Women artists have been involved in making art in most times and places. Often certain certain media are associated with women, particularly textile art

Textile art

Textile art may refer to:*Any one of the textile arts, those arts and crafts that use plant, animal, or synthetic fibers to construct practical or decorative objects*Fiber art, the creation of fine art using textile arts techniques and materials...

s; however, these gender roles in art change in different cultures and communities. Many art forms dominated by women have been historically dismissed from the art historical canon as craft

Craft

A craft is a branch of a profession that requires some particular kind of skilled work. In historical sense, particularly as pertinent to the Medieval history and earlier, the term is usually applied towards people occupied in small-scale production of goods.-Development from the past until...

, as opposed to fine art

Fine art

Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....

.

Women artists faced challenges due to gender biases in the mainstream fine art world. They have often encountered difficulties in training, travelling and trading their work, and gaining recognition.

Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, feminist artists and art historians created a Feminist art movement

Feminist art movement

The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to make art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and reception of contemporary art. It also sought to bring more visibility to women within...

, that overtly addresses the role of women in the art world and explores women in art history

Art history

Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...

.

Prehistoric era

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 principal 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.

India

"For about three thousand years, the women – and only the women – of Mithila

Mithila

Mithila was a city in Ancient India, the capital of the Videha Kingdom. The name Mithila is also commonly used to refer to the Videha Kingdom itself, as well as to the modern-day territories that fall within the ancient boundaries of Videha...

 have been making devotional paintings of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon. It is no exaggeration, then, to say that this art is the expression of the most genuine aspect of Indian civilization."

Classical Europe and the Middle East

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

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

, Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

, and Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

 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

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

 wrote about a number of Greek women who were painters, including Helena of Egypt, daughter of Timon of Egypt, Some modern critics posit that Battle of Issus

Battle of Issus

The Battle of Issus occurred in southern Anatolia, in November 333 BC. The invading troops, led by the young Alexander of Macedonia, defeated the army personally led by Darius III of Achaemenid Persia in the second great battle for primacy in Asia...

might not have been the work of Philoxenus

Philoxenus

Philoxenus or Philoxenos is the name of several prominent ancient Greeks:*Philoxenus of Cythera, an ancient Greek dithyrambic poet*Philoxenus of Leucas, a legendary glutton*King Philoxenus, an Indo-Greek king...

, but of Helena of Egypt. One of the few named women painters who might have worked in Ancient Greece, she was reputed to have produced a painting of the battle of Issus which hung in the Temple of Peace during the time of Vespasian

Vespasian

Vespasian , was Roman Emperor from 69 AD to 79 AD. Vespasian was the founder of the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Empire for a quarter century. Vespasian was descended from a family of equestrians, who rose into the senatorial rank under the Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty...

. Other women include Timarete

Timarete

Timarete , was an ancient Greek painter. She is the daughter of the painter Micon the Younger of Athens. According to Pliny the Elder, she "scorned the duties of women and practised her father's art." At the time of Archelaus I of Macedon she was best known for a panel painting of the goddess of...

, Eirene, Kalypso, Aristarete, Iaia

Iaia

Iaia of Cyzicus was a Roman painter, alive during the time of Marcus Terentius Varro .She was a famous painter and ivory engraver. Most of her paintings are said to be of women. Among pictures ascribed to her was a large panel, in Naples, picture of an old woman and a self-portrait...

, and Olympias. While only some of their work survives, in Ancient Greek pottery

Red-figure pottery

Red-figure vase painting is one of the most important styles of figural Greek vase painting. It developed in Athens around 530 BC and remained in use until the late 3rd century BC. It replaced the previously dominant style of Black-figure vase painting within a few decades...

 there is a caputi hydria in The Torno Collection in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

  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 period

Artists from the Medieval period include Claricia

Claricia

Claricia or Clarica was a 13th century illuminator. She included a self-portrait in a South German psalter of c. 1200, now in the The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. In the self-portrait, she depicts herself as swinging from the tail of a letter Q...

, Diemudus, Ende

Ende (artist)

Ende This female manuscript illuminator worked on a 10th century group of manuscripts, of which there are 24 known copies with illustrations. These manuscripts contain the Commentary on the Apocalypse compiled by the Spanish monk Beatus of Liébana in 786...

, Guda

Guda

Guda was a 12th century nun and illuminator. She created a self-portrait in an initial letter in a Homeliary...

, Herrade of Landsberg and Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen

Blessed Hildegard of Bingen , also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and...

.

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

Opus Anglicanum

Opus Anglicanum or English work is a contemporary term for fine needlework of Medieval England done for ecclesiastical or secular use on clothing, hangings or other textiles, often using gold and silver threads on rich velvet or linen grounds...

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

Bayeux Tapestry

The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth—not an actual tapestry—nearly long, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings...

, of cloth embroidered with wool

Wool

Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

 that is 230 feet long and which narrates the Battle of Hastings

Battle of Hastings

The Battle of Hastings occurred on 14 October 1066 during the Norman conquest of England, between the Norman-French army of Duke William II of Normandy and the English army under King Harold II...

 and the Norman Conquest of England

Norman conquest of England

The Norman conquest of England began on 28 September 1066 with the invasion of England by William, Duke of Normandy. William became known as William the Conqueror after his victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, defeating King Harold II 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

Tower of London

Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the City of London by the open space...

, and there may have been other earlier arrangements.

Manuscript illumination affords us many of the named artists of the Medieval Period including Ende

Ende (artist)

Ende This female manuscript illuminator worked on a 10th century group of manuscripts, of which there are 24 known copies with illustrations. These manuscripts contain the Commentary on the Apocalypse compiled by the Spanish monk Beatus of Liébana in 786...

, a 10th century Spanish nun; Guda

Guda

Guda was a 12th century nun and illuminator. She created a self-portrait in an initial letter in a Homeliary...

, a 12th century German nun; Claricia

Claricia

Claricia or Clarica was a 13th century illuminator. She included a self-portrait in a South German psalter of c. 1200, now in the The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. In the self-portrait, she depicts herself as swinging from the tail of a letter Q...

, 12th 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 11th 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 Pagan Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

, there was a female runemaster

Runemaster

A runemaster or runecarver is a specialist in making runestones.Most early medieval Scandinavians were probably literate in runes, and most people probably carved messages on pieces of bone and wood. However, it was difficult to make runestones, and in order to master it one also needed to be a...

, who is the only historically confirmed female runemaster in Sweden; her name was Frögärd i Ösby

Frögärd i Ösby

thumb|150px|right|[[Uppland Runic Inscription 194|U 194]] in Väsby has been attributed to Frögärd.Frögärd Ulvsdotter i Ösby , was a Swedish Viking age runemaster...

 working ca. 1000–1017.

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

Hildegard of Bingen

Blessed Hildegard of Bingen , also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and...

.

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen

Blessed Hildegard of Bingen , also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and...

 (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

Scivias

Scivias is an illustrated work by Hildegard von Bingen, completed in 1151 or 1152, describing 26 religious visions she experienced. It is the first of three works that she wrote describing her visions, the others being Liber vitae meritorum and De operatione Dei...

(Know the Ways of the Lord), which consists of thirty-five visions relating and illustrating the history of salvation. The illustrations in the Scivias

Scivias

Scivias is an illustrated work by Hildegard von Bingen, completed in 1151 or 1152, describing 26 religious visions she experienced. It is the first of three works that she wrote describing her visions, the others being Liber vitae meritorum and De operatione Dei...

, as exemplified in the first illustration, showing Hildegarde experiencing visions while seated in the monastery at Bingen

Bingen am Rhein

Bingen am Rhein is a town in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.The settlement’s original name was Bingium, a Celtic word that may have meant “hole in the rock”, a description of the shoal behind the Mäuseturm, known as the Binger Loch. Bingen was the starting point for the...

, 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 12th 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

The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...

is one such case. During this time, women also were allowed to be part of some artisan guild

Guild

A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...

s. 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 manuscript

Illuminated manuscript

An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...

s 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

Printing

Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....

, and of book illustration to the printmaking

Printmaking

Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...

 techniques of woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

 and engraving

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

, where women seem to have been little involved, represented a setback to the progress of women artists.

