An art exhibition is usually about the art on display, but Tate Britain’s look at 100 women artists over 400 years is much more than that. It’s the story told about the artists that really matters here.
This is a tale of how women had to fight and fight hard to be recognized in a male-dominated art world that didn’t approve of women as painters.
To tell that story, the display has been packed full of anecdotes and letters from women bemoaning how they are treated. It’s also an exhibition of loss, as so little is known about most of the artists in the show, simply because they weren’t given suitable importance when alive.
In a roughly chronological display, the exhibition opens with the Tudors, and two artists, Susanna Horenbout and Levina Teerlinc, who are amongst the earliest women to be named as artists in the UK, although attributing actual paintings to them has proven remarkably difficult.
By the 17th century, a list of artists working commercially in the UK included just four women.
This has been put down to the attitude that painting by women was acceptable as a hobby, but goodness me, they shouldn’t earn a living from it. That’s what the husband is for after all.
Even when women were allowed to paint commercially, there was a stigma about them painting portraits in oils, as that was a man’s job, and women should stick to suitable forms of art such as needlework or watercolours. If they had to use oils, why can’t they stick to nice paintings of flowers?
Mary Black’s impressive painting of the physician Messenger Monsey is a perfect example of male attitudes. He was content to sit for the artist because she offered to do the painting for half the price it would have cost had man painted it. Even then, Monsey wanted the fee halved again, arguing in a letter that for a woman to expect to be paid meant she was a “slut”.
Fortunately, as you will see in the exhibition, there were a good many women who threw those ideas precisely where they belonged, in the bin. Even so, many female portrait artists struggled to gain acceptance and were often dismissed as self-taught amateurs.
Fortunately, the tide was turning, very slowly at first, and the exhibition launches into paintings that weren’t just shown at exhibitions, but admired and applauded by the critics and the public alike.
It turns out that women can paint after all. Who knew!
One illuminating comment by a miniature by Diana Hill concerns her later move to India. A rival miniaturist, Ozias Humphrey, recognising her talent, wrote that he was rather “all the male painters of England arrived in India than this single woman.”
Also very easy to miss is the miniature self-portrait by Sarah Biffin, an artist born without arms or legs and with the triple disability of being a woman. Initially a fairground attraction as she had learned to paint using her mouth, she was finally recognised as an excellent miniaturist in her own right.
By the time we get to the Victorian era, it was much more acceptable for women to be artists, but only of suitable subjects. And the exhibition shows what women weren’t supposed to paint, such as scenes of war, or nudity.
One painting, showing a glimpse of the shoulder, caused an outcry, and amusingly, Tate had displayed it next to a slightly later full nude, which caused another outcry, especially when it turned out that a concerned letter from a “British Matron” was actually written by a man.
There is nothing quite like the stench of hypocrisy to make a painting popular.
Although women were officially allowed into exhibitions and society as artists by now, they faced many unstated challenges to keep them out — such as the example in the exhibition of the Photographic Society of London, which officially admitted ladies, but then only met in the evenings when the ladies weren’t expected to be out of the house unaccompanied.
Schools strongly announced they admitted ladies, and then put up equally strong barriers to having to actually let them inside.
The exhibition ends more positively with the modern era, but even here, the final painting, by Marie Stillman, who was an artist who exhibited widely but had to struggle against a husband who felt her success undermined his masculinity.
Plus ça change.
It’s an exhibition with many great paintings to look at, but for once, spend a lot more time reading the accompanying notes, which tell the real story of the artists who were so often overlooked in their lifetimes.
The exhibition Now You See Us Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 is at Tate Britain until 13th October 2024.
Tickets can be booked in advance or at the door – full details are here.
This article was published on ianVisits
SUPPORT THIS WEBSITE
This website has been running now for just over a decade, and while advertising revenue contributes to funding the website, but doesn’t cover the costs. That is why I have set up a facility with DonorBox where you can contribute to the costs of the website and time invested in writing and research for the news articles.
It’s very similar to the way The Guardian and many smaller websites are now seeking to generate an income in the face of rising costs and declining advertising.
Whether its a one-off donation or a regular giver, every additional support goes a long way to covering the running costs of this website, and keeping you regularly topped up doses of Londony news and facts.
If you like what your read on here, then please support the website here.
Thank you
