Women’s History

23 Apr Watch: The Tragic Story of Audrey Munson

Not many people know Audrey Munson by name—but if you’ve spent any time in New York City, you’ve seen her face. Munson’s likeness tops some of the city’s grandest buildings. Even when she is remembered, it’s often for the more scandalous and tragic events in...

21 Apr Portrait of Pianist Misia Sert

Posted at 02:08h in art history, fashion history, Metropolitan Museum, Women's History by jenni

Misia Sert was an accomplished pianist--a student of Fauré's, who helped her support herself by referring students to her, she also famously accompanied Caruso at parties when he sang Neapolitan songs. But she was most famous as a salonnière, one of the women who ran...

20 Apr Tapestry of Diane de Poitiers

Posted at 02:14h in art history, courtesans, nasty women, Shady Ladies, Women's History by jenni

Diane de Poitiers, represented on this wall hanging as the goddess Diana, was so powerful in France when she was the mistress of King Henri II that they often signed his correspondence with one word: HENRIDIANE. Find out more about powerful women in history on...

10 Dec Audio: Studio 360’s Kurt Andersen Interview with Andrew Lear

Posted at 17:55h in art history, beauty standards, Shady Ladies, Women's History, World by jenni

Why is contemporary culture obsessed with how well-endowed men are, and yet in classical art men are so small? Kurt Andersen unravels the mystery with a classics scholar, Andrew Lear. Book A Tour Here | Gift A Tour Here...

09 Nov Early Female Artists

Posted at 18:49h in art history, Metropolitan Museum, Women's History by Rena Tobey

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...

21 Aug A transitional moment in the status of women in the arts

Posted at 09:29h in art history, Shady Ladies, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

This picture shows us a transitional moment in the status of women in the arts. We see a group of women studying in an artist's studio, which is of course relatively modern, as there were no studios where groups of women studied before the mid-18th century, even in Paris.

21 Aug Seen at the Tate: Nameless & Friendless by Emily Mary Osborn 1857

Posted at 09:22h in art history, nasty women, Shady Ladies, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

Emily Mary Osborn was one of the most important artists associated with the campaign for women’s rights in the nineteenth century. The daughter of a clergyman, she was brought up in Kent and Essex until 1842 when the family moved back to London. It was here that she trained as an artist at Dickinson’s academy in Maddox Street and then at Leigh’s in Newman Street. During the 1850s Osborn established a reputation as a genre painter specialising in figurative subjects of ‘unpretending character’ – the most significant of which were pictures of modern women in pathetic situations, similar to works by Richard Redgrave and Rebecca Solomon. Home Thoughts, which was painted in 1856 and exhibited at the Royal Academy that same year, was followed by her most famous work Nameless and Friendless in 1857. A full-scale, squared-up preparatory design for the latter exists in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and a smaller version in oil in York Art Gallery.

21 Aug Marie Baltshirtseff: In The Studio

Posted at 09:08h in art history, Metropolitan Museum, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

[caption id="attachment_6066" align="alignleft" width="295"] Marie Bashkirtseff[/caption] The self-portrait is probably the most interesting tradition among women artists. Often women artists portray themselves as artists, or rather claim their status as an artist though self-portraiture; paintings of other women artists painting are a related tradition, involving a...

08 Aug Anne de Pisseleu, the Duchesse d’Étampes

Posted at 11:07h in art history, fashion, Metropolitan Museum, Shady Ladies, Women's History by jenni

People often ask if our tours change over time, and the answer is absolutely yes, they change—both because the museum's displays change, and because we discover things about the artworks. Here for instance is a portrait of a royal mistress that just came onto display at the Met. It isn't certain who the artist is, but the subject is clearly Anne de Pisseleu, the Duchesse d'Étampes, who was one of the most important mistresses of François I, France's most important Renaissance king. Anne was a typical Shady Lady: she was famously beautiful, but also famously intelligent. In fact, she was called "the most beautiful of the learned, and the most learned of the beautiful." It was also typical of the French court that François married her off and gave her husband a title: the French always wanted their royal mistresses to be titled and married (perhaps to prevent their children from making claims on the throne). Want to know more about the Shady Ladies of art and history? Come on our Shady Ladies tours!

08 Aug Comic Actress Elizabeth Farren

Posted at 10:50h in courtesans, Metropolitan Museum, Women's History by Professor Andrew Lear

Elizabeth Farren was the great comic actress of 18th century London. She was the mistress of the Earl of Derby and when his wife died, he married her, so she became the Countess of Derby. Don't imagine that this put their relationship beyond the aim...