Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) was a star. A portrait painter,
history painter, printmaker and designer known in her lifetime
as one of the wealthiest bourgeois women of her era, she was
called "perhaps the most cultivated woman in Europe,"
by the German philosopher J. G. Herder. History painting might
have been the way to prestige, but it was Kauffmann's portraits
that opened avenues to an international aristocratic and intellectual
social world. This volume gathers approximately 150 works, and
is the first publication to rigorously connect them to her personal
history and to London and Rome, where she lived. Kauffmann settled
permanently in Rome in 1782, and made her home a welcome meeting
place for artists and writers. Goethe, a regular, called her
a "woman of immense talent," and his assessment is
borne out, more than 200 years later, by this study of her work.
Early American modernist art has been defined for decades by
a narrow range of works by almost entirely male New York–based
artists in the circles of Alfred Stieglitz and Walter Arensberg.
Typically, Georgia O’Keeffe is the solitary acknowledged
exception to these male-dominated modernist circles. But, Marian
Wardle and the contributors to this long-overdue collection
issue a powerful challenge to this narrow view. They reveal
that scores of women artists of the period produced works that
were significant, influential, and indubitably modern.
All the women considered in this study were once the art students
of the popular and perhaps most influential American art teacher
of the twentieth century, Robert Henri (1865–1929). Henri
encouraged an art that was expressive of personal emotions and
experience and that was grounded in life. He preached equality
among different media and approaches to art. Giving heed to
his teachings, his women students engaged in a wide variety
of artistic production. Collectively, the stunning variety and
power of their work in painting, sculpture, printmaking, textiles,
decorative arts, and furniture broadens our understanding of
American modernism and illuminates the role of women artists
in shaping it. Yet, these women have remained largely unstudied,
and virtually unknown, even among art historians.
The seven new essays included in this volume move beyond the
famed Ashcan School—the small group of Henri’s male
students who worked in a narrow range of urban realist subjects—to
recover the lesser known work of his women students. The contributors,
who include well-known scholars of art history, American studies,
and cultural studies demonstrate how these women participated
in the "modernizing" of women’s roles during
this era; how gender controlled their art, productivity, sales,
and reception; how their many styles, media, and subjects enrich
our understanding of modern American art; and how the work of
modern women artists relates to women’s involvement in
other areas of modern American society and culture, including
labor and social reform, patronage, literature, dance, and music.
Lavishly illustrated and complemented by short biographies of
more than 400 of Henri’s students, this delightful collection
adds a long-ignored but deserving dimension to an expanded story
of American modernism and to women’s contributions to the
arts. "Long overdue, this richly documented book restores
the female presence in early twentieth-century American art,
design, and craft. Brava to all the contributors for their mighty
labors in the archives and museum collections."—Wanda
M. Corn, Robert and Ruth Halperin professor in art history,
Stanford University
Women Artists: An Illustrated History by Nancy Heller –
Paperback: 300 pages Publisher: Abbeville Press; 4th edition
(February 1, 2004) 220 illustrations, 160 in full color
Firmly established as one of the premier histories
of women in the fine arts, Nancy G. Heller's
Women Artists returns in an expanded fourth
edition. Its lavish illustrations--all the artists'
works are reproduced in large-format color--and
documentary pictures of many of the artists
make this one of the most accessible and useful
studies of women in the arts. Dr. Heller's lively
text provides an overview of the obstacles that
women have encountered, emphasizing the ways
that women artists have ingeniously circumvented
them, inventing new forms and bringing a distinctive
perspective to traditional subjects. With coverage
of the 1990s and the beginning of the new millenium,
nearly half the volume is now devoted to the
remarkable period from 1960 to the present,
when women artists emerged as the most dynamic
force in contemporary art.
New to this edition are innovative U.S. figures including sculptor
and performance artist Janine Antoni and photographer Renee Cox,
as well as major international artists including Iran's Shirin Neshat,
Shahzia Sikander from Pakistan, British painter Fiona Rae, and the
Icelandic sculptor and performance artist Katrin Sigurdardottir.
