Five Women Artists We Should All Know

If you’ve ever strolled around a gallery or studied the history of art, you’ll know that it is filled with the names of great men. We all know Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Picasso and da Vinci – but where are all the women artists?

We know they existed. But as art historian Frances Borzello says in her introduction to A World of Our Own: Women Artists Against the Odds, women artists were considered outsiders in the male profession. While they may have been discouraged from engaging with the arts, there are many stories of trailblazing women who persevered and as a result, helped shape the visual world as we know it.

To celebrate the new edition of A World of Our Own: Women Artists Against the Odds, we are shining a spotlight on five wild, wonderful and world-changing women artists throughout history.

Caterina dei Vigri (1413 – 1463) 
It’s undeniable that Italy has produced some of the world’s most famous artists. We’ve already touched on Michelangelo and da Vinci, and you’ll no doubt be familiar with Botticelli, Caravaggio and Titian. But have you heard of Caterina dei Vigri? You may know her better as St. Catherine of Bologna, the patron saint of artists and against temptation.

Caterina is primarily remembered as a nun, teacher and mystic. However, she was also a celebrated artist within her own convent and is something of a phenomenon, given she is one of very few 15th-century women whose artwork has survived.

After serving as a lady-in-waiting, Caterina entered the Corpus Christi convent in 1427 where her work as an artist began. Focusing largely on illuminated manuscripts and religious texts, she was self-taught, and this shines through in her unique visual interpretations of saints. Borzello cites a quote from Caterina’s 15th-century biographer who described how ‘Gladly, in the books and in many places of the monastery of Ferrara she painted the Divine World in swaddling clothes.’

Rosalba Carriera (1675 – 1757) 
Famous in her own time as an influential miniaturist and pastel-portrait painter, Carriera is described as ‘imbued with the charming and delicate qualities central to the Rococo style’ (Women Artists (Art Essentials) by Flavia Frigeri). Born to a lacemaker in Venice, she was made an honorary member of the Académie Royale de la Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris in 1720.

Carriera took an unorthodox route into the arts, beginning her artistic career painting intricate designs on snuffboxes as souvenirs, then moving on to painting miniatures, which would confirm her success and open doors within prestigious institutions in Rome. However, her most successful medium would be pastel portraiture, which according to Borzello made Carriera ‘Hogarth’s female counterpart’.

She moved to Paris and lived there briefly between 1720 and 1721, where she found her work was in great demand. It is widely acknowledged that her work had a significant impact on the aristocratic tastes of the royal court and ultimately, wider Parisian society. However, her time there exhausted her, and she eventually returned to her home on the Grand Canal in Venice, where she devoted the remainder of her life to her art.

Rosa Bonheur (1822 – 1899)  
Perhaps best known as a painter of animals, French artist Rosa Bonheur (born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur in Bordeaux) was a woman of many talents, also producing sculptures and sitting as a subject for painting and photographs. Flavia Frigeri notes that she led ‘a very extravagant life by French 19th-century standards’ (Women Artists (Art Essentials)).

Bonheur’s first exhibition took place in 1841 in the esteemed Salon in Paris. She became renowned for her skilful portrayal of animals in their natural surroundings, painting everything from cows and rabbits to beloved canine companions in the field. Bonheur’s work was considered so influential that she commands her own chapter in Linda Nochlin’s landmark essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, first published in 1971 and considered the dawn of feminist art history and theory.

Bonheur was also a trailblazer in her personal life, paving the way for generations of queer women by living openly as a lesbian with her partner Nathalie Micas for over forty years, and smashing gender boundaries by choosing to wear trousers, shirts and ties in a period when women were forbidden from doing so.

Nina Hamnett (1890 – 1956) 
Born in Wales during the final decade of the Victorian era, Nina Hamnett is known as the Queen of Bohemia. Born into a military family, Hamnett was sent to a boarding school in Kent and went on to study art in Dublin, London and Paris. She quickly became associated with leading avant-garde artists of the period, including Modigliani, Zadkine and Brancusi.

She was both the subject of art – with Roger Fry painting her portrait several times – and a talented painter, designer and writer. Unusually, she was also considered an expert in sailors’ shanties. Hamnett was the very embodiment of a wild woman, once reported to have danced nude on the table of a Parisian café. In British Women Artists: From Suffrage to the Sixties, Carolyn Trant describes Hamnett as falling into a category ‘usually occupied by male artists: promiscuous [and] often drunk.’

This would ultimately lead to her untimely death in 1956 when she fell from her apartment window. Her work, however, continues to live on. Hamnett’s most celebrated paintings were largely portraits featuring subjects such as Dolores Courtney (c. 1917, titled The Student), Rupert Doone (c.1923) and Lady Constance Stewart-Richardson (c. 1917).

Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) 
Hailed the Queen of the Polka Dot, Kusama rose to fame for her work with dot patterns. Born in Japan, she nurtured her passion for art from a very early age, recalling: ‘All I did every day was draw. Images rose up one after another, so fast I had difficulty capturing them all. And it is the same today, after more than sixty years of drawing and painting.’ (Women Artists (Art Essentials)).

In 1948, Kusama enrolled in a formal art school in Kyoto, but became frustrated with Japanese styles, instead turning her attention to the American and European avant-garde. She later became a significant force on the 1960s scene, pushing the boundaries of art as well as her own creative pursuits, which led to the opening of a fashion label called Kusama Fashion Co. Ltd. in 1969, complete with a New York boutique.

While her most spectacular works have involved sculpture and installations, including the Infinity Mirrored Room, presented at the Castellane Gallery in 1965, her most famous collection of paintings – Infinity Net – were inspired by her experimentation with all-over compositions. Employing the repeated gesture of a single brush stroke, these paintings are full of mesmerizing detail, composed of patterns of dots and nets.

Discover more groundbreaking women artists in A World of Our Own: Women Artists Against the Odds by Frances Borzello.