Queen Marie-Antoinette had King Louis XVI pull some strings to get her favorite portrait painter, Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, admitted to France’s Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture as a painter of historical allegory.  Rules at the Academy barred the few women that were admitted from life drawing classes attended by the men.  But that apparently didn’t stop Élizabeth-Louise from learning her anatomy lessons.  Soon everyone who was anyone sat for Vigée-Lebrun, including 30 portraits of Maire Antoinette.

Vigée-Lebrun became one of the most popular artists of her day.  She survived the French Revolution, fleeing to the courts of Italy, Austria, and Russia.  In Rome she was elected to the Roman Accademia di San Luca.  While in Russia she painted numerous members of Catherine the Great’s family. Vigée-Lebrun was made a member of the Academy of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg as well.  She was able to return to France during the reign of Emperor Napoleon I, but much in demand by aristocrats and notables she also traveled to England and Switzerland on commissions.  In Switzerland she was made an honorary member of the Societe pour l’Avancement des Beaux-Arts of Geneva.  She published her memoirs in 1835 and 1837 giving us a glimspe of the artist’s training methods of the time.  Over her lifetime Vigée-Lebrun painted 660 portraits and 200 landscapes.  Not bad for a girl in the 18th century.  Funny nobody mentioned her in school.

Kathleen Benton

All art work featured in the slideshow by Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755-1842)

Bacchante, 1785, Oil on panel, 109 x 78 cm, Museum Nissim de Comondo, Paris  France.  This painting was commissioned by Count de Vaudreuil, in addition to a portrait of himself.

Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante, 1785, Oil on canvas, 28 7/8 x 23 3/8 in, Clark Institute, Williamstown, MA

Bacchus and Ariadne ?, Oil on canvas, 1782, unlocated

Allegory of Poetry, 1774, Oval, 24 x 30 in, unlocated

American Woman, 1803, Oil on canvas, unlocated

Young Woman in Love -?, Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm, unlocated

Portrait of a Young Lady as Flora, 1811, Oval, 72 x 60 cm, National Museum of Stockholm, Sweden

There are many sites the feature the art and career of Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun.  The one I’ve found with the most information and art examples is at http://www.batguano.com/vigee.html

It was through this ability to learn about things I wasn’t even looking for that my subject matter for this post, female artists from the Renaissance and Baroque Periods, was inspired.   I’m sure the art and history of  of these artists have been documented for many years. So it was quite a revelation when recently I came upon some web sites devoted to women artists that I had never known.  The artists included at these web sites were not mentioned in any of the art history classes I attended.  I’ll admit that until two weeks ago I had never been aware of any of the artists that I am featuring in this post.

Suddenly I feel a bit cheated by my educators.  I have to wonder why none of these artists were mentioned in my classes.  Although I do not consider myself a scholar I’ve had a bit more that the average education in art history.  Many of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque period classes that I attended were on the graduate level.  So I think I could reasonably expect that such in-depth studies might include the fact that women were making names for themselves right alongside men.  I now realize that my entire education was edited by historians and professors who were themselves not aware of or chose to ignore the participation and achievements of so many female artists.

What I’ve discovered is that the documented contributions of women artists date back for centuries. But  I knew nothing of the work, education, and success that these women artist attained.  I thought Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot were our early heroines, because those two ladies were the first female artists I recall being mentioned in my classes.  It seems I’ve missed out on about eight hundred years worth of artistic achievements made by women.

Unfortunately I cannot  highlight every one of those woman in a single post.  And of those I do feature here, I do not feel qualified to discuss their work and activity in great detail since I’ve still so much to learn.   At least, if I didn’t know of these women before, because of the Internet I do now and can explore their work further.  So with this introduction let us reflect on the difficulties they must have endured and the frustrations they must have felt.

 Their lives could not have been easy.  (How did these ladies paint in those clothes? Judith Leyster’s collar would make a convenient palette.) Here were women who most likely had their roles assigned to them by society, yet they were able to develop their creativity and reputations as well.  They were educated, attended universities, and were employed in activites and positions usually reserved for men.  And it seems they did it all while remaining fashionably in vogue and in the vanguard so that we might now have the many choices we can take for granted today.

Kathleen Benton

(Click on images to enlarge and read details. Click again to return to page.)

Sonfonisba Anguissola (Italian, 1532-1625), Self-portrait at the Easel, 1556, Oil on canvas, Muzeum-Zamek, Lańcut, Poland

Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593-1652), Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1638-39, Oil on canvas, 38 x 29 inches), The Royal Collection © 2008, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Clara Peeters (Flemish, 1594?-c1657), Self-Portrait with Still Life, Oil on panel, 14 x 19 inches, London, Hallsborough Gallery

Judith Leyster (Dutch, 1609-1660), Self-Portrait, c. 1632-1633, Oil on canvas, 29 3/8 x 25 5/8 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA

Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian. (I can find no information on this painting.  Please contact me if you can help.)

Maria Sibyllan Merian (German,1647-1717),  Branch of guava tree with leafcutter ants, army ants, pink-toed tarantulas, huntsman spiders, and ruby topaz hummingbird, c.1701-05, Watercolour on vellum, 39 x 32.3 cm, The Royal Collection © 2009, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.   The 95 watercolours contained in Metamorphosis in the Royal Collection were bought in 1755 by George III, when Prince of Wales.

Adélaïde Labille Guiard (French, 1749–1803), Self Portrait with Two Pupils, Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond, 1785, Oil on canvas, 83 x 59 1/2 inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755-1842), Self -portrait, 1790, Oil on canvas, 39.37  x 31.89 inches, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

If you would like to find more information on women artists, here’s a list at wendy.com to get you started.