This book presents the work of more than 150 women artists who live
or once lived west of the Mississippi River. The first half of the
book consists of fifteen interpretive essays examining the work
and concerns of 19th and 20th century artists working in a broad
range of media (including photography, quiltmaking, painting, printmaking,
clay art, sculpture, digital art and more). Concepts of community,
identity, spirituality, and locality are explored in interdisciplinary
contexts. Histories and critical reappraisals of gendered representations
of the American West form the backbone of these essays.
The second half of the book is an alphabetical directory of the
artists discussed in the essays, with biographical information,
notes on exhibitions and collections, and the artists’ own
statements about their work and their visions. Together, these artists
represent the full spectrum of ethnicities and cultures that comprise
the American West. The text is lavishly illustrated with nearly
300 reproductions, including 60 in color.
A World of Our Own by Frances Borzello – Hardcover:
224 pages Publisher: Watson-Guptill Publications (October 1, 2000)
This stirring account documents the centuries-long struggle of gifted
women who confronted the exclusionary tactics of a male-dominated
art establishment but pressed ahead undaunted to gain public acceptance
as sought-after professional artists. The author takes readers deep
into the restricted world of women artists of the past, showing
how diligently they trained themselves, set up studios, and pursued
sympathetic patrons. Starting with the flowering of Renaissance
painters Sofonisba Anguissola and Properzia de'Rossi, the book reconstructs
the changing world of women artists as social attitudes evolved.
Seventeenth-century painters Artemisia Gentileschi and Judith Leyster
enjoyed success by depicting subjects relevant to women, as did
eighteenth-century greats Angelica Kauffmann and Elisabeth Vige-Lebrun
with their themes of motherhood. Further breakthroughs came in the
nineteenth century as young hopefuls Mary Cassatt and Marie Bashkirtseff
strove to be admitted to exhibiting societies and opened art schools
to help other women become professionals. Finally, as equality for
women advanced through the twentieth century, Georgia O'Keeffe,
Frida Kahlo, and Cindy Sherman led the way for today's talented
women to secure their rightful place in the annals of art.
The self-portrait is an artist's most intriguing vehicle for analysis
and self-expression. Serving a dual role as both creator and subject,
artists are offered unusual freedom; as a result, self-portraits
offer special value and high interest for both artists and art lovers.
Mirror Mirror explores the role of the self-portrait in the work
of 40 women artists from the mid-17th century to today. Filled with
gorgeous, full-color reproductions, this unique guide covers a wide
range of media-from oil painting to photography, woodcut to ceramic
sculpture. Readers will discover the rare work of major painters
including Mary Beale, Gwen John, and Dame Barbara Hepworth, as well
as portraits by women known primarily for their work in other media,
such as photographer Lee Miller and ceramicist Susie Cooper. Each
of these wonderful self-portraits appears chronologically and features
fascinating biographical details of each artist, as well as inspiring
essays from two leading art historians: Whitney Chadwick, who discusses
style, technique, and how the artist explored her own identity;
and Frances Borzello, who presents the historical background and
artistic context of each portrait. Whether you're interested in
history, art appreciation, or general women's issues, Mirror Mirror
offers a rare look into the work, intrigue, and genius of some of
the most creative women artists throughout the centuries.
Women Artists by Margaret Barlow – Hardcover: 320
pages Publisher: Beaux Arts Editions (May 30, 2001)
The achievements of many women in the arts have, until recently,
been downplayed or ignored. Spanning six centuries and hundreds
of women, Women Artists presents a wealth of information on the
subject, with more than 300 reproductions of works by extraordinary
female artists, from pre-Renaissance times to the present.
Margaret Barlow's informative and well-researched text highlights
the lives and accomplishments of both famous and lesser-known women
who, despite societal pressures and restrictions, pursued successful
careers in art through the ages, including Judith Leyster, Elisabeth-Louise
Vige-Lebrun, Emily Mary Osborn, Kathe Kollwitz, Angelica Kauffmann,
Lilly Martin Spencer, Paula Modershohn-Becker, and scores of others.
