Saturday 29 October 2011


"Why have there been no great women artists?" This is how the critic Linda Nochlin famously opened the debate about the way canonical thinking defined and still defines Western art history.
I assume it's a rhetorical question, meant to provoke debate, rather than a real argument that there have been no 'great' or famous women artists.
It's not that there have been no great female artists, it's that they've been hidden away, discouraged and erased, that they've been paid little attention.
Untaught, overlooked, neglected, overshadowed... they are and they were, and  they stand above... them all.
 I found today an amazing book! Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists -by Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn


Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn's pioneering catalogue lists the folowing women as Pre-Raphaelite women artists:

    Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
    Anna Mary Howitt
    Rosa Brett
    Anna Eliza Blunden
    Jane Benham Hay
    Joanna May Boyce
    Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal
    Rebecca Solomon
    Emma Sandys
    Julia Margaret Cameron
    Lucy Madox Brown
    Catherine Madox Brown
    Marie Spartali Stillman
    Francesca Alexander
    Evelyn de Morgan
    Kate Elizabeth Bunce
    Maria Casavetti Zambaco
    Marianne Preindelsberger Stokes

    Christina Jane Herrigham
    Eleanor Forescue Brickdale

References

Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists. London: Thames & Hudson, 1998.

Suzanne Valadon,Mary Cassatt, Artemisia Gentileschi, Vanessa Bell, Gwen John, Angelica Kauffman, Mona Hatoum, Charlotte Cornish, Halima Cassell, Tamara de Lempicka, Cornelia Parker, Gillian Ayres, Lucy Jones, Vieira da Silva, Dod Proctor, Elizabeth Forbes, Michelle Wright, Barbara Rae, Anita Klein,Mary Stork, Louise Bourgeois, Niki de Sait Phalle and there are many more

One of my favourites artists -
Emma Sandys (born Mary Ann Emma Sands) (1843–1877) 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. Her earliest dated painting is marked 1863 and she exhibited her works in both London and Norwich between 1867 and 1874.
Sandys did most of her work around Norwich but may have spent time in the studio of her brother, Frederick Sandys, in London.

Her works include:

    Elaine (National Trust Collection, Lanhydrock, Cornwall.)
    Fiammetta
    Lady in Yellow Dress (Norwich Castle Museum.)
    Viola (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.)


Emma Sandys, Elaine (National Trust Collection, Lanhydrock, Cornwall.)

 Manchester Art Gallery today




Manchester today