Artemisia Gentileschi
Italian · 1593-1656
The Women Behind the Art
Her hand. Her eye. Her collection.
The women who made the work, the women who made it possible, the women in the pictures and the women who were the reason. Researched and cited like every record here.
Today 10 of the 123 artists in this archive are women. That is the history of who was collected and recorded, and it is what this section is here to change: the researchers now add women artists first.
She made it
The women who made the work: painters, sculptors, photographers, workshop heads, and the artists the market forgot.
Clara Peeters
Flemish (Southern Netherlands, Antwerp) · c. 1580s - after 1621
Dorothea Lange
American · 1895-1965
Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun
French · 1755-1842
Judith Leyster
Dutch · 1609-1660
Julia Margaret Cameron
1815-1879
Kathe Kollwitz
German · 1867-1945
Mary Cassatt
American · 1844-1926
Sofonisba Anguissola
1532-1625
Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Baumfree)
American · 1797-1883
What Counts as a Photograph She Made
Julia Margaret Cameron registered 508 photographs and never attached a specimen to any of them.
13 min read
The Painting She Did Not Sign
Artemisia Gentileschi signed nineteen of about forty-eight surviving paintings by one count, and an earlier catalogue counts...
12 min read
The Publisher Was the Sitter
Truth sold her own cartes de visite, registered the copyright in her own name and left the photographer unnamed.
10 min read
She made it possible
The collectors, dealers, patrons and widows without whom a work or a career would not exist.
The Woman Whose Money the Vermeers Lived On
Three Vermeers in this archive were painted in the years Vermeer worked in Maria Thins's household.
12 min read
The Patron Who Left No Invoices
Christie's states that no document records the order for the Rothschild Faberge egg.
12 min read
The Half That Was Not Sold
Vera Salomons inherited 57 of her father's Breguet watches. Her mother got the other seventy and they were auctioned.
10 min read
Who is she?
The woman in the picture: who she was, why she was painted, and what became of her.
Who She Was, and Who Owned the Picture of Her
Four famous photographs of women in this archive. Only one of the four is named on the picture, by herself, and she is the only...
10 min read
What Wally Neuzil Left in Her Own Hand
Schiele's Portrait of Wally settled for 19 million dollars in 2010. The Wally-Neuzil-Society counts about six surviving documents...
11 min read
The Picture Her Father Refused
The Peacock Room is built around a portrait of Christine Spartali that her own father declined to buy.
10 min read
Her as the reason
The woman behind a work or a whole period of it: the muse, the model, the partner, the motive.
The Queen Who Never Saw the Watch That Carries Her Name
Breguet No. 160 is called the Marie-Antoinette. Nothing from the queen's lifetime connects her to it: the firm's records call it...
10 min read
What the Opera Paid Marie van Goethem
The model for Degas's Little Dancer is documented in a payroll and two lines of his handwriting.
10 min read