Also included here are journal entries, letters, and excerpts from
autobiographies of several women artists—fascinating for the
light they shed on how these women perceived their life and work.
Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945
by Sandra D'Emilio (Editor), Autry Museum of Western Heritage in
Association With the Uni, Patricia Trenton (Editor), Autry Museum
of Western Heritage (Corporate Author) – Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: University of California Press (October 1, 1995)
Note: I discovered that the portrait on the cover is a self-portrait
by artist Mabel Alvarez and I had actually saved it from the web
about six years ago as a painting I admired.
Independent Spirits brings to vivid life the West as seen through
the eyes of women painters from 1890 to the end of World War II.
Expert scholars and curators identify long-lost talent and reveal
how these women were formidable cultural innovators as well as agitators
for the rights of artists and women during a period of extraordinary
development. Abundantly illustrated, with over one-hundred color
plates, this book is a rich compendium of Western art by women,
including those of Native American, African, Mexican, and Asian
descent. The essays examine the many economic, social, and political
forces that shaped this art over years of pivotal change. The West's
dynamic growth altered the role of women, often allowing new avenues
of opportunity within the prevailing Anglo culture. At the same
time, boundaries of femininity were pushed earlier and further than
in other parts of the country. Women artists in the West painted
a wide range of subjects, and their work embraced a variety of styles:
Realism, Impressionism, Symbolism, Surrealism. Some women championed
modern art as gallery owners, collectors, and critics, while others
were educators and curators. All played an important role in gaining
the acceptance of women as men's peers in artistic communities,
and their independent spirit resonates in studios and galleries
throughout the country today.
Complementing a Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibit of the same name,
Hirshler's book chronicles the birth and evolution of women artists
who trained or were centered in Boston. The John Moors Cabot curator
of American painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Hirshler found
her niche rediscovering lesser-known artists with her previous work,
Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist. She hits her stride
with this new study, providing a standard for regional treatments
of women artists. The book not only surveys artists grouped together
solely by gender or artistic medium but also establishes the intertwining
and harmonious relationships among several Bostonian generations.
In addition, the original research generates fresh interest in a
largely forgotten or unknown aesthetic stratum of New England. Hirshler
delves into challenges specific to female artists, thus marrying
art history with social history and appealing to a wider audience.
Abundant illustrations, artists' biographies, and extensive footnotes
make this essential for academic libraries specializing in art history.
—Rebecca Tolley-Stokes, East Tennessee State Univ., Johnson
City Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Abby Remer's Pioneering Spirits: The Life And Times Of Remarkable
Women Artists In Western History showcases a surprising and
fascinating history of women as artists from prehistory to the modern
times. Readers will be introduced to Greek and Roman female painters
of antiquity, nuns and female lay illuminators of sacred medieval
manuscripts, and Renaissance heroines and creators of art with unconventional
power, conviction, and talent. Pioneering Spirits reveals
their struggles and achievements, and offers much that is applicable
contemporary issues facing women arts down through the ages to the
present day. Pioneering Spirits will prove informative and invaluable
for students of art history, women's studies, and cultural mores
as reflected in and by the female artist.
The Life and Work of Sarah Purser by John O'Grady, Intl
Specialized Book Service Irish Academic Pr, Sarah Purser –
Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Four Courts Press (September 1,
1996)
Sarah Purser (March 22, 1848 - August 7, 1943) was an Irish artist.
She studied in Paris at the Atelier Julian and worked mostly as
a portraitist, through her own talent and energy, and through her
friendship with the Gore-Booths she was very successful in obtaining
commission, she herself famously commented "I went through
the British aristocracy like the measles."