Renaissance

Artists from the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 era include Sofonisba Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.-The Anguissola family:...

, Lucia Anguissola

Lucia Anguissola

Lucia Anguissola was an Italian mannerist painter.Very little is known about Lucia’s life. No birth records remain, although her death has been traditionally dated to 1565. Few of Lucia’s paintings are known and only two extant are signed.Born in Cremona, Italy...

, Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana was an Italian painter.-Biography:Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna, the daughter of the painter Prospero Fontana, who was a prominent painter of the School of Bologna at the time and served as her teacher...

, Fede Galizia

Fede Galizia

Fede Galizia was an Italian Renaissance painter, a pioneer of the still life genre.- Life:Fede Gallizi, better known as Galizia, was born in Milan in 1578. Her father, Nunzio Galizia, also a painter of miniatures, had moved to Milan from Trento. Fede learned to paint from him...

, Diana Scultori Ghisi

Diana Scultori Ghisi

Diana Scultori Ghisi was an Italian artist, also known under the name Diana Mantovana.The Renaissance is the first time period where women artists gained international reputations. Perhaps this growth of art among women was due to cultural shifts, such as a move towards humanism, there were many...

, Catarina van Hemessen

Catarina van Hemessen

Caterina van Hemessen was a Flemish Renaissance painter. She is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom there is verifiable extant work, and is known for a series of small scale female portraits completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s.While not an especially gifted artist, Van...

, Esther Inglis

Esther Inglis

Esther Inglis was a Scottish miniaturist, embroiderer, calligrapher, translator and writer. Of Huguenot origin , her family had escaped to Scotland to escape persecution...

, Barbara Longhi

Barbara Longhi

Barbara Longhi was an Italian painter. She was much admired in her lifetime as a portraitist, although most of her portraits are now lost or unattributed...

, Maria Ormani, Marietta Robusti

Marietta Robusti

Marietta Robusti was a female Venetian painter of the Renaissance period. She is one of very few known female artists of this period, a group that included Sofonisba Anguissola, Lucia Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Diana Scultori Ghisi.-Biography:The only known primary source for details of...

 (daughter of Tintoretto), Properzia de' Rossi

Properzia de' Rossi

Properzia de' Rossi was an Italian female Renaissance sculptor. This daughter of a notary studied under the Bolognese artist and master engraver Marcantonio Raimondi, who is best known today for his engravings of the paintings by Raphael....

, Levina Teerlinc

Levina Teerlinc

Levina Teerlinc was a Flemish miniaturist who served as a painter to the English court of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I....

, Mayken Verhulst

Mayken Verhulst

Mayken Verhulst was a sixteenth-century miniature, tempera and watercolor painter, identified by Lodovico Guicciardini in 1567 as one of the most important female artists in the Low Countries.-Life:Mayken Verhulst was born in Mechelen in 1518...

, and St. Catherine of Bologna (Caterina dei Vigri)

Catherine of Bologna

Saint Catherine of Bologna, O.S.C. was an Italian nun, artist and saint.The patron saint of artists and against temptations, Catherine de'Vigri was venerated for nearly three centuries in her native Bologna before being formally canonized, in 1712...

,

This is the first period in Western history in which a number of secular female artists gained 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

Humanism

Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

, a philosophy affirming the dignity of all people, that became central to Renaissance thinking and helped raise the status of women. In addition, the identity of the individual artist in general was regarded as more important; significant artists whose identity is unknown virtually cease from this period.

Two important texts, On Famous Women and The City of Women, illustrate this cultural change. Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...

, a 14th century humanist, wrote De mulieribus claris

De mulieribus claris

De mulieribus claris is a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, first published in 1374. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature...

(Latin for On Famous Women) (1135–59) which was a collection of biographies of women. Among the 104 biographies he included was that of Thamar

Thamar

Thamar Angelina Komnene was a member of the ruling house of the Despotate of Epirus and later Princess of Taranto as wife of Prince Philip I.-Family:...

 (or Thmyris), an ancient Greek vase painter. Curiously, among the 15th 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

Christine de Pizan

Christine de Pizan was a Venetian-born late medieval author who challenged misogyny and stereotypes prevalent in the male-dominated medieval culture. As a poet, she was well known and highly regarded in her own day; she completed 41 works during her 30 year career , and can be regarded as...

, who was a remarkable late medieval French 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 considered 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 16th century Italian humanist Baldassare Castiglione

Baldassare Castiglione

Baldassare Castiglione, count of was an Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and a prominent Renaissance author.-Biography:Castiglione was born into an illustrious Lombard family at Casatico, near Mantua, where his family had constructed an impressive palazzo...

. 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

Sofonisba Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.-The Anguissola family:...

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

Artists who were not noblewomen were affected by the rise in humanism as well.
In addition to conventional subject matter, artists such as Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana was an Italian painter.-Biography:Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna, the daughter of the painter Prospero Fontana, who was a prominent painter of the School of Bologna at the time and served as her teacher...

 and Catarina van Hemessen

Catarina van Hemessen

Caterina van Hemessen was a Flemish Renaissance painter. She is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom there is verifiable extant work, and is known for a series of small scale female portraits completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s.While not an especially gifted artist, Van...

 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. Artists, unlike earlier craftsmen, were now expected to have knowledge of perspective, mathematics, ancient art, and study of the human body. In the late Renaissance the training of artists began to move from the master's workshop to the Academy

Academic art

Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism,...

, and women began a long struggle, not resolved until the late 19th century, to gain full access to this training.

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

Although many aristocratic women had access to some training in art, though 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 15th 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

Suor Barbara Ragnoni

Suor Barbara Ragnoni was a fifteenth century artist for whom only one work remains extant. Her signed painting, The Adoration of the Shepherds, is now in the Pinacoeteca of Siena. The style of the painting, with its warm colors, is very much in keeping with the late quattrocento style....

. During the 15th and 16th 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

Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana was an Italian painter.-Biography:Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna, the daughter of the painter Prospero Fontana, who was a prominent painter of the School of Bologna at the time and served as her teacher...

, miniature portraitist Levina Teerlinc

Levina Teerlinc

Levina Teerlinc was a Flemish miniaturist who served as a painter to the English court of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I....

, and portrait painter Catarina van Hemessen

Catarina van Hemessen

Caterina van Hemessen was a Flemish Renaissance painter. She is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom there is verifiable extant work, and is known for a series of small scale female portraits completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s.While not an especially gifted artist, Van...

. 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 more common for children of both genders to enter into their father's profession. In fact, in the Low Countries where women had more freedom, there were a number of artists in the Renaissance who were women. For example, the records of the Guild of Saint Luke

Guild of Saint Luke

The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of artists, who was identified by John of Damascus as having painted the...

 in Bruges

Bruges

Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....

 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 (many probably working as manuscript illuminators).

Baroque era

Artists from the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 era include: Mary Beale

Mary Beale

Mary Beale was an English portrait painter. She became one of the most important portrait painters of 17th century England, and has been described as the first professional female English painter.-Life and work:...

, Élisabeth Sophie Chéron

Élisabeth Sophie Chéron

Élisabeth Sophie Chéron is remembered today primarily as a French painter, but she was acclaimed in her lifetime as a gifted poet, musician, artist, and academicienne.-Life:...

, Maria Theresa van Thielen

Maria Theresa van Thielen

Maria Theresia van Thielen was a Flemish Baroque painter.-Biography:Maria van Thielen was born into an artistic patrician family. According to Houbraken, she competed with her sisters Anna Maria and Francoise Katharina and was very successful. The sister Anna may well have been her aunt Anna,...

, Isabel de Cisneros, Giovanna Garzoni

Giovanna Garzoni

Giovanna Garzoni was an Italian painter of the Baroque era. She was unusual for Italian artists of thetime for two reasons: first, in that her themes were mainly decorative and luscious still-lifes of fruits, vegetables, and flowers, and second, because she was a woman.Garzoni was born in Ascoli...

 Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Early Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation influenced by Caravaggio...

, Judith Leyster

Judith Leyster

Judith Jans Leyster was a Dutch Golden Age painter. She was one of three significant women artists in Dutch Golden Age painting; the other two, Rachel Ruysch and Maria van Oosterwijk, were specialized painters of flower still-lifes, while Leyster painted genre works, a few portraits, and a...

