Tate Britain foregrounds more than 100 British women artists you may never have heard of, reports John Westbrooke
Four years ago, the National Gallery’s Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition surprised many with the life and art of an almost forgotten painter. Now, Tate Britain has taken this further by looking at the work of females over 400 years of British art, and questioning why they’re so obscure.
Artemisia’s Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting is near the entrance, strikingly lit from above, sleeves rolled up, hair straggly as she looks past the canvas to an unseen mirror – a professional at work. And she really was a professional, famous in her day, and worked in London for a while for Charles I; it’s later centuries who forgot her. But so many of the other artists struggled even to paint at all, whatever their talent.
Susanna Horenbout and Levina Teerlinc worked in Henry VIII’s court – but not as painters. Their fathers were Flemish artists, but the daughters were Gentlewomen of the Privy Chamber to queens. We know they both did paint – Levina was referred to as a “paintrix” – but we don’t know what. There are miniatures on display, including a charming Lady Holding a Monkey attributed to Levina, but it might not be hers. Painting was a useful skill, but not appreciated so much that anyone kept a record of their work.
In 1658, a century later, a publication listed English painters, four of them women working in oil. Two remain in the shadows, but one – “that worthy artist Mrs Carlile” – was another courtier, Queen’s Laundress to Charles I’s wife; her husband was Gentleman of the Guns and Bows. After their employer’s execution, short of money, Joan Carlile became one of the first professional female painters. Her work was similar to that of male contemporaries; she typically painted women, often wearing a wasp-waisted white satin dress, perhaps a souvenir of her time as a dresser.
Mary Beale, the fourth artist listed, wasn’t at court at all; she was a professional portrait painter in Pall Mall. Her husband kept accounts of her work, her sitters and sittings and prices (usually £10, ultramarine £1 extra), and his own activities buying supplies, so we know more about her than about most artists. Like Carlile, she painted fine ladies in fine costumes, sometimes with poses lifted from the work of her friend Peter Lely, who was a court painter.
We don’t know where Carlile or Beale learnt their trade, but Beale’s father, a rector, painted: having money or a place at court or an involved family seems to have been the best way into art for women. Sometimes the explanation given for their absence from art history is that they were never good enough. Few men were good enough to begin with either, but they were offered the opportunity of classes and apprenticeships and encouraged to think of it as a career. Women had to learn at home and were expected to think of it as a hobby.
The founding of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768, to promote the creation and enjoyment of art, may have seemed to offer hope: two of the 34 founding members, Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, were women, both were taught by their fathers.
Moser was best known for flower paintings, a suitable subject for a lady: though she did portraits too, one critic advised her to stick to flowers since she was good at it. But Kauffman boldly painted historical and mythical subjects, previously thought fit only for men. Her prices were up there with men’s too, even when she painted four roundels for the ceiling of the RA council chamber.
The two were never full RA members – they couldn’t go to council meetings, and women couldn’t attend life-drawing classes – but they could hang their work at the summer exhibitions, a huge date on the social calendar; hundreds of other women did likewise over the years.
In Kauffman’s wake came Maria Cosway, with a spectacular, almost cinematic portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, as Cynthia (1782), The moon goddess is shown bursting through the clouds with the night sky behind her. Cosway was a success in high society – and yet even she was under pressure from her husband, a painter himself, not to sell her work; and most of her pictures have vanished.
Understandably some painters joined the struggle for women’s rights in general. One of the more striking works on show is “Woman’s Work”: A Medley by Frances Claxton (1861), an early feminist, in which, outdoors but surrounded by a wall, women cluster round a man sitting beneath a golden calf and are talked out of joining professions; a couple look expectantly at the sea through a gap, and just one climbs a ladder to escape. The RA might not have been amused but it’s colourful and highly enjoyable.
Eventually, things changed – notably the opening of the Slade School of Fine Art in 1871, which upended tradition by admitting women and men alike (in practice, more women).
Among the landmarks of progress on show are Elizabeth Butler’s The Roll Call (1874), a line of weary soldiers in the Crimean snow, which was such a sensation that a policeman had to keep order when it was hung at the Academy, and the Queen bought it.
Louise Jopling’s A Modern Cinderella (1875) shows a model taking her costume off and revealing a bare shoulder: it sold quickly but drew criticism for impropriety. Ten years later a full-frontal nude Bacchante by Henrietta Rae was condemned in The Times by “A British Matron”, who proved to be Mr J.C. Horsley RA but failed to win much support.
By the 20th century the battle for legitimacy was over – almost. Gwen John’s work includes a self-portrait from 1902 (there’s a more assertive one in the National Portrait Gallery), but she remained for decades in the shadow of her brother Augustus; only since her death in France in 1939 has her talent been fully recognised.
In 1918, Anna Airy became the first official female war artist and one of her big canvases, Shop for Machining 15-Inch Shells, is hung here. But even she noted in later years: “A client might admire your talent but ultimately feel safer with a man.”
As for Knight, the belated RA trailblazer, she’s represented by paintings of women by the sea and the rocks on the Cornish coast. They led to her being called an “English impressionist”: they’ve got at least as much of the solidity of Cézanne as the sunkissed Normandy coast of Monet, but you couldn’t mistake them for either: she was her own woman.
Near the close of the exhibition is one of the most vigorous works, a full-length portrait of suffragette Una Dugdale by Ethel Wright (1912). She’s strong, self-confident, colourfully dressed, and scandalised the nation when she married by refusing to promise to obey her husband. She didn’t necessarily lead a more exciting life than the women painted by Joan Carlile – who had after all survived a civil war – but was readier to have it portrayed.
By the end of the show I was amazed that they’d found so many disregarded women – more than 100 – and yet, compared to men, so few. Along the way are some sad stories. Young Mary Black paints a man (well) in 1764 but he kicks up such a fuss about the price that she turns to pastels instead. In the 1760s, Mary Grace paints herself with palette in hand: exhibition records show how prolific she was, and yet this is the only work now known to exist. Harriet Gouldsmith in 1839 publishes A Voice from a Picture, in which a landscape painting explains the traumas a painting by a woman endures, hung badly and sold cheaply.
It’s been a long hard slog toward equality, but who knew how many were lost on the way?
Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920 is at Tate Britain until 13 October 2024. £20, concessions available.
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/women-artists-in-britain-1520-1920
Award Winning Website for Cultural Travellers 