However, Bruce Arnold (1977) notes "some of her finest and
most sensitive work was not strictly portraiture, for example, An
Irish Idyll in the Ulster Museum, and Le Petit Déjeuner
[in the National Gallery of Ireland ]"
Sarah Purser became very wealthy through astute investments, particularily
in Guinness. She was very active in the art world in Dublin and
was involved in the setting up of the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery,
she was the one who persuaded the Irish government to give over
Charlemont House for that purpose. She was also associated with
the stain glass movement founding a stained-glass workshop, An Túr
Gloine in 1903. In 1923 she became the first female member of the
Royal Hibernian Academy.
The work of western women artists, past and present, is collected
here in a stunning array of forms: fiction, poetry, autobiography,
essay, journal and letter writing, sculpture, painting, graphics,
photography, ceramics, needlework, music, and dance. The unique
experience of women artists from diverse national, ethnic, racial,
and economic backgrounds is explored from their own viewpoints,
as are the important relationships between women's social condition
and women's art.
Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Academie Julian
by Dahesh Museum (Corporate Author), Sterling and Francine Clark
Art Institute (Corporate Author), Dixon Gallery and Gardens (Corporate
Author), Jane R. Becker (Editor), Gabriel P. Weisberg (Editor) –
Paperback: 146 pages Publisher: Rutgers University Press (October
1999)
This volume introduces with aplomb a recently discovered, otherwise
unknown treasure trove of archives and works of 19th-century art
to a wider general public. These records, artworks, and caricatures
survived in the Acad?mie Julian Del Debbio, the successor to the
famous 19th-century Paris Acad?mie Julian. Since women could not
study at the official state Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Académie
Julian was virtually the only art educational institution available
to them. The catalog of a traveling exhibition organized by the
Dahesh Museum in New York, this work contains over 90 small illustrations
drawn from the archives. Most are paintings and drawings by unknown
or little-known women artists and will be studied today more for
historical than aesthetic reasons. Catherine Fehrer writes of her
search and recovery of the documents, Weisberg contributes an essay
on the women of the Acad?mie Julian, Becker writes of the rivalry
between Marie Bashkirtseff and Louise Breslau, and Tamar Garb provides
discourse on gendering and art education. It is not overstatement
to say this book is invaluable and the exhibition is not to be missed.
—Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson Univ., MD Copyright 1999 Reed
Business Information, Inc.
Tate Women Artists by Alicia Foster – Paperback:
272 pages Publisher: Tate (June 15, 2004)
The Tate collection contains works by more than 200 women artists
spanning five centuries. In this celebration of the history of women's
creative endeavor, Alicia Foster discusses the changes in the position
of women artists from the 17th century, when they received little
recognition, to the present-day art world, which encompasses a dazzling
array of women painters, sculptors, conceptual artists, and video-
and filmmakers. The author shows how artists as diverse as Angelica
Kauffmann and Cindy Sherman share a concern with feminine identity
and representation. Tate Women Artists makes an important contribution
to one of the most hotly debated areas of art history.
Dictionary
of Women Artists (Two Volume Set) by Delia Gaze – Library
Binding: 1600 pages Publisher: Routledge; 1st edition (July 1, 1997)
Incomparably rich, monumental, and up to date, these two volumes
present the finest scholarship on women in art "from the Middle
Ages to the present day, in countries throughout Europe as well
as America and Australia." More than 20 key survey essays preface
the main body of the dictionary and contextualize the latest knowledge
found in the biographical and bibliographical entries of 600 women
artists born before 1945. Twenty-three specialist advisers and 330
contributing scholars have amassed the most unqualifiedly comprehensive
work yet completed on women artists (with an admittedly Anglo-American
emphasis, owing to the many studies in these areas). This work should
be available to all who hope to teach the nuanced history of art
as it is known today; others interested in women's studies should
at least read the essay "Why a Dictionary of Women Artists
at This Time?" One of the finest publications on women artists
since Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin's Women Artists: 1850-1950
(LJ 5/1/77), the first really substantial publication in this area,
this indispensable set belongs on all library reference shelves.
—Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson State Univ., Md. Copyright
1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
According to the ethos of the late 1800s and early 1900s, a woman’s
natural destiny was to be a wife, mother, and guardian of the virtues
of hearth and home. Some women wanted more, however, and despite
cultural expectations chose to explore their creativity and seek
training in art. Often at considerable social cost these women exchanged
washboards, ovens, and mending baskets for the challenges of a piece
of canvas or block of stone.
In Skirting the Issue, authors Judith Vale Newton and
Carol Ann Weiss present dozens of women from Indiana who chose this
route. The authors include a biographical dictionary detailing the
lives of one hundred of the state’s historical women artists,
and they single out nearly forty of them for further examination
in detailed essays. They describe the challenges the artists faced,
the sacrifices they had to make, and the varying degrees of success
they met, and they present numerous examples of the artists’
work. While this first-of-a-kind book focuses on Indiana women specifically,
its stories offer excellent insights into the culture and values
of the greater Midwest—and the nation at large—in the
decades before and after the turn of the twentieth century.
Skirting the Issue includes more than two hundred images, including
full-color reproductions of artworks and black-and-white photographs
of the artists themselves.
Why are women artists of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque so
relatively unknown today when, during their lifetimes, their artistic
merits were celebrated by their foremost contemporaries? Italian
Women Artists of the Renaissance and Baroque aims to provide
the first survey of women professionally active as painters, engravers
and sculptors in 16th and 17th century Italy, and to document the
sociocultural context that contributed to shape their lives and
oeuvres. This catalogue, published in association with the travelling
exhibition which opens at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
in Washington D. C., examines the artistic practices and achievements
of these remarkable women who managed to gain public, if not international,
acclaim. Featuring 60 outstanding works by a dozen of the foremost
Italian female artists, this volume offers an unparalleled opportunity
to understand their social, personal, and stylistic developments.
This scholarly publication will undoubtedly make a significant contribution
to the re-emergence of these women as artists of stature and thus
constitute a new departure for historical investigations into the
way gender has affected how we perceive works of art and into issues
of attributions and art market economics.
The women in Impressionist painting represent the full spectrum
of faces of the 19th-century woman, from elite portraiture to
working class scenes. Women and Impressionism examines
the avant-garde position of the Impressionists, whose paintings
depicted a series of conceptual and historical shifts by depicting
traditional, visual schemes with added new meanings, contributing
visually to the breakthrough of the modern. The concept of "the
new woman" came into existence in this confrontation of
conflicting interests.Women and Impressionism begins
with an examination of two works by Manet—La Maîtresse
de Baudelaire couchée, 1862, and Portrait de Zacharie
Astruc, 1866. The volume then traces the representation
of women as it manifested in the work of the Impressionists
in the 1870s and the early 1880s. The exhibition catalog includes
a number of works from the New York Carlsberg Glyptotek collection
as well as from prestigious international private and public
institutions.
Lilla Cabot Perry: An American Impressionist by Meredith Martindale,
Pamela Moffat, Nancy Mowll Mathews – Paperback: 164 pages
Publisher: Cross River Press; Reissue edition (March 1, 1995)
Reader review: As highlighted in the this book's essay
by Nancy Mowll Mathews, Lilla Cabot Perry's story and work provide
an interesting comparison to Mary Cassatt. Whereas Cassatt,
Cecilia Beaux and several other 19th century women painters
chose never to marry, some, like Berthe Morisot and Lilla Cabot
Perry did manage to marry, raise children, and maintain a professional
level of focus on their art.
This book contains many color plates of Lilla Cabot Perry's
work: her portraits of her husband and three daughters, and
her self portraits, as well as her landscapes. Ironically, she
(like Sargent and others) were glad to be able to stop painting
portraits and concentrate on landscapes. The examples in this
book suggest that the portraits were by far the best of Perry's
work.