, Maria Sibylla Merian

Maria Sibylla Merian

Maria Sibylla Merian was a naturalist and scientific illustrator who studied plants and insects and made detailed paintings about them...

, Louise Moillon

Louise Moillon

Louise Moillon was a French painter in the Baroque era. She became known as one of the best female still life painters during her time, and worked for King Charles I of England, as well as the French nobility.-Biography:...

, Josefa de Ayala

Josefa de Óbidos

Josefa de Óbidos was a Spanish-born, Portuguese painter from the seventeenth century. Her birth name was Josefa de Ayala Figueira, but she signed her work as, "Josefa em Óbidos" or, "Josefa de Ayalla". She is one of the relatively few female European painters known to have been active in the...

 better known as Josefa de Óbidos, Maria van Oosterwijk

Maria van Oosterwijk

Maria van Oosterwijk, also spelled Oosterwijck or Oosterwyck , was a Dutch Baroque painter, specializing in richly detailed still lifes.-Biography:...

, Magdalena de Passe

Van de Passe family

Crispijn van de Passe the Elder, or de Passe was a Dutch publisher and engraver and founder of a dynasty of engravers comparable to the Wierix family and the Sadelers, though mostly at a more mundane commercial level...

, Clara Peeters

Clara Peeters

Clara Peeters was a Flemish painter noted for painting still lifes, particularly of breakfast scenes and florals.-Life:Few details of her life are known. She was baptized in Antwerp in 1594, and married there in 1639. She is known to have lived in Amsterdam and The Hague. Her first known work was...

, Luisa Roldán

Luisa Roldán

Luisa Ignacia Roldán , called La Roldana, was a Spanish sculptress of the Baroque Era. She is the first woman sculptor documented in Spain....

 known as La Roldana, Rachel Ruysch

Rachel Ruysch

Rachel Ruysch was a Dutch artist who specialized in still-life paintings of flowers, one of only three significant women artists in Dutch Golden Age painting, of whom Maria van Oosterwijk was also a flower painter, and Judith Leyster mainly not .She was born in The...

 and Elisabetta Sirani

Elisabetta Sirani

Elisabetta Sirani was an Italian Baroque painter whose father was the painter Giovanni Andrea Sirani of the School of Bologna-Biography:...

.

As in the Renaissance Period, many women among the Baroque artists came from artist families. Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Early Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation influenced by Caravaggio...

 is an excellent example of this. She was trained by her father, Orazio Gentileschi

Orazio Gentileschi

Orazio Lomi Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter, one of more important painters influenced by Caravaggio...

, and she worked alongside him on many of his commissions. Luisa Roldán

Luisa Roldán

Luisa Ignacia Roldán , called La Roldana, was a Spanish sculptress of the Baroque Era. She is the first woman sculptor documented in Spain....

 was trained in her father's (Pedro Roldán

Pedro Roldán

Pedro Roldán was a Baroque sculptor from Seville, Andalusia, Spain. His daughter Luisa Roldán, known as La Roldana, was also a major figure of Spanish Baroque sculpture.- Life :...

) sculpture workshop.

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

Elisabetta Sirani

Elisabetta Sirani was an Italian Baroque painter whose father was the painter Giovanni Andrea Sirani of the School of Bologna-Biography:...

 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

Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...

 and the more traditional woman, Fede Galizia

Fede Galizia

Fede Galizia was an Italian Renaissance painter, a pioneer of the still life genre.- Life:Fede Gallizi, better known as Galizia, was born in Milan in 1578. Her father, Nunzio Galizia, also a painter of miniatures, had moved to Milan from Trento. Fede learned to paint from him...

, 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 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

Clara Peeters

Clara Peeters was a Flemish painter noted for painting still lifes, particularly of breakfast scenes and florals.-Life:Few details of her life are known. She was baptized in Antwerp in 1594, and married there in 1639. She is known to have lived in Amsterdam and The Hague. Her first known work was...

, a painter of banketje or breakfast pieces, and scenes of arranged luxury goods; Maria van Oosterwijk

Maria van Oosterwijk

Maria van Oosterwijk, also spelled Oosterwijck or Oosterwyck , was a Dutch Baroque painter, specializing in richly detailed still lifes.-Biography:...

, the internationally renowned flower painter; and Rachel Ruysch

Rachel Ruysch

Rachel Ruysch was a Dutch artist who specialized in still-life paintings of flowers, one of only three significant women artists in Dutch Golden Age painting, of whom Maria van Oosterwijk was also a flower painter, and Judith Leyster mainly not .She was born in The...

, 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

Giovanna Garzoni

Giovanna Garzoni was an Italian painter of the Baroque era. She was unusual for Italian artists of thetime for two reasons: first, in that her themes were mainly decorative and luscious still-lifes of fruits, vegetables, and flowers, and second, because she was a woman.Garzoni was born in Ascoli...

, who created realistic vegetable arrangements on parchment, and Louise Moillon

Louise Moillon

Louise Moillon was a French painter in the Baroque era. She became known as one of the best female still life painters during her time, and worked for King Charles I of England, as well as the French nobility.-Biography:...

, whose fruit still life paintings were noted for their brilliant colors.

18th century

Artists from this period include, Rosalba Carriera

Rosalba Carriera

Rosalba Carriera was a Venetian Rococo painter. In her younger years, she specialized in portrait miniatures...

, Maria Cosway

Maria Cosway

Maria Cosway was an Anglo-Italian artist, who exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. She also worked in France, where she cultivated a large circle of friends and clients, and later in Italy. She commissioned the first portrait of Napoleon to be seen in England...

, Marguerite Gérard

Marguerite Gérard

-Notes:...

, Angelica Kauffmann

Angelica Kauffmann

Maria Anna Angelika/Angelica Katharina Kauffman was a Swiss-Austrian Neoclassical painter. Kauffman is the preferred spelling of her name; it is the form she herself used most in signing her correspondence, documents and paintings.- Early years :She was born at Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland,...

, Adelaide Labille-Guiard

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard , also known as Adélaïde Labille-Guiard des Vertus, was a French miniaturist and portrait painter.-Family:...

, Giulia Lama

Giulia Lama

Giulia Lama was an Italian painter. She was active as a historical painter in Venice....

, Mary Moser

Mary Moser

Mary Moser was an English painter and one of the most celebrated women artists of 18th century Britain. One of only two female founding members of the Royal Academy , Moser is particularly noted for her depictions of flowers.-Life and career:London-born Moser was trained by her Swiss-born artist...

, Ulrika Pasch

Ulrika Pasch

Ulrika Fredrica Pasch , also known as Ulla Pasch, was a Swedish painter and miniaturist. She was one of few female artists known in Scandinavia before the 19th century...

, Adèle Romany, Anna Dorothea Therbusch

Anna Dorothea Therbusch

Anna Dorothea Therbusch was a prominent Rococo painter born in the Kingdom of Prussia. About 200 of her works survive, and she painted at least eighty-five verified portraits....

, Anne Vallayer-Coster

Anne Vallayer-Coster

Anne Vallayer-Coster was an 18th-century French painter. Known as a prodigy artist at a young age, she achieved fame and recognition very early in her career, being admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1770, at the age of twenty-six.Despite the negative reputation that...

, 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 17th century and the French Revolution, and only fifteen were women. Of those, most were daughters or wives of members. In the late 18th 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. She became a court favourite, and a celebrity, who painted over forty self-portraits, which she was able to sell.

In England, two women, Angelica Kauffmann

Angelica Kauffmann

Maria Anna Angelika/Angelica Katharina Kauffman was a Swiss-Austrian Neoclassical painter. Kauffman is the preferred spelling of her name; it is the form she herself used most in signing her correspondence, documents and paintings.- Early years :She was born at Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland,...

 and Mary Moser

Mary Moser

Mary Moser was an English painter and one of the most celebrated women artists of 18th century Britain. One of only two female founding members of the Royal Academy , Moser is particularly noted for her depictions of flowers.-Life and career:London-born Moser was trained by her Swiss-born artist...

