Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting display at the Victoria and Albert Museum looked at female printmakers since 1900. The display was quite small but included a number of well-known names as well as introducing some less famous. I liked the inclusion of some of the women who had worked on London Transport Posters and well as a Suffragette one. Highlights for me must be two by Dame Laura Knight and a lovely print by Mary Anne Sloane of her friend, the printer, Constance Pott. Closes 27 September 2026

Fascinating exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery looking at landscapes by female artists from 1760-1860. These works were by largely unknown artists working during the first 100 years of the Royal Academy. Some of the works had been shown in the annual shows, held at the time in the building they were now being displayed. There were some beautiful works and fascinating stories from Elizabeth Frances Batty's small works which were engraved and published as "Italian Scenery" in 1820, Mary Smirke who showed at the Royal Academy every year from 1809-1814 despite being hindered by her artist father who was on the hanging committee and Harriett Lister who later worked with her husband, Amos Green, on works which began with an ink blot. There were a number of potential novels in this show. Closes 20 May 2026

Fabulous exhibition at the British Library looking at the lives of Medieval women. I studied Medieval history at university, a long time ago, and how I wished we’d had this exhibition. It was full of wonderful stories and new people to discover. I’ve been twice now and got just as much from it the second time around. I liked the way it was divided into sections on private, public and spiritual lives. The private section looked at domestic life and had a number of displays on women’s health. Spiritual lives included nuns as well as Joan of Arc and her signature had to be one of the highlights of the show. I think my favourite section was the public one which looked at queens and what agency they had focusing on those who became regents and women as patrons of the art. There was also a display on working women such as a notary Juliet Durer from Lubeck and Alice Claver, a silk weaver in London. And my favourite object was Christine de Pisan’s “City of Women” showing women doing b...

Interesting exhibition at the National Maritime Museum to mark 200 years of the Royal National  Lifeboat Institution. Given the show was billed as being part of the 200th anniversary I would have liked to have seen a bit more history in it. There was a good timeline and a few exhibits around fundraising but that was it. Instead the real focus of the show were the photographs by Jack Lowe who has set himself the challenge of photographing all 238 operational RNLI lifeboat stations across the British Isles using glass-plate photography. The photographs were shown in pairs with a picture of the view from the station and, in this case, a picture of the women who are based there. The photographs had a Victorian feel due to the technique used. Closed 2 December 2024

Stunning exhibition at Tate Britain looking at professional women artists in Britain from the 16th to 20th centuries. The show told the story simply and clearly letting the artists’ work and stories speak for themselves without being too preachy. I have done lots of courses reinstating women artists in the canon of art history but there were lots of people mentioned in this show who I didn’t know. Around every corner seemed to be an extraordinary new fact such as that Reynolds had a sister who was an artist, Elizabeth, who kept house for him and copied his work. There were familiar faces too and I did a little dance in front of the Vanessa Bell and it is always good to see the Artemisia Gentileschi self-portrait from the Royal Collection. Talking Royal Collection they also have the newly identified picture by her of “Susanna and the Elders” which I’d been wanting to see. The new names are too numerous to mention and I have a lot of Googling to do. I’ll just mention one. The man ...

Disappointing online lecture from the National Gallery looking at female artists in the gallery’s collection. I say disappointing as from the title, I had assumed the talk would focus on female studio practice and in particular, that of Eva Gonzales. However the talk became a mix of a standard talk on female artists in the collection and ones I had done a couple of year’s ago on the Eva Gonzales portrait in a studio by Manet when there was a focus exhibition on the painting at the gallery. Jacqui Ansell, from Christies Education, as ever delivered the talk well with good images and intelligent coverage of the subject, but I felt the talk’s title had promised more focus than this. It was a good International Women’s Day talk but, as a paid talk, was not novel enough. Maybe I have just done too many National Gallery talks now!

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery to mark International Women’s Day looking at how women artists have supported other women artists. The discussion between Amy Mechowski and Jon King started by looking at Rosa Bonheur and how she mentored her female partners who were also artists. They also used her to look at how difficult it was for women to train as artists until the late 19th century. They also looked at Adelaide Labille-Guiard and Louise Vigree le Brun and how society set them up as rivals in the 18th century. They also looked in detail at Labille-Guiard’s self-portrait with two of her pupils. They came up to date by looking at some of the artists in residence in the gallery and what they have done to rebalance the collection.  

