We'd like to see more art by women in our galleries

[ArtforallbyallwithArtActivistBarbie]

Hello all
If you went into a number of our public galleries you could be forgiven for thinking that only white men ever painted in the past, and like all of us who have thought that, you'd be wrong! Even in the middle ages, women painted, and as the centuries went by, more and more women fought against the odds to paint.

In the National Gallery, of 1056 paintings on display, do you know how many are by women?

Eight. Yes Eight. Less than 1%

At the moment, government places no requirement on the galleries they fund to address inequalities in their collections. ArtActivistBarbie and ArtforAllbyAll are trying to change this.

Please please help us persuade them by signing our petition!

https://www.change.org/ArtByEveryone

Art is Art. Who cares who painted/made it

I agree @RebelliousCow

It all starts with encouraging and supporting girls and women to pursue artistic interests and careers.

Here you go Sausagenbacon.
Johanna of Beverley

As you can see, only one piece and it is the only signed piece of English embroidery from the Middle Ages. It kind of illustrates the problem: it’s not that women’s art doesn’t exist, it’s that it is of a kind traditionally seen as lesser than oil painting and is very rarely signed or otherwise attributable.

In the National Gallery "art" includes depictions of rape, and pictures of young women in sexualised poses. What would women paint, given the time and resources?

Maybe, but you didn't need to read a wall of text in order to "understand" the artwork.

Much religious art stood in for text in a world where the majority were illiterate and art itself can (and was) be read like a text. An open window here, an apple with a fly on it held by a woman - all had meaning.

What would women paint, given the time and resources?

I wonder ... given the prevalence of the male gaze?

Back stories to change how we perceive images.

For example, there was a lace making school for blind girls in Victorian times. They made absolutely beautiful lace. You could argue they were exploited. You could also argue this gave them a living wage in a world where being a disabled woman left them exceptionally vulnerable.

If you looked at a piece of Victorian lace an knew the maker was blind, does it change your perception of it? Should it?

If more art by women was included in the national gallery should it be pointed out that it's rare? There's an opposing argument that perhaps this would dilute the stark reality of how hard it has been at time for women to be seen as or receive patronage as serious artists.

Art and the study of art goes quite deep into contextual political and cultural commentaries.

No mention of Linda Nochlin? https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/02/11/no-great-women-artists-how-linda-nochlin-tore-apart-the-art-historical-narrative-50-years-ago

I’m an art historian - the National Gallery in London has an unbelievably small number of works by women on show and really need to up their game, they’ve had it called out many, many times. The new hang of the National Portrait Gallery is much more evenly balanced now, at least in terms of artists. And FWR regulars might like to see the fantastic huge image of Mo Mowlam facing Germaine Greer painted by Paula Rego, and a whole mezzanine floor of female self-portraits (Eileen Agar is my favourite).

As to the poster who mentions the guilds and their having been no female artists in the Middle Ages, I’d direct her to the still sublime Virginia Woolf lecture on ‘A Room of One’s Own’, in which she points out that ‘Anonymous was often a woman’. True in visual arts as in literary I’d say. Plus as other posters have pointed out, look at the other media - tapestry was hugely admired in the Middle Ages, and embroiderers were anonymous and often female, for example in Northern France and what’s now Belgium.

In the Italian renaissance there were known female painters - check out the fantastic story of Sofinisba Anguisola

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/anguissola-sofonisba/#:~:text=By%201559%2C%20her%20fame%20as,queen%20in%20drawing%20and%20painting.

‘There having been’ oops sorry for typos, plus Sofonisba not Sofinisba. Need an edit button ….

Thank you @CVK and this essay answers a point that a few posters have raised when they have said they want to see the best art - why did so few women paint as technically well as men? Because they weren't allowed into life classes. But why didn't women just draw each other anyway? And teach each other? When women teach art, do we teach about female artists?

You're absolutely right, WarriorH, we're just looking to address the balance.
Plautilla Nelli, for example, was a nun who painted in the 1500s in Florence. There are several of her artworks on show in florence today, including her amazing Last Supper
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plautilla_Nelli

Thank you for all this, totally agree. Sofinisba Anguissola is a wonderful example. As is Artemisia Gentileschi of course.
The Nat Portrait Gallery has done a wonderful job. It is such a different experience going into a gallery where there are nearly as many images of women as there are of men. It actually looks like half the population is female now! I'd love to see more galleries do this kind of thing.