, were founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768. Kauffmann helped Maria Cosway

Maria Cosway

Maria Cosway was an Anglo-Italian artist, who exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. She also worked in France, where she cultivated a large circle of friends and clients, and later in Italy. She commissioned the first portrait of Napoleon to be seen in England...

 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

Royal Collection

The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...

. 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

Academic art

Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism,...

 on studies of the nude during training remained a considerable barrier for women studying art until the 20th 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

Laura Knight

Dame Laura Knight, DBE was an English Impressionist painter known for painting the world of London's theatre, ballet and circus.-Early life and education:...

 in 1936, and women were not admitted to the Academy's schools until 1861.

By the late 18th 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

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...

 and Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Jean-Baptiste Greuze was a French painter.-Early life:He was born at Tournus, Saône-et-Loire. He is generally said to have formed his own talent; this is, however, true only in the most limited sense, for at an early age his inclinations, though thwarted by his father, were encouraged by a...

.

19th century

Artists from this 19th century period include Lucy Bacon

Lucy Bacon

Lucy Angeline Bacon was a Californian artist who studied in Paris under the famous Impressionist, Camille Pissarro...

, Marie Bashkirtseff

Marie Bashkirtseff

Marie Bashkirtseff was a Ukrainian-born diarist, painter and sculptor....

, Anna Boch

Anna Boch

Anna Rosalie Boch was a Belgian painter, born in Saint-Vaast, Hainaut. Anna Boch died in Ixelles in 1936 and is interred there in the Ixelles Cemetery, Brussels, Belgium.-Artistic style:...

, Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur, born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur, was a French animalière, realist artist, and sculptor. As a painter she became famous primarily for two chief works: Ploughing in the Nivernais , which was first exhibited at the Salon of 1848, and is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris depicts a team...

, Marie Bracquemond

Marie Bracquemond

Marie Bracquemond was a French Impressionist artist described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. However, her frequent omission from books on women artists indicate the success of her husband, Félix...

, Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...

, Camille Claudel

Camille Claudel

Camille Claudel was a French sculptor and graphic artist. She was the elder sister of the poet and diplomat Paul Claudel.- Early years :...

, Marie Ellenrieder

Marie Ellenrieder

Anna Marie Ellenrieder was a German painter.She was born in Konstanz, Germany, the daughter of Konrad and Anna Maria Herrmann, and the granddaughter of Franz Ludwig Herrmann....

, Kate Greenaway

Kate Greenaway

Catherine Greenaway , known as Kate Greenaway, was an English children's book illustrator and writer, who spent much of her childhood at Rolleston, Nottinghamshire. She studied at what is now the Royal College of Art in London, which at that time had a separate section for women, and was headed by...

, Kitty Lange Kielland

Kitty Lange Kielland

-Early life and training:Kielland was born to an affluent family in Stavanger, the older sister of Alexander Kielland. Kielland's mutual interactions with her brother would be important to shaping her as an artist. Although she received some training in drawing and painting, it was not until she...

, Edmonia Lewis

Edmonia Lewis

Mary Edmonia Lewis was the first African American and Native American woman to gain fame and recognition as a sculptor in the international fine arts world...

, Constance Mayer, Victorine Meurent

Victorine Meurent

Victorine Louise Meurent was a French painter and a famous model for painters.Although she is now best known as the favourite model of Édouard Manet, she also was an artist in her own right, who exhibited repeatedly at the prestigious Paris Salon...

, Berthe Morisot

Berthe Morisot

Berthe Morisot was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.In 1864, she exhibited for the first...

, Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon was a French painter born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts...

, and Enid Yandell

Enid Yandell

Enid Yandell was an American sculptor who studied with Auguste Rodin and Frederick William MacMonnies. She was the daughter of Dr. Lunsford Pitts Yandell, Jr. and Louise Elliston Yandell of Louisville, Kentucky. Yandell was a prolific sculptor creating numerous portraits, garden pieces and small...

 among others.

Marie Ellenrieder

Marie Ellenrieder

Anna Marie Ellenrieder was a German painter.She was born in Konstanz, Germany, the daughter of Konrad and Anna Maria Herrmann, and the granddaughter of Franz Ludwig Herrmann....

 and Marie-Denise Villers

Marie-Denise Villers

Marie-Denise Villers was a French painter, who specialized in portraits. She was born Marie-Denise Lemoine in Paris. She came from an artistic family, and her sisters Marie-Victoire Lemoine and Marie-Élisabeth Gabiou were also accomplished artists...

 worked in the field of portraiture

Portrait painting

Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait...

 in the beginning of the century, and Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur, born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur, was a French animalière, realist artist, and sculptor. As a painter she became famous primarily for two chief works: Ploughing in the Nivernais , which was first exhibited at the Salon of 1848, and is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris depicts a team...

 in realist painting and sculpture.

Barbara Bodichon

Barbara Bodichon

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was an English educationalist, artist, and a leading early nineteenth century feminist and activist for women's rights.-Early life:...

, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale was an English artist from London. She studied at the Royal Academy and worked at first mostly in illustration, moving to paintings influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite artists. Later, she also worked with stained glass. She was a staunch Christian, and donated works to...

, Kate Bunce

Kate Bunce

Kate Elizabeth Bunce was an English painter and poet associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.The daughter of John Thackray Bunce – a patron of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and editor of the Birmingham Post during its Liberal heyday – Bunce was born in Birmingham and educated at home...

, Evelyn De Morgan

Evelyn De Morgan

Evelyn De Morgan was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter.She was born Evelyn Pickering. Her parents were of upper middle class. Her father was Percival Pickering QC, the Recorder of Pontefract...

, Emma Sandys

Emma Sandys

Emma Sandys was a 19th-century English painter.Sandys was born in Norwich, England in 1843. She was taught by her father, Anthony Sands, and worked in portraits in both oil and chalk, often in medieval or period dress...

, Elizabeth Siddal

Elizabeth Siddal

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal was an English artists' model, poet and artist who was painted and drawn extensively by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and most of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's early paintings of women.-Early...

, Marie Spartali Stillman

Marie Spartali Stillman

Marie Euphrosyne Spartali, later Stillman , was a British Pre-Raphaelite painter of Greek descent, arguably the greatest female artist of that movement...

, and Maria Zambaco

Maria Zambaco

Maria Zambaco was born Marie Terpsithea Cassavetti , was an artist and model favoured by the Pre-Raphaelites....

  were women artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

During the century, access to academies and formal art training expanded more for women in Europe and North America. The British Government School of Design, which later became the Royal College of Art

Royal College of Art

The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...

, admitted women from its founding in 1837, but only into a "Female School" which was treated somewhat differently, with "life"- classes consisting for several years of drawing a man wearing a suit of armour. The Royal Academy Schools finally admitted women beginning in 1861, but students drew initially only draped models. However, other schools in London, including the Slade School of Art from the 1870s, were more liberal. By the end of the century women were able to study the naked, or very nearly naked, figure in many Western European and North American cities.

The Society of Female Artists (now called The Society of Women Artists

Society of Women Artists

-History :The Society was founded in 1855 as the Society of Female Artists and held its first exhibition two years later. The Society has since held an annual exhibition in London of work by women artists....

) was established in 1855 in London and has staged annual exhibitions since 1857, when 358 works were shown by 149 women, some using a pseudonym.

Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary themes....

 and Gertrude Kasebier

Gertrude Käsebier

Gertrude Käsebier was one of the most influential American photographers of the early 20th century. She was known for her evocative images of motherhood, her powerful portraits of Native Americans and her promotion of photography as a career for women.-Early life :Käsebier was born Gertrude...

 became well known in the new medium of Photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

, where there were no traditional restrictions, and no established training, to hold them back.

Elizabeth Thompson

Elizabeth Thompson

Elizabeth Southerden Thompson, Lady Butler was a British painter, one of the few female painters to achieve fame for history paintings, especially military battle scenes, at the end of that tradition...

 (Lady Butler), perhaps inspired by her life-classes of armoured figures at the Government School, was the one of the first woman to become famous for large history paintings, specializing in scenes of military action, usually with many horses.