Interesting exhibition at Cristea Roberts of works on paper by contemporary female abstract artists. The show has been designed to complement the show at the Whitechapel Gallery I I’d been to shortly before extending the narrative into contemporary art. It had a small selection of work by each artist with a good commentary on them on a press release. I was particularly drawn to Rana Begum’s interlocking grids which gave different mixes of colour to give different effects. Closed 22 April 2023    

Fascinating exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at female print makers. I’d been meaning to do this show for ages and I’m so glad I made the effort before it closed. From the first revelation that Madame de Pompadour made prints I was hooked! Each section had a small biography of the artist and it looked at professional and amateur work. It featured a number of artists I knew, from Angelica Kauffman to Mary Cassatt and Gwen Raverat, but also a lot I didn’t know like Elizabeth Judkins and her niece Caroline Watson. It would have been nice to have a bit more on female print sellers in the 18th century but it was only a small space so that would be asking a lot. Closed 7 May 2023    

Clever exhibition at the British Museum looking at how women appear in faiths around the world. It was a clever idea to group the narrative around five themes each championed by a contemporary spokeswoman including Mary Beard and Bonnie Greer. Themes ranged from women as nature, passion, magic and malice, compassion and justice. Each section was a round display with an introductory object and commentary on a central display. Under each theme there were objects for all ages and all around the world. I did feel at times the objects got a bit lost within the themes and some stunning works were made to feel quite ordinary such as a gemstone from 200-400AD which is one of the earliest images of The Fall and some wonderful classical statues which became purely an example of a particular goddess with little information that particular object. Closes 25 September 2022 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard    

Interesting talk from the National Portrait Gallery to mark Women’s History Month. Gaynor Pelham from the gallery took us though images of women in the collection and talked about how they are hoping to fill some of the gaps of women they feel should be represented and who aren’t at present plus how they plan to display more pictures of women. Most of the talk was the guide though the collection starting with the self-portrait of Angelica Kauffman, the 18th century artist, as well as a portrait of her by George Romney. With each example Gaynor told us a bit about the sitter as well as showing us their portraits. She covered a wide selection of women however I was familiar with most of those mentioned. It might have been nice to hear a bit more about the gaps they want to fill, particularly of historic figures.

Interesting online seminar from the National Gallery looking at women artists and the gallery. There was a good blend of looking at what is in the collection, how the collection has been used by women and how contemporary artists are interacting with it all delivered with an interesting range of speakers. The afternoon opened with a look at the roles of women hidden behind male artists such as sisters, daughters and mothers. Some like Marietta Robusti, daughter of Tinteretto, were artists themselves but others like Agnes Durer and Margaret Van Eyck ran their husband’s studios. They mused on how many similar women in the art world had been forgotten. The meat of the event was looking at copying work in the gallery and the role this played in women’s art studies. We also discussed women who used these copies as a way of earning money. This included a fascinating examination of the gallery’s own registers tracing women who appeared in them from 1900-1910. There were also intervi...

Beautiful exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum contrasting the way women saw themselves through their art from the beginning of the twentieth century to today with their representation by male artists. The show drew on the galleries own collections one side looked at men using women as their muse and it was good to see one of the Stanley Spencer self-portraits with his second wife Patricia Preece in this context as the Epstein sculpture of Hélène Yellin. There was also a Glyn Philpott I didn’t know. The other side looked at female artists and included a nice Gwen John and a lovely picture by Marie Louis von Motesiczky “At the Dressmaker’s” from 1930 showing herself as the lady being fitted for a dress. It was good to see contemporary art represented with a Bridget Riley. Closes 1 March 2022

Wonderful three part online course from ARTscapades looking women artists from early times to the Baroque. Richard Stemp romped through art history listing and describing the work of women artists with wonderful illustrations. He began by going through the women artists mentioned by Pliny, how Boccaccio then elaborated on the stories of some of them and how copies of his work were illustrated by illuminators. He argued that their accurate depictions implied that it was not unknow for women to be artists. He also looked at the barriers to women becoming artists at this time from the fact that women couldn’t go out in public without a chaperone and therefore found it hard to observe the world to the fact they couldn’t go to live in the house of a master and therefore couldn’t study in the traditional way. Most fun though was his listing of some amazing artis, many of who I knew but there were also lots of new names to loo out for. I hadn’t come across Catherina de Vigri who becam...

