Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520- 1920. Tate Britain’s captivating new exhibition
By James Brewer
It’s raining women at Tate Britain, or so it seems when scores of fine female artists from a span of four centuries reign supreme. Only a few of them were superstars during their lifetimes, so to remedy some of the neglect, the leading gallery is presenting Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920. This ambitious show charts the long and winding road of women to gaining esteem as professional artists, a 400-year journey to break through societal expectations.
Only a handful of artists featured in this show were “household names,” said Dr Andrea Schlieker, director of exhibitions and displays at Tate Britain. The new exhibition was “a kind of prequel” to one that has just closed in the very same rooms: Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990, a bravura display of feminist art and resolve of those decades. As with the former exhibition, the new showcase would guide us “to make sure that women are truly seen and heard,” said the Tate director.
The formal opening awakened an echo of the limitations on women that the world of modern commercial insurance had once imposed. Clarissa Franks, head of retail at broker Lockton – a company which has a multi-year partnership with Tate – recalled some of the parallels between the arts and the insurance industry in the reluctant acceptance of women’s potential. Women were allowed on the trading floor of Lloyd’s only in 1973, and it took until the 1980s for it to be accepted that in the underwriting room they could dress in trousers.
Tabitha Barber, curator at Tate Britain of British Art 1550-1750, said that the perception many still have is of women first and foremost as wives and mothers, with an accomplishment, but the exhibition was not about that – rather it concerned their battle to overcome obstacles to establishing their place as a woman in the art world. Carrying out research to develop the exhibition had been “almost like archaeology,” added Tim Batchelor, assistant curator in the same department.
Featuring more than 100 artists, the exhibition celebrates well-known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman, Julia Margaret Cameron and Gwen John, but art history having mainly been written by men means that many other talents are only now being ‘rediscovered. And it has been forgotten that some of these artists championed equal access to art training and academy membership.
Media employed for the 200 works here are oil, watercolour, pastel, sculpture, photography and ‘needle painting’.
Women artists of the 18th century were often dismissed as amateurs pursuing ‘feminine’ occupations like watercolour and flower painting, but some nevertheless achieved popular success. An exhibition ban was imposed in 1770 by the Royal Academy on ‘Needlework, artificial flowers, cut Paper, Shell-work, or any such baubles’ but these ‘lower arts’ including miniatures were what women practised most and could most easily use to make a living by selling and tutoring. They often had female patrons, and some enjoyed fashionable clienteles.
Mary Linwood (1755–1845), a schoolmistress, was among those ‘needle painters’ who were undaunted. Charging a shilling entrance fee, her Leicester Square gallery, the first such establishment in London to be run by a woman, exhibited large needlework copies of famous paintings. It attracted thousands of visitors including members of the royal family. Her greatest hit was Salvator Mundi, after the Italian painter Carlo Dolci (1616-1686). This work from around 1798 is, like many others in the Tate exhibition, lent by His Majesty Charles III. Mary Linwood left an estate of more than $5m in today’s money and she bequeathed Salvator Mundi to “the reigning monarch.”
In 1771, Queen Charlotte had commissioned another talented embroiderer, Mary Knowles, to create a ‘needle painting’ copy of an oil portrait by the German artist John Zoffany (1733-1810) of her husband George III. In the needlework self-portrait on display, Mary Knowles is seen at work on her copy of the Zoffany which was praised as having “all the Softness and Effect of Painting.” The Queen gave her £800 for it, which allowed Mary’s husband to begin studying medicine. Determined not to be “a mere smiling Wife,” Mary went on to write on subjects including women’s rights, Quakerism, and slavery. The Royal Collection website says: “She is now regarded as an important early protagonist of the feminist viewpoint in English cultural life. Her support for the abolition of slavery, her investigation into mystical science and her knowledge of garden design, in addition to her accomplishment as a needlewoman, suggest the breadth of her interests.”
The president of the Royal Academy, Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), had dismissed working in pastel as unworthy of real artists and was “just what ladies do when they paint for their own amusement.” He even denied his sister Frances the same training and opportunities from which he had benefited. She kept house for him in London and learnt to paint by making copies of his works. Frances was a member of the Bluestocking Circle, a group of women writers, artists and intellectuals who met at the house of the philanthropist Elizabeth Montagu.
The self-taught Frances was a friend of the lexicographer and literary luminary Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) and painted his portrait several times. Joshua at least provided for his sister in his will.
Now You See Us begins at the Tudor court with miniatures and manuscripts, and moving further ahead, tells of women such as Mary Beale, Joan Carlile and Maria Verelst who broke new ground as professional painters of portraits in oil.
Two of the most dramatic pictures in the exhibition are from the celebrated Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 to 1654 or later) who worked for the highest ranks of European society. She was a follower of Caravaggio and created works in London at the court of Charles I, including the recently rediscovered Susanna and the Elders of 1638-40 That is on loan from the Royal Collection for the first time. It was in the Royal Collection but had been misattributed at least two centuries ago. The story of Susanna comes from the Apocrypha in the Book of Daniel. Susanna, a beautiful and virtuous young wife, is bathing in her garden, while unknown to her, two lecherous voyeurs are spying on her.
The year after she painted Susanna, Artemisia at the age of 17 was raped by her tutor, following which there was an infamous trial, when she was tortured in a vicious attempt to verify her evidence. She visited London from 1639 until about 1641, perhaps to assist her ailing father on the ceiling painting of the Queen’s House in Greenwich. This was when she probably produced the Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura). A Royal Collection catalogue entry states: “Depicting herself in the act of painting in this challenging pose, the angle and position of her head would have been the hardest to accurately render, requiring skilful visualisation.”
Women increasingly dared to paint what were usually thought to be subjects suitable for male artists: history pieces, battle scenes and the nude. The best-known painting by Henrietta Rae is The Lady with the Lamp (1891) depicting Florence Nightingale at Scutari, but naked nymphs appeared in classical themes such as Spring’s Awakening (The Snow Maidens) (1913), and she depicted sirens who with their enchanted songs lured sailors to their doom. Henrietta had to apply six times to be admitted to the rolls of the Royal Academy. The current exhibition shows some of the student work of women finally admitted to art schools, as well as their petitions for equal access to life drawing classes.
Elizabeth Butler specialised in battle paintings, notably the monumental Calling the Roll after an Engagement in Crimea, from 1874, oil paint on canvas (lent by the King). The unveiling of The Roll Call at the Royal Academy in 1874 was one of the art sensations of the 19th century. It was praised by Academicians and hung ‘on the line’ (the most prestigious, eye-level position). The painting proved so popular that a policeman had to be stationed nearby to protect nearby paintings from the milling crowd. Queen Victoria summoned the work to Buckingham Palace for a private viewing, and the copyright sold for the enormous sum of £1,200. Butler’s work prompted critic John Ruskin to retract his statement that “no women could paint”.
With the oil on canvas A Modern Cinderella, Louise Jopling shows a model removing her fine clothes at the end of a painting session. When in 1875 Jopling exhibited this work at the Royal Academy, the model’s naked shoulder drew ‘tut-tuts.” Although one reviewer thought it was “quite harmless,” the wife of a picture dealer reportedly said that “she could never hang such a thing in her house.”
From its foundation in 1853, the Photographic Society of London welcomed women members, but they rarely attended meetings, which were scheduled in the evenings, as women required a chaperone to leave the house. The atmosphere of the meetings was described as a ‘men’s club’, and it was not until 1898 that the Society belatedly banned smoking ‘in respect of ladies’ attendance.’ Fine photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron and Emma Barton marked the debut of women on to the photography stage, and autochrome images such as Olive Edis’s War from 1919 add a bleak note.
The exhibition reaches into the early 20th century with women’s suffrage and the First World War. Artists including Gwen John, Vanessa Bell and Helen Saunders played an important part in the emergence of modernism, abstraction and vorticism.
Bell was a founding member of the Omega Workshops based in Fitzroy Square, Bloomsbury, and which aimed to remove the “false divisions” between fine and decorative arts. We see that demonstrated in her Still Life on Corner of a Mantelpiece, from 1914: the mantelpiece being in her house at 46 Gordon Square, and handmade paper flowers from the Omega Workshops pop up. Her use of an unconventionally low viewpoint and distinctive colours shows her exploring different techniques associated with 20th century art movements.
Others, such as Anna Airy, who also worked as a war artist, continued to excel in conventional traditions. She painted Shop for Machining 15-inch Shells: Singer Manufacturing Company, Clydebank, Glasgow, in 1918.
The show concludes with a flourish by lauding Laura Knight and Ethel Walker, independent, confident professionals who achieved critical acclaim and membership of the Royal Academy.
Dame Ethel Walker’s Decoration: The Excursion of Nausicaa 1920, exemplifies how she often placed women at the centre of her works, celebrating their bodies and sexuality. The scene is based on Book VI of Homer’s Odyssey. While laundering regal clothes in the river, Nausicaa and her attendants disturb the shipwrecked Odysseus who has been sleeping in the woods nearby.
In contrast with earlier paintings in which Odysseus was the focal point, here he is relegated to the background. This lesbian artist has created a version of the story that is unquestionably woman-centred, gently homoerotic, and on an impressively grand scale. In A Queer Little History of Art, critic Alex Pilcher wrote “Six feet high and almost twelve across, this probably set a new record for the biggest Sapphic beach party in Western art.”
Laura Knight (1877-1970) produced captivating oil paintings of women on atop cliffs in Cornwall, an area to which she moved with her husband. Painted with vivid colour, her women are shown enjoying brilliant sunshine and a sense of freedom. Often alone and in modern dress, her subjects are strong and resilient. In the later works such as A Dark Pool of 1917 there is a more studied air, which may reflect the sombre postwar mood.
Captions in detail:
A Dark Pool, 1917. By Laura Knight, © Estate of Dame Laura Knight. All rights reserved 2024/ Bridgeman Images.
Salvator Mundi, after Carlo Dolci, c 1798. By Mary Linwood. Needlework, silk. Lent by His Majesty the King.
Needlework Picture, 1779. By Mary Knowles. Royal Collection Trust/ © His Majesty King Charles III 2024.
Decoration: The Excursion of Nausicaa, 1920. By Dame Ethel Walker. Photo: Tate.
Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura), c 1638-1639. By Artemisia Gentileschi. Royal Collection Trust/ © His Majesty King Charles III 2024.
A Modern Cinderella, 1875. By Louise Jopling. Private collection.
The Roll Call, 1874. By Elizabeth Butler. Royal Collection Trust/ © His Majesty King Charles III 2024
War, 1919. By Olive Edis. Wilson Centre for Photography.
Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 is staged in partnership with Lockton, the world’s largest independent and privately held insurance brokerage. Lockton recorded $3.1bn global revenue in the 2023 fiscal year and has 130 offices internationally and 65,000 clients including leading names in marine. Other exhibition supporters include Julia and Hans Rausing and the Christian Levett Collection. The exhibition continues until October 13, 2024.