Berthe Morisot

Berthe Morisot

Berthe Morisot was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.In 1864, she exhibited for the first...

 and the Americans

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...

 and Lucy Bacon

Lucy Bacon

Lucy Angeline Bacon was a Californian artist who studied in Paris under the famous Impressionist, Camille Pissarro...

, became involved in the French Impressionist movement of the 1860s and 1870s. American Impressionist Lilla Cabot Perry

Lilla Cabot Perry

Lilla Cabot Perry was an American artist who worked in the Impressionist style, rendering portraits and landscapes in the free form manner of her mentor, Claude Monet. Perry was an early advocate of the French Impressionist style and contributed to its reception in the United States...

 was influenced by her studies with Monet and by Japanese art

Japanese art

Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, ink painting on silk and paper and more recently manga, cartoon, along with a myriad of other types of works of art...

 in the late 19th century. Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux was an American society portraitist, in the manner of John Singer Sargent. She was a near contemporary of better-known American artist Mary Cassatt and also received her training in Philadelphia and France...

 was an American portrait painter

Portrait painting

Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait...

 who also studied in France.

In the late 19th century, Edmonia Lewis

Edmonia Lewis

Mary Edmonia Lewis was the first African American and Native American woman to gain fame and recognition as a sculptor in the international fine arts world...

, an African-Ojibwe-Haitian American artist from New York began her art studies at Oberlin College

Oberlin College

Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

. Her sculpting career began in 1863. She established a studio in Rome, Italy and exhibited her marble sculptures through Europe and the United States.

In 1894, Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon was a French painter born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts...

 was the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in France. Laura Muntz Lyall

Laura Muntz Lyall

Laura Muntz Lyall, June 18, 1860 – December 9, 1930, was a Canadian impressionist painter. Born Laura Adeline Muntz in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, her family emigrated to Canada when she was a child to farm in the Muskoka District of Ontario.As a young woman, Muntz studied to...

, 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

Société des artistes français

The Société des Artistes Français is the association of French painters and sculptors established in 1881. Its annual exhibition is called the Salon....

 in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.

20th century

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...

 was born in the late 19th century. She became known for her paintings, featuring flowers, bones, and landscapes of New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

.
Notable women artists from this period include:

Hannelore Baron

Hannelore Baron

Hannelore Baron was an artist whose work has become known for the highly personal, book-sized, abstract collages and box constructions that she began exhibiting in the late 1960s. Born in Dillingen/Saar, Germany, she and her family fled persecution in Nazi Germany in 1938 and relocated to the...

, Lee Bontecou

Lee Bontecou

Lee Bontecou is an American artist who was born 15 January 1931 in Providence, Rhode Island. She attended the Art Students League of New York from 1952 to 1955, where she studied with the sculptor William Zorach. She received a Fulbright scholarship to study in Rome in 1957-1958 and the Louis...

, Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...

, Romaine Brooks

Romaine Brooks

Romaine Brooks, born Beatrice Romaine Goddard , was an American painter who worked mostly in Paris and Capri. She specialized in portraiture and used a subdued palette dominated by the color gray...

, Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington OBE was a British-born Mexican artist, a surrealist painter and a novelist. She lived most of her life in Mexico City.-Early life:...

, Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...

, Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett Mora is an African-American sculptor and printmaker. Catlett is best known for the black, expressionistic sculptures and prints she produced during the 1960s and 1970s, which are seen as politically charged....

, Camille Claudel

Camille Claudel

Camille Claudel was a French sculptor and graphic artist. She was the elder sister of the poet and diplomat Paul Claudel.- Early years :...

, Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay was a Jewish-French artist who, with her husband Robert Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. Her work extends to painting, textile design and stage set design...

, Dulah Marie Evans

Dulah Marie Evans

Dulah Marie Evans, later Dulah Marie Evans Krehbiel was an American painter, photographer, printmaker, illustrator, and etcher.-Education:...

, Audrey Flack

Audrey Flack

Audrey Flack is an American photorealist painter, printmaker, and sculptor.Flack studied fine arts in New York from 1948 to 1953. She earned a graduate degree and an honorary doctorate from Cooper Union in New York City, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Yale University. She studied art history at...

, Mary Frank

Mary Frank

Mary Frank née Mary Lockspeiser is a visual artist known primarily as a sculptor, painter and printmaker/illustrator.- Biography :...

, Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work...

, Elisabeth Frink

Elisabeth Frink

Dame Elisabeth Jean Frink, DBE, CH, RA was an English sculptor and printmaker...

, Françoise Gilot, Natalia Goncharova

Natalia Goncharova

Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova was a Russian avant-garde artist , painter, costume designer, writer, illustrator, and set designer. Her great-aunt was Natalia Pushkina, wife of the poet Alexander Pushkin.-Life and work:...

, Nancy Graves

Nancy Graves

Nancy Graves was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime-filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the moon...

, Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan was an American Abstract Expressionist painter of the New York School in the 1950s.-Biography and early career:...

, Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth

Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art in Britain.-Life and work:Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,...

, Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse , was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. -Early life:Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in Hamburg, Germany...

, Sigrid Hjertén

Sigrid Hjertén

Sigrid Hjertén , was a Swedish modernist painter. Hjertén is considered a major figure in Swedish modernism. Periodically she was highly productive and she participated in 106 exhibitions...

, Malvina Hoffman

Malvina Hoffman

Malvina Hoffman , was an American sculptor and author, well known for her life-size bronze sculptures of people...

, Margaret Ponce Israel

Margaret Ponce Israel

Margaret Ponce Israel was a painter and ceramist who lived and worked in New York City. She was married to New York artist Marvin Israel. She was born in 1929 in Havana, Cuba and died in 1987 in Manhattan. She was hit by a tractor-trailer while riding her bike on West 23rd Street...

, Gwen John

Gwen John

Gwendolen Mary John was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. She is noted for her still lifes and for her portraits, especially of anonymous female sitters...

, Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century...

, Lee Krasner

Lee Krasner

Lee Krasner was an influential abstract expressionist painter in the second half of the 20th century. On October 25, 1945, she married artist Jackson Pollock, who was also influential in the Abstract Expressionism movement....

, Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....

, Laura Knight

Laura Knight

Dame Laura Knight, DBE was an English Impressionist painter known for painting the world of London's theatre, ballet and circus.-Early life and education:...

, Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed...

, Marie Laurencin

Marie Laurencin

Marie Laurencin was a French painter and printmaker. -Biography:Laurencin was born in Paris, where she was raised by her mother and lived much of her life. At 18, she studied porcelain painting in Sèvres...

, Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara de Lempicka , born Maria Górska in Moscow, in the Russian Empire, was a Polish Art Deco painter and "the first woman artist to be a glamour star."- Early life :...

, Séraphine Louis

Séraphine Louis

Séraphine Louis, known as "Séraphine de Senlis" , was a French painter in the naïve style. Self-taught, she was inspired by her religious faith and by stained-glass church windows and other religious art...

, Dora Maar

Dora Maar

Dora Maar was a French photographer, poet and painter, best known for being a lover and muse of Pablo Picasso.-Life:...

, Maruja Mallo

Maruja Mallo

Maruja Mallo was a Spanish painter.She was born in Vivero, Lugo, and studied arts in Madrid between 1922 and 1926, where she met many important artists, as she also did subsequently in Paris: Salvador Dalí, Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, Magritte, Max Ernst, Miró, De Chirico, André Breton,...

, Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin

Agnes Bernice Martin was an American abstract painter, often referred to as a minimalist; Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist.She won a National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1998....

, Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta was a Cuban American performance artist, sculptor, painter and video artist who is known for her "earth-body" art work....

, Joan Mitchell

Joan Mitchell

Joan Mitchell was a "second generation" abstract expressionist painter. She was an essential member of the American Abstract expressionist movement, even though much of her career took place in France. Along with Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, and Helen Frankenthaler she was one of her era's few...

, Paula Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker was a German painter and one of the most important representatives of early expressionism. In a brief career, cut short by an embolism at the age of 31, she created a number of groundbreaking images of great intensity.-Life and work:Paula Becker was born and grew up in...

