To celebrate International Women's Day and Women's History Month, we have complied a list of some of the most inspirational female artists for us and those who are our role models as two young British artists. We have also written a short description about each lady, to show how remarkable and inspiring these women really were or are.
Artemisia Gentileschi
Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura) - Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi showed great artistic promise as a young girl. The daughter of a well-known artist Orazio Gentileschi, she received training from a young age and it wasn't long before her talent outshone that of her brothers. Like her father, she was influenced by the great painter Caravaggio, and adopted his style within her own work, most notably his technique of chiaroscuro.
At 18 years old, she was sexually assaulted by her father's assistant Agostino Tassi, whom he had assigned to tutor her. Orazio took Tassi to court after he refused to salvage Artemisia's reputation through marriage. The experience had a huge impact on Artemisia's work and soon after the trial, she painted one of her most famous works, 'Judith Slaying Holofernes'.
This painting differs from her idol Caravaggio's work that shares the same name. Caravaggio's Judith is a young, delicate woman, her body leaning away from the reclining Holofernes, her arms stretched as her sword cuts his throat, her sweet face filled with concern. Judith depicted in Artemisia's painting, is intent, her face focused, her bloody hand pressed hard against her enemy's face, while the other digs the sword into his neck. Artemisia pairs her heroine, with an equally strong maidservant, who bears down on the large torso of the writhing man in support, while Caravaggio’s equips his Judith with an old dainty woman, who stands away from man, offering verbal courage to the young woman instead.
Artemisia had a unique perspective over her contemporaries, the experience of being a woman, and the skill to articulate those emotions onto the canvas. She would continue to reference biblical scenes and characters, focusing on the women, portraying their vulnerability and resilience. She was the first woman accepted into the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts, and gained the patronage of the powerful Medici family and later Charles I of England. She proved that she had the strength to overcome her past traumas, inciting her own act of revenge by becoming a successful and respected artist and woman.
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Self-portrait in a Straw Hat- Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, was an 18th century French painter, whose style cannot be categorised to only one style. Her delicate pastel colour palette and flattering lighting were distinctively Rococo which was favoured by French nobility and adorned the palace of Versailles. She mostly avoided the fantasy elements in favour of a balanced naturalism that resonated more with Neo-Classicism.
Vigée attracted the admiration of Marie Antoinette, becoming the monarch's favourite court painter, a position she held for almost a decade. She was tasked with making the unpopular queen more relatable to her public, who thought her to be cold and distant.
'Marie Antoinette in a Chemise Dress' has the Queen dressed in a simple muslin dress, a style adopted by the queen when she would retire to her smaller chateau 'The Petit Trianon' on the grounds of Versailles. Vigée had intended to show the Queen in her most natural habitat, void of grandeur and restriction, but it only enraged the public and was quickly replaced by a portrait of the queen in an elaborate silk dress. The artist took to depicting Marie with her beloved children. 'Marie Antoinette and Her Children' showed the Queen in a simple formal dress, surrounded by her children. Vigée's sympathy and compassion for her sitter is noted with the inclusion of an empty crib that would have held the Queen's youngest daughter, who sadly passed. It was a heart-breaking reminder of the suffering imposed on a grieving mother.
Vigée thrived under Marie Antoinette's patronage, securing a place at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, one of only five women to attend. She also had access to a wide circle of fashionable ladies who wished to be painted and this served her well financially. The artist was forced to flee France to avoid being arrested when the Queen and her family were detained and later executed. She was later able to return to France, having lived in exile for more than ten years. She was remarkable artist and woman, who fought to establish herself in a male dominated world as well as face a dangerous and unstable period in French history.
Mary Cassatt
Self-Portrait- Mary Cassatt
American artist Mary Cassatt is mostly recognised for her informal portraits focused on displaying 'The New Woman' as an intelligent, cultured and active member of society. Cassatt herself embodied the idea of a modern woman by working, living and travelling independently as an unmarried woman. Determined not to be deterred by the artistic restrictions forced on her gender, she moved to Paris and struck up a friendship with mentor Edgar Degas, who invited her to join the Impressionists. The movement was dominated by men whose cause was to break away from the limitations of traditional painting, preferring scenes of modern domesticity.
A favoured subject of hers was to show these women in their relaxed natural approach to motherhood. The subjects shown in her pieces are void of the traditional poses and strict composition of previous mothers depicted in stately or religious portraiture. The aim of the Impressionist was to convey the beauty in the ordinary and to immortalise the smallest moments shared between mother and child. The women are warm, maternal and approachable, women that are often overlooked for the stylised figures, whose beauty and grace is almost unachievable, whereas Cassatt's women are relatable.
Cassatt was a constant vocal supporter of women's rights and was involved in campaigns to allow equal scholarships and the right to vote, having suffered from the injustice of not being considered an equal to her male counterparts. She is now considered one of the three 'grandes dames' of Impressionism, alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot. She was a true advocate to the movement, using her affluent connections with dealers and collectors to sell her and her friends' work and popularising their practices in America.