A single-volume "virtual archive" of amazing proportions
and precision by two dedicated scholars, this well-illustrated
and meticulously documented concise biographical dictionary
covers over 1000 women artists, mostly unknown. With few exceptions,
these individuals are not covered by the Dictionary of Women
Artists (LJ 12/97). The multitude of adventurous, mostly
U.S. women painters, graphic artists, and sculptors presented
here worked in or created images of the 17 westernmost contiguous
American states from 1840 to 1980. Research for this volume,
which took 20 years, included extensive interviews and the investigation
of original documents, obituaries, and grave markers. The results
reveals a commonality of lifestyle patterns, education, exhibition
history, and so on. Many of the artists were peripatetic?Helen
Chain (1849-92), called "Trot" by family members for
her love of travel and mountain climbing, was lost at sea during
a typhoon in the China Sea. There is no resource like this.
Highly recommended wherever art reference is in demand. —Mary
Hamel-Schwulst, Towson Univ., Millersville, MD
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
It is everything we might have wished: passionate yet lucid,
clear yet complex, deeply researched yet not pedantic. It is
a book that explains, better than any I have ever read, the
psychological, economic and even aesthetic reasons for the virtually
unchallenged patriarchalism of all our artistic establishments.
—Erica Jong
This reference organizes and describes the primary and secondary
literature surrounding Mary Stevenson Cassatt, Berthe Morisot,
Eva Gonzales, and Marie Bracquemond, four major women
Impressionist artists. The Impressionist group included several
women artists of considerable ability whose works and lives
were largely ignored until the advent of feminist art criticism
in the early 1970s. They studied, worked, and exhibited with
their male counterparts including Degas, Manet, Monet, and Pissarro.
The entries provide extensive coverage of the careers, critical
reception, exhibition history, and growing reputations of these
four female artists and discuss women Impressionists in general
as they shared the challenges of becoming accepted as professional
artists in late 19th-century society. Containing nearly 900
citations of manuscripts, books, articles, reproductions, films,
exhibitions, and reviews, this unique sourcebook will appeal
to both art and women's studies scholars. Each artist receives
a biographical sketch, chronology, information about individual
and group exhibitions and reviews, and a primary and secondary
bibliography, which captures details about the artist's life,
career, and relationship with other artists. An art works index
and names index complete the volume.
Note: I was unfamiliar with the work of Eva Gonzales, but then
found I had saved a painting of hers years ago, which I fine very
beautiful:
The Philadelphia Ten was a group of women painters and sculptors,
who showed their work together between 1917 and 1945 in Philadelphia,
as well as in other major East Coast and Midwest cities. All members
of the group (a total of 30) studied art in the schools of Philadelphia,
primarily the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the Pennsylvania
Academy. Among the best known of the group are Fern Coppedge, M.
Elizabeth Price, and Harriet Frishmuth. The book acompanies a travelling
exhibition of the same name.
Great Women Masters of Art
by Jordi Vigue – Paperback: 480 pages Publisher: Watson-Guptill
Publications (April 1, 2003)
An entertaining, informative, and inspirational look at the greatest
women artists of all time! The latest entry in the new Great Masters
of Art series, Great Women Masters of Art is an affordable, easy-to-use
guide featuring the life and work of the greatest women painters
of Western art-from the 15th century to the present day. Legendary
women painters of each key historical movement are included, such
as Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster,
Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Gwen John, Frida Kahlo, and dozens
more. Each artist is represented by several impressive reproductions
of her most significant works, alongside a biographical timeline
and brief history of her life and career. Every dazzling, full-color
reproduction includes cultural and aesthetic discussions about the
individual painting. Plus, entertaining anecdotes and stories bring
each woman's inspirations, circumstances, and creative genius to
life. This one-stop guide is appealing, compact, lavishly illustrated,
and conveniently organized for fast and easy use. Great Women
Masters of Art is an enjoyable trip for all.
Women
Artists (Icons) by Elke Linda Buchholz – Hardcover:
128 pages Publisher: Prestel Publishing (November 2003) by Elke
Linda Buchholz
Sacramento Bee, November 2003: A useful survey of the work
of famous female artists from the 16th century to the present day.
This collection of 15 women artists opens an appealing portal into
the male-dominated Russian art world of the past few centuries.