, Gabriele Münter

Gabriele Münter

Gabriele Münter was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. Artists and writers associated with German Expressionism shared a rebellious attitude toward the materialism and mores of German imperial and bourgeois society...

, Alice Neel

Alice Neel

Alice Neel was an American artist known for her oil on canvas portraits of friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers...

, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...

, Orovida Camille Pissarro‎, Irene Rice Pereira, Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley

Bridget Louise Riley CH CBE is an English painter who is one of the foremost proponents of Op art.-Early life:...

, Verónica Ruiz de Velasco

Veronica Ruiz de Velasco

Veronica Ruiz de Velasco is a neo-figurative painter of Mexican origin living in the United States. She was a disciple of Teodulo Romulo, Rufino Tamayo, Jean Dubuffet, and Gilberto Aceves Navarro.-Early life:...

, Anne Ryan

Anne Ryan

Anne Ryan belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists. Her first contact with the New York Avant-garde came in 1941 when she joined the Atelier 17, a famous printmaking workshop that the British artist Stanley William Hayter had established in Paris in the...

, Charlotte Salomon

Charlotte Salomon

Charlotte Salomon was a German-Jewish artist born in Berlin. She is primarily remembered as the creator of an autobiographical series of paintings Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel consisting of 769 individual works painted between 1941 and 1943 in the south of France, while Salomon was in...

, Augusta Savage

Augusta Savage

Augusta Savage, born Augusta Christine Fells was an African-American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a teacher and her studio was important to the careers of a rising generation of artists who would become nationally known...

, Zinaida Serebriakova

Zinaida Serebriakova

Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebriakova was among the first female Russian painters of distinction.-Family:Zinaida Serebriakova was born on the estate of Neskuchnoye near Kharkov into one of Russia's most refined and artistic families.She belonged to the artistic Benois family...

, Henrietta Shore

Henrietta Shore

Henrietta Shore was a post-impressionist Canadian painter who exhibited contemporaneously with Georgia O'Keeffe and influenced the photographer Edward Weston. Her media were oils, murals, watercolors, and lithographs....

, Sr. Maria Stanisia, Marjorie Strider

Marjorie Strider

Marjorie Strider is an American painter, sculptor and performance artist best known for her three-dimensional paintings and site-specific soft sculpture installations.-Biography:...

, Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon was a French painter born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts...

, Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo Uranga was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter and anarchist. She was born María de los Remedios Varo Uranga in Anglès, Girona, Spain in 1908. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement...

, Nellie Walker

Nellie Walker

Nellie Verne Walker , was an American sculptor best known for her statue of James Harlan in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol, Washington D.C.-Early years:...

, Marianne von Werefkin

Marianne von Werefkin

Marianne von Werefkin , born Marianna Wladimirowna Werewkina , was a Russian-Swiss Expressionist painter.-Life and career:...

, and Ogura Yuki

Ogura Yuki

was a nihonga painter in Shōwa period Japan. Her maiden name was Mizoguchi Yuki. She was known for her bijinga.-Biography:Ogura was born in Ōtsu city, Shiga prefecture and graduated from the Nara Women's Normal School...

.

Sr. Maria Stanisia was able to overcome the patriarchal attitudes both within early twentieth century Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church to become acclaimed as one of the greatest painters in the field of religious art.

In the Art Deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 era, Hildreth Meiere

Hildreth Meiere

Hildreth Meiere , American artist, architectural artist, muralist and mosaicist.- Biography :After studying at New York's Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, Meiere studied in Florence. Being exposed to the Renaissance Masters, she is quoted as saying, "After that I could not be satisfied...

 made large-scale mosaics and was the first woman honored with the Fine Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects. Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara de Lempicka , born Maria Górska in Moscow, in the Russian Empire, was a Polish Art Deco painter and "the first woman artist to be a glamour star."- Early life :...

, also of this era, was an Art Deco painter from Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

.

In 1927, Dod Proctor's painting Morning was voted Picture of the Year in the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

 Summer Exhibition, and bought by the Daily Mail

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

for the Tate

Tate

-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...

 gallery. Its popularity resulted in its showing in New York and a two year tour of Britain.

Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, which became prominent in the 1920s and 1930s, had a number of prominent women artists, including Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington OBE was a British-born Mexican artist, a surrealist painter and a novelist. She lived most of her life in Mexico City.-Early life:...

, Kay Sage

Kay Sage

Katherine Linn Sage , usually known as Kay Sage, was an American Surrealist artist and poet.-Biography:...

, Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning is an American painter, printmaker, sculptor and writer. She has also designed sets and costumes for ballet and theatre.-Biography:...

, and Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo Uranga was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter and anarchist. She was born María de los Remedios Varo Uranga in Anglès, Girona, Spain in 1908. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement...

.

Lee Miller

Lee Miller

Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller, Lady Penrose was an American photographer. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1907, she was a successful fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris where she became an established fashion and fine art photographer...

 rediscovered solarization and became a high fashion photographer. Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration...

 documented the Depression. Margaret Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White was an American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet Industry, the first female war correspondent and the first female photographer for Henry Luce's Life magazine, where her...

 created the industrial photographs that were featured on the cover and in the lead article of the first Life Magazine. Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....

 based her photography on outsiders to mainstream society. Graciela Iturbide

Graciela Iturbide

- Biography :Graciela Iturbide was born in Mexico in 1942, the eldest of thirteen children. She then married the architect Manuel Rocha Díaz in 1962 and had three children over the next eight years. Iturbide's six year old daughter died in 1970; after this death she turned to photography...

's works dealt with Mexican life and feminism, while Tina Modotti

Tina Modotti

Tina Modotti was an Italian photographer, model, actress, and revolutionary political activist.- Early life :Modotti was born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini in Udine, Friuli, Italy...

 produced "revolutionary icons" from Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 in the 1920s. Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz

Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer.-Early life and education:Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants, from Central and Eastern Europe. Her father's...

's photographic work was of rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 and other celebrity figures.

Aleksandra Ekster

Aleksandra Ekster

Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster was a Russian-French painter and designer.-Biography:-Childhood:...

 was a Constructivist

Constructivism (art)

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...

, Cubo-Futurist

Cubo-Futurism

Cubo-Futurism was the main school of painting and sculpture practiced by the Russian Futurists.When Aristarkh Lentulov returned from Paris in 1913 and exhibited his works in Moscow, the Russian Futurist painters adopted the forms of Cubism and combined them with the Italian Futurists'...

, and Suprematist

Suprematism

Suprematism was an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms which formed in Russia in 1915-1916. It was not until later that suprematism received conventional museum preparations...

 artist well known and respected in Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

, Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 and Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay

Sonia Delaunay was a Jewish-French artist who, with her husband Robert Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. Her work extends to painting, textile design and stage set design...

 and her husband were the founders of Orphism

Orphism (art)

Orphism or Orphic Cubism , the term coined by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, was a little known art movement during the time of Cubism that focused on pure abstraction and bright colors influenced by Fauvism and the dye chemist Eugène Chevreul...

. Mary Carroll Nelson founded the Society of Layerists in Multi-Media

Society of Layerists in MultiMedia

The Society of Layerists in Multi-Media is a group of artists, centred in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States formed in 1982. It describes itself as a network for artists and other persons interested in a holistic perspective....

 (SLMM), whose artist members follow in the tradition of Emil Bisttram

Emil Bisttram

James Emil Bisttram was an American artist, who lived in New York and Taos, New Mexico, and was known for his modernist work.Bisttram was born in Hungary, near the Romanian border, in 1895. When he was 11 years old, his family immigrated to New York City. Emil grew up in the tenement buildings...

 and the Transcendental Painting Group, as well as Morris Graves

Morris Graves

Morris Cole Graves was an American expressionist painter. Along with Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, William Cumming, and Mark Tobey, he founded the Northwest School. Graves was also a mystic.-Early years:...

 of the Pacific Northwest Visionary Art School. In the 1970s, Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago is a feminist artist, author, and educator.Chicago has been creating artwork since the mid 1960s. Her earliest forays into the art world coincided with the rise of Minimalism, which she eventually abandoned in favor of art she believed to have greater content and relevance...

 created The Dinner Party

The Dinner Party

The Dinner Party is an installation artwork by feminist artist Judy Chicago depicting place settings for 39 mythical and historical famous women. It was produced from 1974 to 1979 as a collaboration and was first exhibited in 1979. Subsequently, despite art world resistance, it toured to 16 venues...