Good points. Of course many of the successful women artists learnt their skills from painter fathers. Like Artemesia and Lavinia Fontana, for example.

Excellent question. They not only paint different subjects, often, but also with different interpretations of the same subject. As in Ithell Colquoun's The Judgement of Paris.
There are some examples here:

I really like your post WarriorN. It really highlights the difference between the actual existence of women artists and how women's art is curated. Look at Artemesia Gentileschi. She was a member of an academy in Florence and sold many paintings in her lifetime. I recently went to the Berthe Morisot exhibition in Dulwich https://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/2023/april/berthe-morisot/

I was surprised to discover she also sold many paintings in her lifetime. Her career was constrained - she painted outside less than other Impressionists - but that was partly because there was so much interest in a woman painting outside so she liked to paint in a boat where she could get on with her work. Berthe's daughter was also a successful painter in her lifetime.

Earlier I went to Alice Neel at the Barbican. She was less acclaimed in her lifetime because she painted portraits when almost everyone in the art world was 'Oh, abstract art, that's so much better than silly representations of people and places'. It was a superb exhibition, showing an amazing woman who painted almost up until her death at the age of 84.

We know from 19th novels that most middle class and aristocratic women painted watercolours. They reached a very high standard, largely from practice. However, much of that art will have been preserved in personal collections and archives, not in public galleries.

What we are told is 'great art' is hugely governed by what the directors of public galleries and acquisition committees decide to buy. When we don't see paintings by women, I hold them far more responsible than a medieval guild for women's under representation in public galleries.

Not much ‘painting’ in the sense of easel painting going on in the ‘Middle Ages’, mainly fresco or manuscript illustration. This wasn’t really controlled by the guilds, painting was seen as a subsidiary pursuit commercially and generally handled by the Goldsmiths.

Cloistered women are known to have been occupied in manuscript production and illustration, although most of this work is unsigned by the maker ( male or female), so hard to be exact. Local fresco work ….who knows?

Personally I prefer art to judged by merit, not sex, race or any other physical characteristics

And women weren't allowed access to anatomy dissections and indeed women's bodies weren't anatomically studied till much later on. <can't remember dates>

Just had a look at membership of craft guilds by women in the Middle Ages. Text below:

Many medieval Guilds had women members. Some Guilds specifically excluded women, but most did not. There are records of women only Guilds in Paris and Cologne which dealt with the manufacture of silk and textiles.
Women who were independent Masters of crafts generally had same rights and obligations as men in the Guilds. Sometimes women had to meet additional conditions before being allowed to join a Guild, for example they might have to prove that they had a reputation for being chaste. Women members of some Guilds also had to abide by dress codes.

Some towns and Guilds allowed widows who did not have independent Guild membership could continue to use their husbands' Guild rights as "part members" provided they had a competant journeyman to do the craft work involved in their business. ‘

What we are told is 'great art' is hugely governed by what the directors of public galleries and acquisition committees decide to buy. When we don't see paintings by women, I hold them far more responsible than a medieval guild for women's under representation in public galleries.

Yes great post.

Look at the impact of Saatchi.

And then Art in the last decade has had Instagram.

One of the things that altered my perception of “what is at” was Grayson Perrys Art Club during lockdown.

While a lot of art such as fine portraits or sculptures are judged and admired because of their technical merits, I now prefer to consider art as something creative that provokes a reaction. And as part of that, the context and the artist are absolutely part of that. Eg I would have a different response to a painting if you told me that the painter used their mouth or feet because they do not have the use of their hands, because part of my emotional response will be admiration and wondering how the heck they did it. Visit the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and his art is entwined with his personality, illnesses and experiences so that by the end of it, you really feel like you are understanding the man as much as his art.

so yes, I support the effort to show more work by women because it is about hearing the voices of those women, through their creative output.

One of the things that altered my perception of “what is at” was Grayson Perrys Art Club during lockdown.

I didn't know about the art club but I really love Grayson Perry's art.

If anyone is ever in Cambridge, do go and look at the Murray Edwards Art Collection. It's all female artists. Free to visit, and fascinating.

The largest collection of Women's art in Europe

https://www.murrayedwards.cam.ac.uk/about/womens-art-collection