Thoughtful online talk from the National Gallery taking three pictures of women from the collection where they are not named and represent a type not an individual while obviously being a portrait of a real person. Holly Morrison, Kate Devine and Jenny Staff each took a picture and talked us through different ways to looking at it. These including “The Old Woman/The Ugly Duchess” by Quintin Massys from 1513, the portrait of a black woman shown here by an unknown French 19th century artist and “Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernando” by Edward Degas in 1879. Although in the latter picture we do know the subject they discussed whether Degas was painting her as a type rather than wanting to capture her individuality . This was an interesting contrast to the second picture, which I didn’t know and has been on long term loan to Dublin, where we aren’t burdened by what we know about the artist when we look at it. The Massys may represent a satirical type or a portrait of a real woman with Pag...

Fascinating online tour from London Art Week of an exhibition at Sam Fogg looking at Medieval women as the subject and makers of art. Jana Gajdosova, Medieval specialist at Sam Fogg and Alexandra Gajewski   of Burlington Magazine took us round the show with four brief videos of the installation then picked out specific images to highlight themes. I loved the image of St Avia shown here which would probably have been set in a wall and fascinated to hear about Shrine Madonna’s which open up down the chest to reveal an image, often a Trinity, and fell out of fashion due to the theological contradiction that them implied the Virgin came before all aspects of the Trinity not just the son. They kept mentioning a previous round table discussion which I found on the Sam Fogg website which involved the two speakers from the talk plus Jeffrey Hamburger from Harvard University and Madeline Caviness from Tuft University. This talked more about the themes involved including the idea of who...

Excellent two part online course from the National Gallery looking at the role of families in artistic traditions and in particular the benefits for female artists. Sian Walters led two two hour sessions over two days covering early female artists through to the 18th century. On the first day we looked at why women were only really able to operate as artists if they were part of an artistic family and some examples of this from the Renaissance including Marietta Robusti, Tintoretto’s daughter, Sofonisba Auguissola, Lavinia Fontana and Catharina Van Hemessen. We then went on to discuss Artemisia Gentileschi and her father and their influence on each other. Day two we looked at some male dominated families mainly the Bellini’s and their brother in law Mantegna, concentrating on how Giovanni Bellini and   Mantegna influenced each other. We also looked at the Brueghel family and their family connections to later artists. We finished by looking at some later female artists, Judith ...

Thought provoking online discussion at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on the female view in various cultural areas. Aindrea Emelfie chaired the event with Kenya Hunt, Fashion Director of Grazia Magazine; Charlotte Jansen, Editor at Large of Elephant Magazine and contemporary artist and founder of Big Art Hertstory, Luisa-Maria MacCormack. I would have liked to have heard more about the female gaze in art but Jansen did talk about her study of female photographers for her book “Girl on Girl” and MacCormack talked about forgotten women in art, such as Adelaide Labille-Guiard, who started an art school in 18th century France. Other interesting conversations were around how fashion magazines are changing to represent a more diverse range of customers and are employing more female photographers.  

Clear precise online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the female artists in their collection and why there are so few of them. Fiona Alderton led us though eight of the female artists with works at the National Gallery giving us a quick outline of their life and describing the pictures by them in the collection. We looked at Catharine Van Hemessen, Judith Leyster, Rachel Ruysch, Artemisia Gentileschi, Elisabeth Louise Vigee le Brun, Rosa Bonheur and Berthe Morisot. I thought it was a lovely touch to also include Bridget Riley and her 2019 commission “Messengers” for the new staircase. She talked about the barriers these artists faced and how most had been encouraged by male relative who were also artists. Catharine Van Hemessen was a new find for me, a 16th century Flemish artist of small somber portraits. Checking a list online I see there are some other women artists I don’t know in the collection and I’d love to hear a second talk looking at these lesser known fi...

Humourless exhibition at the Photographers Gallery looking at feminist photography from the 1970s. This was very old school, humourless feminism which felt a bit bludgeoning after a while but you had to take a step back and think about the context and what it was trying to do. I did like Mary Beth Adelson’s “Some Living American Women Artists” based on Leonardo’s Last Supper with Georgie O’Keefe in the place of Christ. It seems appropriate after the wonderful show of her work this year at Tate Modern. I was interested to see two artists take the approach of a series of pictures of themselves with their faces pressed up against glass. I also liked Helena Almeida’s picture of women’s hands through bars in the windows and fences. I would have liked to see a bit more commentary on the works but I guess I needed to buy the small book which went with the show which I wasn’t including to do! Closes on 29 January 2017