Frida Kahlo
The Two Fridas - Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera has proven herself to be one of the most famous female artists of our time as well as an inspirational and influential woman. Her artwork was mainly centred around self-portraits all including different inspirations from her Mexican cultural heritage. Her work was highly personal and has often been considered as a form of magical realism.Â
Kahlo was part of the post-revolutionary movement which sought to forge a Mexican identity during the Mexican modernist movement during the First and Second World Wars. At just 18 years of age, Kahlo was in a terrible bus accident which meant that her spine, pelvis and foot were crushed, causing her terrible pain for the rest of her life. This anguish and pain led her to painting as a form of mourning for her previous life. Due to this past trauma, her paintings mainly explored the themes of human mortality and self-identity quite the contrary to other artists of the time, including her husband Diego Rivera, who explored the social and political issues in Mexico at the time in his work.Â
Although her work was often overlooked due to the success of her husband, by 1938, André Breton, the founder of surrealism declared her a surrealist painter and arranged for her first solo exhibition in New York which was a roaring success. However, her already poor health began to deteriorate and she eventually passed away in 1954 at the age of just 47 years old.Â
By the 1970s, her artistic achievements were recognised as her work was rediscovered by art historians and the contribution she made to modern art and more specifically feminist art.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe, also known as the mother of American Modernism and was also one of the first female artists to receive worldwide critical acclaim for her work. She is best known for her impressionist paintings of magnified flowers and South Western American landscapes.
O'Keeffe played a fundamental role in the development of American Modernism and its link to the European avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. Over her 70-year artistic career, she established a significant body of work, all of which captured the emotion and power of objects in the natural world, such as through her many depictions of flowers. Her husband, Alfred Stieglitz was the one who identified her as the first female American modernist and her paintings of desolate landscapes, intense still lifes and American iconography have become fundamental works of the twentieth century and in American art history. It was through this profound influence which she had on the modernist movement, that gave her the name of "the mother of American modernism".
She is notable for her role as a pioneering female artist, who was highly influential at the time to other aspiring female artists. Santa Fe, New Mexico is the home to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum which is the first museum in the USA entirely dedicated to a female artist.
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois was a French-American artist whose work spanned most of the twentieth century and was most famously known for her installation art and sculptures, as well as her paintings.Â
Bourgeois' work was greatly influenced by some deeply rooted traumatic experiences relating to her father's infidelity when she was a child. The often sexually explicit nature of her work, due to her past, and focus on sculpture was quite unusual for a female artist of her time. Her work demonstrated some very personal content relating to sexual desires and the body with no shame, using objects such as spiders, cages or medical tools to symbolise psychological angst and frustration and the female form. Her famous work "Maman", the monstrous steel spider which looms high above, could be understood as being symbolic to this experience of the female form and the emotional development in a woman when faced with motherhood.
Bourgeois helped to build the momentum required by the feminist art movement and still continues to influence feminist artwork today. This is thanks to the central themes of the form, sexuality and domesticity which were continually explored by Bourgeois.
Tracey Emin
I've Got it All - Tracey Emin
Young British Artist Tracey Emin's work is a long series of brutally honest revelations told through various forms and mediums from paintings and etchings, to neon lighting, textiles and found objects.Â
The exhibition 'Sensation: Young British Artists from The Saatchi Gallery', at the Royal Academy in 1997, made up of collector Charles Saatchi's private collection of modern conceptual work included Emin's 'Everyone I Have Ever Slept With' a tent appliquéd with 102 names of the people she had slept up to that point. The piece was highly provocative, sparking the public's judgemental curiosity, many making the assumption that the piece was a list of flings, when in fact it dealt with intimacy, with most of the names including her family, friends, serious boyfriends and of course herself "With myself, always myself, never forgetting".Â
Emin is her own subject, her canvas is her confessional booth, with her experiences as her inspiration, and how she deals with them is her muse. Through her techniques she is able to convey the aftermath of emotions. Like with her tent that is carefully stitched with names of people she shared her bed with. Her care and attention conveys the level of love and respect she has for those people and that experience. While her paintings, neon installations and etchings are executed roughly, expressing transitory thoughts and momentary feeling relating to sex, depression and alcohol.Â
Emin is unafraid and rightfully unashamed in exposing the true nature of the modern woman. A woman who is sexually liberated and isn't bound by traditions that confined her artistic predecessors, but continues to battle age old issues and angst of relationships and identity.
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread, a British sculptor whose work is usually in the form of plaster casts was the first female artist to win the Turner Prize in 1993. She is also one of a limited number of artists of her generation to have produced public sculptures which have gained monumental status and importance.Â
Whiteread was one of the Young British Artists involved in the "Sensation" exhibition at the Royal Academy, which contained a variety of artwork from the collection of Charles Saatchi. This exhibition caused a media frenzy and uproar due to the controversial images on show, but also propelled her work even more into the spotlight.Â
In her work, Whiteread engages with both political issues and feminism, working entirely within the realms of sculpture. Her sculptures are casts of the negative space which can be found in or around specific objects, reproducing real-world objects in a minimalist style, lacking intricate details. Her work is almost like cast traces of the past, being recrafted in a futuristic way. One of the most famous works is 'House' which is a life-size replica of the inside of an East-End terraced house in London. It was shortly after creating this piece that she won the Turner Prize.Â
More recently, she had a solo show at Tate Britain, London which ended at the beginning of this year, 2018 which was a celebration of over 25 years of her internationally renowned sculptures.