Famous Female Painters throughout the Ages

Forgotten Genius – Female Painters Throughout the Ages

‘Art has no gender” – and yet most of the art we know was created by men.

Many female painters have made significant contributions to art history. Not only did they create masterpieces, but they pioneered art movements and painting techniques that inspire artists today. However, they remain in the shadows of the corridors of art history.

There are many female artists whose brilliance has largely remained unrecognized, but the most appreciated among them are the 10 Female Painters Who Shaped Art History.

Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) …
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) …
Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) …
Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) …
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) …
Alma Thomas (1891–1978) …
Lee Krasner (1908–1984) …
Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011)

There is no doubt that historically speaking, women did not enjoy the same rights as men. Male artists were mostly free to experiment and express their creativity to their heart’s desire, while female artists were often not taken seriously or afforded the same education, opportunities, and exposure in spite of their talent.

However, despite the challenges and obstacles, the world was gifted with remarkable female artists throughout history. These women in art belonged to different social eras and various art movements and had vastly different working conditions and points of view from the public and the progenitors. Each of them had to overcome her own set of adversities to succeed, whether these obstacles were imposed by the society they live in or by the artist’s own life path.

Even though we cannot possibly hope to mention every female artist who has left their brilliant permanent markings on the history of art, the 8 artists mentioned above inspired the world with their extraordinary skills and unyielding courage.

Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann RA, usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, Kauffmann was a skilled portraitist, landscape, and decoration painter.

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun also known as Madame Le Brun, was a French portrait painter, especially of women, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Her artistic style is generally considered part of the aftermath of Rococo with elements of an adopted Neoclassical style. Her subject matter and color palette can be classified as Rococo, but her style is aligned with the emergence of Neoclassicism. Vigée Le Brun created a name for herself in Ancien Régime society by serving as the portrait painter to Marie Antoinette. She enjoyed the patronage of European aristocrats, actors, and writers, and was elected to art academies in ten cities.

Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, but lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy as one of “les trois grandes dames” (the three great ladies) of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot. In 1879, Diego Martelli compared her to Degas, as they both sought to depict movement, light, and design in the most modern sense

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is known for painting her experience of chronic pain.

Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O’Keeffe has been called the “Mother of American modernism”. In 1905, O’Keeffe began art training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago^[3] and then at the Art Students League of New York. In 1908, unable to fund further education, she worked for two years as a commercial illustrator and then taught in Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina between 1911 and 1918. She studied art in the summers between 1912 and 1914 and was introduced to the principles and philosophies of Arthur Wesley Dow, who created works of art based on personal style, design, and interpretation of subjects, rather than trying to copy or represent them. This caused a major change in the way she felt about and approached art, as seen in the beginning stages of her water colours from her studies at the University of Virginia and more dramatically in the charcoal drawings that she produced in 1915 that led to total abstraction. Alfred Stieglitz, an art dealer, and a photographer held an exhibit of her works in 1917. Over the next couple of years, she taught and continued her studies at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Alma Woodsey Thomas (September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) was an African-American artist and teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D.C. and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. Thomas is best known for the “exuberant”, colourful, abstract paintings that she created after her retirement from a 35-year career teaching art at Washington’s Shaw Junior High School.

Lenore “Lee” Krasner (born Lena Krassner; was an American abstract expressionist painter, with a strong speciality in collage. She was married to Jackson Pollock. Although there was much cross-pollination between their two styles, the relationship somewhat overshadowed her contribution for some time. Krasner’s training, influenced by George Bridgman and Hans Hofmann, was the more formalized, especially in the depiction of human anatomy, and this enriched Pollock’s more intuitive and unstructured output.

Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of post war American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s until 2011), she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. Frankenthaler began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as colour field.

Each of their paintings is an inspiration. At VVFAG we take pride in offering Museum quality art reproductions illuminating the creative works of these female painters’ works as sources of great brilliance and upliftment. VVFAG’s priceless collections of Handmade oil paintings, and Classic oil painting reproductions cannot fail to overwhelm the visitor to our catalogue of museum quality art reproductions with their spellbinding beauty and the brilliance of their creative skills. They provide a vibrant picture of the power and range of human creativity.

We are a global art gallery with an extensive catalogue of Custom oil painting reproduction paintings for sale. At VVFAG you will find a large and breathtaking selection of Fine art oil painting reproductions of many exemplary artworks of female painters, each one a masterpiece, from the 14^th century to the contemporary art era. These paintings for the living room or your workspace will bring the same inspiration and upliftment as those in the global national galleries.

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Famous Female Painters throughout the Ages