09 Nov Early Female Artists
For almost ten years, I’ve been researching and writing about American women artists working before 1945, with particular interest in resuscitating their careers. Everything about these women fascinates me–their struggle to become professionals in a world that doesn’t see women that way; the ways they negotiated their personal lives, loves, and family with their drive to succeed in the male-dominated art world; and of course, the artworks themselves.
Encyclopedic museum collections like the Metropolitan Museum of Art include works by little-remembered women artists, and working with that phenomenal collection brought me to Shady Lady Tours. The Nasty Women tour opens the door to woman artists and women subjects from around the world and through time. These are women who didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, who said ‘yes’ to opportunities. Smart. Forthright, Talented. Driven. Powerful in voice and in deed. What fun to introduce this prestigious sorority to tour goers.
Here are just two you’ll meet along the way. Look at how Adélaide Labille-Guiard gazes coolly and confidently at us, as we in turn take in her elegance and pride in her work. This woman is a force, and she uses her self-portrait to advocate for equality and fraternity for professional women artists in France, just as revolutionary forces are gathering for similar societal changes.
Lilly Martin Spencer uses humor to make her point about gender equality. But where is she? Not in the painting, but making it, from the confines of her middle class, New York City home. Husband Benjamin, unable to support their growing family financially, instead muddles through the domestic sphere task of shopping with clumsy inelegance. Spencer has a thing or two to say about women’s roles, as wives, as partners, as painters.
Come join me on a Nasty Women tour, to meet these artists and more powerhouse women from the Met’s exceptional collection. See you there!
