Pollock, Framing Feminism: Art and the Women's Movement, 1970-1985, Pandora, London and New York, 1987. ISBN 0-86358-179-X.
• Parker, Rozsika, and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art & Ideology, Pantheon Books, New York, 1981. ISBN 0-7100-0911-9.
• Parker, Rozsika, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine, Routledge, New York, 1984. ISBN 0-7043-4478-5.
• Petteys, Chris, Dictionary of Women Artists: an international dictionary of women artists born before 1900, G.K. Hall, Boston, 1985
• Pollock, Griselda, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art, Routledge, London, 1988. ISBN 0-415-00722-4
• Pollock, Griselda, Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts, Routledge, London, 1996. ISBN 0-415-14128-1
• Pollock, Griselda and Florence, Penny, Looking back to the Future, G&B Arts, Amsterdam, 2001. ISBN 90-5701-132-8
• Pollock, Griselda, Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive, 2007. Routledge. ISBN 0415413745.
• Rosenthal, Angela, Angelica Kauffman: Art and Sensibility, London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-300-10333-6.
• Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer, American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions, G.K. Hall, Boston. 1990
• Slatkin, Wendy, Voices of Women Artists, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1993. ISBN 0-13-951427-9.
• Slatkin, Wendy, Women Artists in History: From Antiquity to the 20th Century, Prentice Hall, N.J., 1985. ISBN 0-13-027319-8.
• Tufts, Eleanor, American Women Artists, 1830-1930, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1987. ISBN 0-940979-02-0.
• Waller, Susan, Women Artists in the Modern Era: A Documentary History, Scarecrow Press Inc., London, 1991. ISBN 0-8108-4345-5.
• Watson-Jones, Virginia, Contemporary American Women Sculptors, Oryx Press, Phoenix, 1986. ISBN 0-89774-139-0
• de Zegher, Catherine, Inside the Visible, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1996.
• de Zegher, Catherine and Teicher, Hendel (Eds.), 3 X Abstraction, Yale University Press, New Haven, Drawing Center, New York, 2005 ISBN 0-300-10826-5.

See also

• Feminist art
• Linda Nochlin
• Griselda Pollock
• National Museum of Women in the Arts
• List of American artists (general)

External links

• n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, founded in Dec 1996, scholarly writing about contemporary women artists and feminist theory.
• Women Artists Self-Portraits and Representations of Womenhood from the Medieval Period to the Present
• Women Artists in History
• National Museum of Women in the Arts
• Pre-Raphaelite Women, Part D: The Art-Sisters Gallery
• Women's Art at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893
• Gallery of Victorian and Edwardian Women Artists at the University of Iowa
• Art.Net hosts many women artists and their works. Art.Net was founded by a woman artist.
• UK's Latest Art Magazine Polled Experts to list the 30 Greatest Women Artists. Features six pages of artist profiles.
• Colouring Outside The Lines. A UK zine interviewing female contemporary artists from around the world.