Pomeroy, curator of painting and sculpture at the National Museum
of Women in the Arts, and Blakesley, a lecturer in art history at
Cambridge, avoid the trap of arbitrarily grouping these women for
the sake of a solid theme. Instead, they provide running biographical
narratives for the painters, the sitters and the society they inhabited,
arranged in more or less chronological sections covering 18th- and
19th-century works. The full-color images feature a multitude of
women in satin and curls, but the often generic-seeming portraits
have a complex iconography that the authors carefully unpack. Published
to coincide with St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary, the detailed
histories of these women reexamine the cultural life of the city
by tracing the paths these works took on their way to the Hermitage.
Readers learn that Christina Robertson ate a cold breakfast and
refused a full luncheon while painting, and how much she was paid
for her portrait of the Grand Duchess Alexandra Nikolaevna (1,572
rubles). Also included is Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, Marie-Antionette's
favorite painter, who later escaped the French Revolution, ending
up in St. Petersburg, and Angelica Kauffman, who never actually
lived in Russia, but whose work Russian Emperor Paul I collected.
As the first book to put these women artists, largely unkown to
U.S. aficionados, side by side, it offers a broad picture of a significant
group of artists boldly working within (or with an eye toward) Mother
Russia. —Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Borzello traces women's self-portraits across eight centuries,
deftly weaving together art and social history, the biographies
of many women artists, and a wide selection of paintings, prints,
and photographs by women. While some of the pieces are primarily
of historical interest, there are some stunning works here,
including period works by such accomplished painters as Artemisia
Gentileschi and Rosalba Carriera and modern works by such little
known but talented painters as Zinaida Serebryakova and Lotte
Laserstein, and paintings by such familiar figures as Frida
Kahol and Paula Modersohn-Racker.
Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists by Jan Marsh, Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Manchester
City Art Gallery – Paperback, 160 pages (April 1, 1999)
Thames & Hudson
The work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their followers
is enduringly popular and correspondingly familiar to a wide
public. Works by women artists within the Pre-Raphaelite style
have, however, largely been forgotten and ignored in the history
of the movement. This book, published to accompany an exhibition
in Manchester, England, brings together paintings, drawings,
photographs, and other works that women contributed to the Pre-Raphaelite
movement. Many are reproduced and documented here for the first
time. Spanning three generations from the 1840s to the early
1900s, the artists include Barbara Bodichon, Anna Howitt, Rosa
Brett, Anna Blunden, Jane Benham Hay, Joanna Boyce, Elizabeth
Siddal, Rebecca Solomon, Emma Sandys, Julia Margaret Cameron,
Lucy and Catherine Madox Brown, Marie Spartali Stillman, Maria
Zambaco, Francesca Alexander, Evelyn De Morgan, Kate Bunce,
Marianne Stokes, Christina Herringham, and Eleanor Fortescue
Brickdale. Their works demonstrate that Pre-Raphaelitism is
a broader historical movement than has previously been recognized
and that women were active in all its phases. Their re-inclusion
in Pre-Raphaelite history will redefine its scope, concerns,
and achievements, as well as restore a wealth of neglected works
to public attention.
Thousands of women pursued artistic careers in the United States
during the late nineteenth century. According to census figures,
the number of women among the ranks of professional artists
rose from 10 percent to nearly 50 percent between 1870 and 1890.
Examining the effects of this change, Kirsten Swinth explores
how women's growing presence in the American art world transformed
both its institutions and its ideology.
Swinth traces the careers of women painters in New York, Philadelphia,
and Boston, opening and closing her book with discussion of the
two most famous women artists of the period--Mary Cassatt and Georgia
O'Keeffe. Perhaps surprisingly, Swinth shows that in the 1870s and
1880s men and women easily crossed the boundaries separating conventionally
masculine and feminine artistic territories to compete with each
other as well as to join forces to professionalize art training,
manage a fluid and unpredictable art market, and shape the language
of art criticism. By the 1890s, however, women artists faced a backlash.