, one of the most important works of feminist art.

Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work...

 was an Abstract Expressionist

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

 painter and she was influenced by Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

. Lee Krasner

Lee Krasner

Lee Krasner was an influential abstract expressionist painter in the second half of the 20th century. On October 25, 1945, she married artist Jackson Pollock, who was also influential in the Abstract Expressionism movement....

 was also an Abstract Expressionist

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

 artist and married to Pollock and a student of Hans Hofmann

Hans Hofmann

Hans Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter.-Biography:Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich...

. Elaine de Kooning

Elaine de Kooning

Elaine de Kooning was an Abstract Expressionist, Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era and editorial associate for Art News magazine...

 was a student and later the wife of Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....

, she was an abstract figurative painter

New York Figurative Expressionism

New York Figurative Expressionism of the 1950s represented a trend where "diverse New York artists countered the prevailing abstract mode to work with the figure."-Categories of figurative expressionist modes:...

. Anne Ryan

Anne Ryan

Anne Ryan belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists. Her first contact with the New York Avant-garde came in 1941 when she joined the Atelier 17, a famous printmaking workshop that the British artist Stanley William Hayter had established in Paris in the...

 was a collagist. Jane Frank

Jane Frank

Jane Schenthal Frank was an American artist. She studied with Hans Hofmann and Norman Carlberg and is known as a painter, sculptor, mixed media artist, and textile artist...

, also a student of Hans Hofmann

Hans Hofmann

Hans Hofmann was a German-born American abstract expressionist painter.-Biography:Hofmann was born in Weißenburg, Bavaria on March 21, 1880, the son of Theodor and Franziska Hofmann. When he was six he moved with his family to Munich...

, worked with mixed media

Mixed media

Mixed media, in visual art, refers to an artwork in the making of which more than one medium has been employed.There is an important distinction between "mixed-media" artworks and "multimedia art". Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct...

 on canvas. In Canada, Marcelle Ferron

Marcelle Ferron

Marcelle Ferron, , a Québécoise painter and stained glass artist, was a major figure in the Quebec contemporary art scene....

 was an exponent of automatism

Les Automatistes

Les Automatistes were a group of Québécois artistic dissidents from Montreal, Quebec. The movement was founded in the early 1940s by painter Paul-Émile Borduas. "Les Automatistes" were so called because they were influenced by Surrealism and its theory of automatism...

.

From the 1960s on feminism

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 led to a great increase in interest in women artists and their academic study. Notable contributions have been made by the art historians Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....

, Linda Nochlin

Linda Nochlin

Linda Nochlin is an American art historian, university professor and writer. She is considered to be a leader in feminist art history studies. She is best known as a proponent of the question "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"...

, Griselda Pollock

Griselda Pollock

Griselda Pollock is a prominent art historian and cultural analyst, and a world-renowned scholar of international, post-colonial feminist studies in the visual arts. She is best known for her theoretical and methodological innovation, combined with deeply engaged readings of historical and...

 and others. Figures like Artemesia Gentileschi and Frida Kahlo emerged from relative obscurity to become feminist icons

Cultural icon

A cultural icon can be a symbol, logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group...

.

In 1996, Catherine de Zegher curated an 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' works from the 1930s through the 1990s featuring: Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun was a French artist, photographer and writer. Her work was both political and personal, and often played with the concepts of gender and sexuality.-Early life:...

, Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...

, Bracha Ettinger, Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin

Agnes Bernice Martin was an American abstract painter, often referred to as a minimalist; Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist.She won a National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1998....

, Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems is an award-winning photographer and artist. Her photographs, films, and videos have been displayed in over 50 exhibitions in the United States and abroad and focus on serious issues that face African Americans today, such as racism, gender relations, politics, and personal identity...

, Charlotte Salomon

Charlotte Salomon

Charlotte Salomon was a German-Jewish artist born in Berlin. She is primarily remembered as the creator of an autobiographical series of paintings Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel consisting of 769 individual works painted between 1941 and 1943 in the south of France, while Salomon was in...

, Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse , was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. -Early life:Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in Hamburg, Germany...

, Nancy Spero

Nancy Spero

Nancy Spero was an American visual artist.-Life and work:Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She was married to, and collaborated with artist Leon Golub....

, Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring herself and female models. Many of her photographs show young women who are nude, who are blurred , who are merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured...

, Lygia Clark

Lygia Clark

Lygia Clark was a Brazilian artist best known for her painting and installation work. She was often associated with the Brazilian Constructivist movements of the mid-20th century and the Tropicalia movement...

 and Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum is a video artist and installation artist of Palestinian origin, who lives in London.- Lebanon :...

 among others.

Contemporary artists

In 1993, Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....

 was the first woman to win the Tate

Tate

-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...

 Gallery's Turner Prize

Turner Prize

The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

. Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing OBE RA is an English conceptual artist, one of the YBAs, and winner of the annual British fine arts award, The Turner Prize, in 1997. On 11 December 2007, Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London....

 won the prize in 1997, when there was an all-woman shortlist, the other nominees being Christine Borland

Christine Borland

Christine Borland is a British artist and one of the Young British Artists . Borland attended the University of Ulster, and the Glasgow School of Art....

, Angela Bulloch

Angela Bulloch

Angela Bulloch , is an artist who often works with sound and installation; she is recognised as one of the Young British Artists.-Life and career:...

 and Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Ann Parker OBE, RA is an English sculptor and installation artist. -Life and career:Parker studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design and Wolverhampton Polytechnic...

. In 1999, Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

 gained considerable media coverage for her entry My Bed

My Bed

My Bed is a work by the British artist Tracey Emin. First created in 1998, it was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1999 as one of the shortlisted works for the Turner Prize. It consisted of her bed with bedroom objects in an abject state, and gained much media attention...

, but did not win. In 2006 the prize was awarded to abstract painter, Tomma Abts

Tomma Abts

Tomma Abts is a German-born abstract painter who won the Turner Prize in 2006.-Early life:Abts was born in Kiel in Germany and currently lives and works in London, England.-Work:...

.

In 2001, a conference called "Women Artists at the Millennium" was organized at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

. A book by that name was published in 2006, featuring major art historians such as Linda Nochlin

Linda Nochlin

Linda Nochlin is an American art historian, university professor and writer. She is considered to be a leader in feminist art history studies. She is best known as a proponent of the question "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"...

 analysing prominent women artists such as: Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...

, Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental. Her work is classified as minimalist art.- Early life :...

, Bracha Ettinger, Sally Mann

Sally Mann

Sally Mann is an American photographer, best known for her large black-and-white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death.-Early life and education:...

, Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse , was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. -Early life:Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in Hamburg, Germany...

, Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....

 and Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel is a German Artist, and an important figure in the international contemporary art movement.- Life :...

.

Internationally prominent contemporary artists who are women also include Magdalena Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz is a Polish sculptor. She is notable for her use of textiles as a sculptural medium. She was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, Poland from 1965 to 1990 and a visiting professor at University of California, Los Angeles in 1984...

, Marina Abramović

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramović is a Belgrade-born New York-based Serbian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.” Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and...

, Jaroslava Brychtova, Lynda Benglis

Lynda Benglis

Lynda Benglis is an American sculptor known for her wax paintings and poured latex sculptures. After earning a BFA from Newcomb College in 1964, Benglis moved to New York, where she lives and works today...

, Lee Bul

Lee Bul

Lee Bul is one of the most prominent contemporary artists to have emerged from Asia in the 1990s.In 1999, she came to prominence when she represented Korea in the Venice Biennale.- Education :...

, Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines...

, Janet Cardiff

Janet Cardiff

Janet Cardiff is a Canadian installation artist. Born in Brussels, Ontario in 1957 Cardiff studied at Queen's University where she graduated in 1980. She also studied at the University of Alberta and graduated in 1983. She works in collaboration with her partner George Bures Miller. Cardiff and...

, Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas is a South African born artist and painter who lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Stressing both the physical reality of the human body and its psychological value, Dumas tends...

