I'm standing in front of this mesmerizing work titled 'Messengers'.
This was made by Bridget Riley, an artist who is unusual in our collection as she is
alive and female and the title of the painting is inspired by the artist
John Constable's phrase for clouds.
Hello, my name is Fiona Alderton and I'm an Educator here at the National Gallery
This video is to celebrate International Women's Day
and you can find more resources about women in art history in
the description box below. You can also find a full list of the paintings
mentioned in this video.
And today we're going to take you on a tour of some of
the paintings by women in the collection.
Catharina van Hemessen was a Flemish artist
who studied art under her father's tutelage. She was not only the
first woman but we think the first person to paint a self portrait at the easel.
Showcasing her skills and her talent in a male-dominated world, an
early case of marketing. One of her patrons was Mary of Hungary and actually
on Mary's death she made sure the Catharina and her husband were well
looked after: she left them a pension for life. She specialised in still, quiet
portraits and she may, as many women of her time
may have ceased to paint after her marriage and what we see here behind me is a very
strong portrait of a man, not looking quite at us, but looking away, his hands
on his hip and the other one on the sword. He's obviously a man of wealth but
we don't know his identity and he wears an array of rings: one of them actually
has a coat of arms yet to be identified.
This engaging portrait that we see behind me is by
the French artist Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, one of
the most successful artists during her lifetime. This portrait is of Alexandrine
Brongniart, one of the children of Elisabeth's great friends, Alexander Brongniart
and his wife Anna Louisa and it was with those great friends that Elisabeth
sought solace in the lead-up to the French Revolution when her relationship
with the Queen, Marie Antoinette, was becoming problematic to say the least.
So in this portrait behind me we see Alexandrine looking out at us quite
confidently. She's searching in this green, purple-trimmed bag
looking for, perhaps, the knitting materials to add to the red
ball of wool that we see and she's engaged in a childish pursuit and these
types of portraits were very popular during this period.
And this painting of Alexandrine is very much in contrast
with Judith Leyster's painting of 'A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel’
We have these two very mischievous children
gazing out at us as if we've quite literally caught them in the midst of
doing something. They're testing the boundaries of how far they can go and
this painting is very much a trend of Dutch moralistic paintings where it's a
warning to the behavior of the adults who are looking upon the work.
Rachel Ruysch was a woman who combined being an artist and a mother to ten
children. Her husband, also a painter, was unusually supportive of her work.
She was extremely wealthy and successful and her paintings sold for more in her lifetime
than Rembrandt's did in his.
Now, of course, for a woman, a female artist,
painting during this period there were many obstacles to them: one of them was
the skill of learning to paint and draw the human figure and so, like many other
women who wanted to become an artist, Rachel focused on the work of still life;
primarily flower painting. Her father was a botanist and collector of unusual
specimens and Rachel would help him with his work and this greatly influenced her
future paintings. But of course these flowers would not have been in bloom all
at the same time so Rachel would have referred to her collection of drawings
to create a still life where the seasons are all coming together.
Artemisia Gentileschi was an artist who was born in Rome and was the best painter amongst
her siblings, her brothers. She was trained by her father and this was at a
time when, as a woman, you needed to have that connection, whether it be a father
or a brother in order to train as an artist.
She was raped by her father's friend, the artist Agostino Tassi
and there was a big court case in Rome
where he was found guilty but the punishment was never
enforced and the papers from that court case survive to this day.
She traveled around Europe gaining the patronage of royalty
including Charles I here in England. She took on big historical
subjects and she was a follower of Caravaggio but her work was criticised
for being 'unfeminine' and 'animalistic' but she had a thriving, successful studio in
Naples which she ran for about 25 years.
And in this self portrait we see behind me
we see her being shown as Catherine of Alexandria who was martyred for her faith.
This is another painting by Catharina van Hemessen who painted
'Portrait of a Man'. She specialised in these small-scale portraits of women and
there were eight of them in various collections around the world and what we
see in this very delicate portrait is a woman who is explicitly showing off her wealth.
And this painting we see behind me is a self portrait by the French
artist Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun and this self portrait is clearly an
exercise in self promotion in advertising. Elisabeth was known to be
beautiful, attractive and people were suspicious of this. People said "Well, how
could she be beautiful but also a good artist?" and they decided that actually
there must be a man somewhere, a man who was in love with her who was doing the
paintings and she was passing them off as her own.
Now her big break comes when she gains
the patronage of the Queen, Marie Antoinette,
and she's taken off to Versailles and her task is to soften the image of the
Queen. She paints around 30 portraits of the Queen and her children and through
her contacts with the Queen and the King, she gains entry to the Académie Royale
and this is at a time when there is a limit on the number of women admitted.
The French Revolution is on its way but she manages to flee Paris with her
daughter Julie, leaving her husband behind, before the King and the Queen are
hauled off to be executed. She's in exile for 12 years and she travels to Italy
and then finds herself in Russia where she paints the grandchildren of
Catherine the Great and such is her charge for her paintings that have fellow French
men and women can't afford to be painted by her.
She is said to be the best mirror in the land.
This painting behind me is by Rosa Bonheur and this is the first
painting by female artist that the National Gallery acquired. It's a smaller
version of an earlier painting that she made which now hangs in The Met in New York.
Now, like some of our female artists we've looked at today, her father was
also a painter and he told her that she would "surpass Madame Le Brun"
but unlike Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Rosa didn't trade on her femininity.
In fact, she did the exact opposite: in order for her to carry out her works and
to visit the Horse Fair, the scene of the painting behind me, she had to seek
permission from the French authorities to dress like a man and this was to stop
her being harassed as she went about her day-to-day work and this work was said
to be so good that it could almost have been done by a man.
And if you look very closely in our painting
you'll see a self portrait of our artist herself.
And by the age of 30, such was her success, she was able to buy a Chateau.
Rosa wasn't explicit about her sexuality but she had two long term
relationships with women and all three of them are buried together in a
Parisian cemetery.
And I think Napoleon III's wife Eugenie puts it best when
she said "Genius has no gender".
Berthe Morisot is an artist who was
encouraged to draw and paint by her parents and her parents actually built a
studio in the bottom of their garden for her sisters and herself.
And whilst drawing was seen as a cultural accomplishment for girls such as Berthe, to actually
become an artist for a woman at this time was seen as a "catastrophe" or a "disaster".
Now she marries the artist, Eugène Manet, and she carries on
painting throughout this time whereas her sister Edma, on her marriage, stops.
Berthe is linked very closely to the Impressionists and when she exhibits a
piece of work, before the Impressionists actually get their names,
she is told not to join these "mad men".
She was described as a "feminine artist"
or a "woman Impressionist" and her use of materials:
her oil paints and her pastels and her light brushstrokes were seen by her
critics as a marker of her femininity
unlike Artemisia, who was seen as not feminine enough.
And even though she carries on as an artist throughout her
lifetime, upon her death at the age of 54, her fellow artist Paul Cézanne writes to
his son to talk about the sadness of her demise but also the fact that the public
hardly knows her.
Our paintings in the Gallery are not static and some of them
may be on loan to galleries around the world or being examined for research in
our Conservation or Scientific departments. Please check before your
visit if you have your heart set on seeing a particular painting.
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Thank you very much for watching and see you next time.