Art

For a long, long time, women were systematically written out of art history. 

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, after the rise of ‘Academic’ art institutions in Italy, France, and Britain, women weren’t allowed to train properly as artists.

They were rarely admitted to academies, barred from formal apprenticeships, and forbidden from studying the nude model (until the 19thC), which was considered essential for mastering painting. 

Of course, this did not stop them. 

Since the 1970s, feminist art historians have been making up for lost time. Although lots more research is yet to be done into women artists (especially in the realms of craft, folk, and naive art), there are some great books that have been published, particularly in the last few years, that shed some light on these brilliant women. 

• Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (1971) — groundbreaking essay, arguing that the exclusion of women from the ‘canon’ of art is not because they don’t make good artists, but rather because of historic, institutional barriers.

• Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet (1974) — not an art history essay at all: a bizarre, hilarious novel by the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington… all about an old woman who leads a feminist revolution. 

• Gina Siciliano, I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi (2019) — a rich, graphic-novel biography of the Baroque painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, addressing her struggles with patriarchy, family expectation, and sexual assault. 

• Katy Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men (2022) — a response to the art historian E.H. Gombrich’s ‘The Story of Art’ and its woeful lack of female artists. 

• Franny Moyle, Mrs Kauffman and Madame Le Brun (2023) — dual biography of the eighteenth-century Academic painters, Angelica Kauffman and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, following their parallel and intertwined careers.

• Jill Burke, How to Be a Renaissance Woman (2023) — a thoroughly-researched, conversational account of what it was like to be a woman in Renaissance Italy. 

Enjoy!