Ultimately, Swinth argues, these gender contests spilled beyond
the world of art to shape twentieth-century understandings of high
culture and the formation of modernism in profound ways.
Self-portraiture has long been a means for the male artist to assert
an identity as masterful creator or tortured soul; women have overwhelmingly
been presented as objects, and rarely as subjects of self-portraiture.
In recent years, however, women artists have used their work to
disrupt this tradition.
With 43 illustrations of works by Louise Bourgeois, Frida Kahlo,
Alice Neel, Cindy Sherman, and Jo Spence, among others, The Art
of Reflection is the first sustained inquiry into the appropriation
of self-portraiture by women. In suggestive critical meditations
on paintings, photographic work, sculpture, performance art, and
body art, Marsha Meskimmon shows how twentieth-century women artists
have undermined male-centered definitions of how "the artist"
depicts the self.
Drawing upon feminist theory and philosophy from Simone de Beauvoir
to Luce Irigaray, The Art of Reflection casts doubt on the
idea of self-portrait as a mirror, in which the static self is rendered
accurately and naturalistically. Meskimmon evokes a series of myths
about what an artist is, how "he" should be represented,
and how "his" work is to be read as autobiography. Through
close readings of the imaginative self-representations of women
artists—as male artist and god, as central player in the studio
and in the Christian passion- she shatters these myths.
In an absorbing assessment of the ways women artists have negotiated
the complex group of roles ascribed to "woman," Meskimmon
considers the partially nude painting by pregnant artist Paula Modersohn-Becker
and performance artist Annie Sprinkle's confrontation of the thin
line between celebration of female sexuality and objectification
of the female body.
As a nuanced appreciation of the interpretations of self-portraiture
among women artists, The Art of Reflection will prove an
invaluable resource on a subject that has received little attention
from art criticism. Meskimmon's work also presents a bold challenge
to critical tradition, compelling readers to rethink the meaning
of the genre as a whole.
Thanks to the breadth of her textual analyses and the insightful
questions she poses throughout, Jacobs offers a richly illuminating
reading of the construction of the Renaissance woman artist. In
turn, the book provides a welcome context for several worthy but
more narrowly focused critical studies on related subjects whose
contents she integrates into her own narrative....a considerable
achievement in having uncovered and woven together a complex of
ideas that expands consequentially our view of artistic activity
in Early Modern Italy. —Leslie Korrick, Sixteenth Century
Jrnl
A historical perspective on current issues, such as gender and class,
is applied to art education and rendered through the study of two
specific institutions, the Female School of Design in London and
the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. Sweeping generalizations
are avoided as women's history, intertwined with men's, unfolds
in two cities on opposite continents. Women's struggles against
male domination and prejudice to define for themselves art education
for work provides the common theme uniting the social issues explored.
Through this unique examination of the relationship between the
two schools, women's place in British and American art education
is reclaimed. The specific focus on two art and design schools should
appeal to social, education and art scholars and historians as well
as to students and researchers interested in women's and gender
studies. The relationship between the two schools of art and design
has never been fully explored. This new study of women's art education,
through the lens of these two schools, is particularly engaging
and provoking in light of its male authorhip.
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Angelica
Kauffmann: A Woman of Immense Talent
Women Artists: An Illustrated History
A World of Our Own
Mirror, Mirror: Self-Portraits by Women Artists
Women Artists
Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945
A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870-1940
The Life and Work of Sarah Purser
In Her Own Image: Women Working in the Arts
by Claudio Strinati, Jordana Pomeroy – Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Skira (May 15, 2007) 
Lilla Cabot Perry: An American Impressionist
The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their
Work
The Women Impressionists: A Sourcebook (Art Reference Collection)
The Philadelphia Ten: A Women's Artist Group 1917-1945 
Great Women Masters of Art
Lavinia
Fontana: A Painter and Her Patrons in Sixteenth-century Bologna
Seeing Ourselves: Women's
Cecilia Beaux and the Art of Portraiture
Women Artists: The National Museum of Women in the Arts
Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists
