Happy Women in Trade Day - From Brushstrokes to Breakthroughs: 5 Female Artists We Should Celebrate Today
Who Were the First Female Painters and Decorators?
While the Middle Ages largely reserved the brush and chisel for the bearded and guild-approved, today, women make up over half of art school graduates. Yet, their names still don’t roll off the tongue quite like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, or Van Gogh. So, who were the women who dared to pick up the brush and change the picture?
by Marijana Vascic
This year's Women in Trade Day event offers the perfect moment to look back at the trailblazers, creative women who picked up the brush and paved the way for future generations in both art and trade.
Although art is as old as humanity, and some of the first known cave drawings are dated all the way back to 40,000 BC, the records of the first recognised female artists appear in the official art history in the 16th century.
Does that mean that there were no female artists before? That for centuries, not a single woman tried to draw, paint, or sculpt? Unlikely. Women simply didn't have access to education and the same opportunities as men, and therefore, their efforts remain mostly anonymous.
Before the world celebrated Yayoi Kusama, Marina Abramović, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Frida Kahlo, there were the women who painted the imprimatura ("underpainting", the very first base layer).
Sofonisba Anguissola (c.1532-1625)
Anguissola was one of the first women to gain international recognition as a professional artist during the Renaissance period. She was born into a noble family in Cremona, Italy, encouraged to pursue painting and allowed to apprentice as a painter - a rarity for women at the time. By managing to have an actual "career" as a painter, against all odds, Anguissola's name stands, well-deserved, at the beginning of almost every (hi)story of female artists.
Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807)
Swiss portrait painter Angelica Kaufmann had a successful international career in the 18th century. Her artworks were commissioned by European nobility, and her studio became an important stop on the Grand Tour - a popular educational trip among the upper class at the time.
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842)
French artist Madame Le Brun learned to paint at a young age and was trained by her father. She was known for her exquisite portraits and became Marie Antoinette's favourite portrait painter. After fleeing the country due to the French Revolution, she developed an international career portraying prominent Europeans of the time.
Elsie de Wolfe (1859-1950)
Born New Yorker, Elsie de Wolfe, started her career as an actress, and transferred her passion for stage and sets into the field of interior design. It is believed that she is the first person ever to be commissioned to decorate a home, and is still today known as America's first decorator.
Vanessa Bell (1879–1961)
Vanessa Bell, a painter and interior designer, was a pioneer of British modern art and a key figure in the avant-garde Bloomsbury Group. She is also known for her collaborations with her sister, Virginia Woolf, and fellow artists like Duncan Grant at the Omega Workshops, a design collective that blurred the boundaries between fine art and interior decoration.
Rewriting the Story of Art
Until the 70s and Linda Nochlin (Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, 1971), no one really questioned the absence of women in art (history). Not so long ago, the idea that women had always been on the margins was simply accepted as fact. But as we dig deeper, we find that women were always there, painting, creating, innovating. While we've come a long way, the story of women in art is still being told, one brushstroke at a time.