, Marisol Escobar

Marisol Escobar

Maria Sol Escobar , otherwise known simply as Marisol, is a sculptor born in Paris of Venezuelan lineage, living in Europe, the United States and Caracas.-Education:...

, Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer is an American conceptual artist. Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York.-Education:...

, Runa Islam

Runa Islam

Runa Islam is a Bangladesh born artist based in London, and was a nominee for the 2008 Turner Prize. Islam is principally known for her film works.-Background:...

, Chantal Joffe

Chantal Joffe

Chantal Joffe is an English artist based in London. Her often large-scale paintings generally depict women and children. In 2006 she received the prestigious Charles Wollaston Award from the Royal Academy.-Life and education:...

, Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama

is a Japanese artist whose paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation...

, Karen Kilimnik

Karen Kilimnik

Karen Kilimnik is an American painter and installation artist.-Life and work:Karen Kilimnik trained at Temple University, Philadelphia.Her installations reflected a young viewpoint of pop culture...

, Sarah Lucas

Sarah Lucas

Sarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s...

, Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono

is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...

, Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville

Jenny Saville is a contemporary British painter; best known as one of the Young British Artists. She is known for her large-scale painted depictions of naked women.-Life and career:Saville works and lives in Oxford, England...

, Carolee Schneeman, Shazia Sikander, Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson is an African American artist and photographer who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. Her work often portrays black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity and sex...

, Lisa Steele

Lisa Steele

Lisa Steele is a Canadian artist, a pioneer in video art, educator, curator and co-founder of V tape in Toronto. Born in the United States, Steele moved to Canada in 1968 and is now a Canadian citizen...

, Stella Vine

Stella Vine

Stella Vine is an English artist, who lives and works in London. Her work is figurative painting with subject matter drawn from either her personal life of family, friends and school, or rock stars, royalty and celebrities.After a difficult relationship with her stepfather, she left home and in...

, Kara Walker

Kara Walker

Kara Walker is a contemporary African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes, such as The Means to an End--A Shadow Drama in Five Acts.-Biography:Walker was born in...

, and Susan Dorothea White

Susan Dorothea White

Susan Dorothea White , also called Sue White and Susan White, is an Australian painter, sculptor, and printmaker. She is a narrative artist and her work concerns the natural world and human situation, increasingly incorporating satire and irony to convey her concern for human rights and equality...

.

In the Autumn of 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 are both contemporary and historical including Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Early Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation influenced by Caravaggio...

, Mary Cassatt

Mary Cassatt

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...

, Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...

, Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....

, Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo de Rivera was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán, and perhaps best known for her self-portraits....

, Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...

, Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

, Paula Rego

Paula Rego

Paula Rego is a painter born in Portugal although she is a naturalised British citizen.-Biography:Rego was born in the Portuguese capital Lisbon, the daughter of an electrical engineer who worked for the Marconi Company. Although this gave her a comfortable middle class home, the family was...

, Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago is a feminist artist, author, and educator.Chicago has been creating artwork since the mid 1960s. Her earliest forays into the art world coincided with the rise of Minimalism, which she eventually abandoned in favor of art she believed to have greater content and relevance...

, Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz

Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer.-Early life and education:Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants, from Central and Eastern Europe. Her father's...

 and twenty others.

Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese artist Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama

is a Japanese artist whose paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation...

's paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation. Her work shows some attributes of feminism

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

, minimalism

Minimalism

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...

, surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, Art Brut

Outsider Art

The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...

, pop art

Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

, and abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. She describes herself as an "obsessive artist". In November 2008, Christie's auction house New York sold her 1959 painting No. 2 for $5,100,000, the record price in 2008 for a work by a living female artist.

See also

• Bonn Women's Museum
  Bonn Women's Museum
  The Bonn Women's Museum is a women's museum in Bonn, Germany. It was founded in 1981 by Marianne Pitzen and an interdisciplinary group of working women, and claims to be the first museum of its kind in the world...
  
  
• List of 20th century women artists
• The depiction of women artists in art history
  The depiction of women artists in art history
  There are a number of issues in constructing a history of women artists.# 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.#Anonymity...
  
  
• Feminist art
  Feminist art movement
  The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to make art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and reception of contemporary art. It also sought to bring more visibility to women within...
  
  
• Guerrilla Girls On Tour
  Guerrilla Girls On Tour
  Guerrilla Girls On Tour is an anonymous touring theatre company of 26 women trained in a variety of comedic theatre techniques who develop unique and outrageous activist plays, performance art and street theatre...
  
  
• National Museum of Women in the Arts
  National Museum of Women in the Arts
  The National Museum of Women in the Arts , located in Washington, D.C. is the only museum solely dedicated to celebrating women’s achievements in the visual, performing, and literary arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay...
  
  
• Native American women in the arts
  Native American women in the arts
  Women in Native American communities have been producing art intertwined with spirituality, life, and beauty for centuries. According to mixed-media artist, Nadema Agard, "Native American women have always been an integral part of the creative vision, and [they] continue to contribute to Indian...
  
  
• List of American artists
• Australian Feminist Art Timeline
  Australian Feminist Art Timeline
  Australian Feminist Art Timeline lists exhibitions, artists, artworks and milestones that have contributed to discussion and development of feminist art in Australia. The timeline focuses on the impact of feminism on Australian contemporary art...
  
  
• Women Surrealists
  Women Surrealists
  Women Surrealists are women artists, photographers, filmmakers and authors of the Surrealist Movement which began in the early 1920s. Many of them were part of, or connected to, the official Surrealist movement. Others were inspired but more distantly connected.-Painters:*Eileen Forrester Agar ...
  
  
• Women in the workforce
  Women in the workforce
  Until modern industrialized times, legal and cultural practices, combined with the inertia of longstanding religious and educational traditions, had restricted women's entry and participation in the workforce. Economic dependency upon men, and consequently the poor socio-economic status of women...
  
  

Further reading

• Anscombe, Isabelle, A Woman's Touch: Women in Design from 1860 to the Present Day, Penguin, New York, 1985. ISBN 0-670-77825-7.
• Armstrong, Carol and Catherine de Zegher (eds.), 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.
• Chanchreek, K.L. and M.K. Jain, Eminent Women Artists, New Delhi, Shree Pub., 2007, xii, 256 p., ISBN 81-8329-226-9.
• 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 0-7190-4258-5.
• 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
  Alfred Knopf
  Alfred Knopf is the name of:*Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. , founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the publishing company*Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. , son of Alfred A. Knopf, Sr.*Alfred A. Knopf or Knopf Publishing Group, subsidiary of Random House...
  
  , New York, 1976. ISBN 0-394-41169-2.
• Henkes, Robert. The Art of Black American Women: Works of Twenty-Four Artists of the Twentieth Century, McFarland & Company, 1993.
• 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
  St. Martin's Press
  St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in the Flatiron Building in New York City. Currently, St. Martin's Press is one of the United States' largest publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under eight imprints, which include St. Martin's Press , St...
  
  , 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
  Rozsika Parker
  Rozsika Parker was psychotherapist, art historian and writer and a feminist.- About :Parker was born in London and spent her early years in Oxford, studying at the Wychwood School....
  
  , 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
  Pantheon Books
  Pantheon Books is an American imprint with editorial independence that is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.The current editor-in-chief at Pantheon Books is Dan Frank.-Overview:...
  
  , 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, (edited and introduction by 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 0-415-41374-5.
• 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
• Sills, Leslie. Visions: Stories About Women Artists, Albert Whitman & Company, 1993.
• Slatkin, Wendy, Voices of Women Artists, Prentice Hall
  Prentice Hall
  Prentice Hall is a major educational publisher. It is an imprint of Pearson Education, Inc., based in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, USA. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6-12 and higher-education market. Prentice Hall distributes its technical titles through the Safari...
  
  , 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
  Phoenix, Arizona
  Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
  
  , 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.
• de Zegher, Catherine, Eva Hesse Drawing, NY: The Drawing Center//New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-300-11618-7.

External links

• Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum
• n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, 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
• Guerrilla Girls on Tour
• 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
• 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.
• Female Formal