Below the Surface of Women’s Art, Centuries of #MeToo, Misogyny

Can an assemblage of polite portraits, sentimental botanical prints, and charming “needlepainting” say something new about women’s efforts to be taken seriously as artists? 

An exhibition at London’s Tate Britain, Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920, aspires to do just that, showcasing 200 works by women who forged artistic careers in spite of the societal expectations of their time. 

Curators have indeed gathered some fascinating works, but—dare we say it—is the theme a little done? 

Enough to create change?

A woman's group show is hardly a new idea, or in itself a very compelling one. The first all-female international art exhibition was held almost half a century ago, in 1976, and since then curators have been recycling this premise with little variation. The forgotten women, the overlooked women, the erased women—we’ve heard it all before. Even Linda Nochlin, the feminist scholar who wrote the foundational 1971 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” suggested in her writing that merely showing more examples of works by under-appreciated women—technically superior though they may be—isn’t enough to create change.

But the Tate insists that the appetite for such a show is healthy as ever. “You only need to look at the popularity of other shows of women artists around the world, as well as the explosion of books, podcasts and articles around the subject, to see that there's a high level of interest in revisiting what we think we know about women artists of the past,” explains Tabitha Barber, the museum’s curator of British art, 1500–1750, in an interview with The Persistent. 

Barber adds that the impressive attendance records for the Tate’s recent blockbuster show, Women in Revolt! Art, Activism and the Women’s movement in the UK 1970–1990, indicate the public’s enthusiasm for the subject. But the appeal of Now You See Us is more subtle.  

In lieu of radical (and Instagrammable) feminist art, we have traditional works that invite viewers to pause, to linger, to probe a little. The reward is a journey beyond the often-polite compositions that invites the viewer to question, well, everything. This isn’t a simple ask at a time when the typical museum visitor spends less than 30 seconds looking at a work of art.

Those who do take the time to look closer at Now You See Us will uncover a great deal about the plight of professional women artists over the last 400 years. 

“No women could paint”

Take Artemisia Gentileschi, among the most celebrated of the baroque artists, who was raped by her tutor at age 15. Her painting, Susanna and the Elders, which is included in the exhibition after extensive restoration work, depicts the tale of a young married woman harassed by two lecherous men who saw her bathing, and threatened to shame her publicly if she refused their advances. The Old Testament story has been painted many times over since the 3rd Century, but Gentileschi’s treatment has been praised by scholars as the rare depiction of the biblical tale to truly capture the woman’s anguish. Gentileschi’s backstory tells us why.

The show also includes The Roll Call, a searing war tableau by Elizabeth Thompson Butler, which the artist was inspired to paint after reading Alexander William Kinglake's book "Invasion of the Crimea." When it was accepted into the Royal Academy’s summer show in 1874, so many people flocked to see the painting that police had to hold back the crowds. Fellow artists gave it a standing ovation, while the influential art critic John Ruskin was moved to reconsider his assertion that “no women [sic] could paint.”

That wasn’t enough for the then all-male Royal Academy, which still refused to welcome Butler into its ranks. Butler’s career eventually took a back seat after she married an officer of the British Army, and raised their six children. 

It’s storytelling that allows us to chip away at Nochlin’s original provocation. But the questions nevertheless remain: Why are there so few great female artists? Why do they remain under-appreciated? 

Male gatekeepers of the art world

The answer is a simple one: Institutions like the Royal Academy, England’s most prestigious art institution, trained male artists, and promoted men's work in exhibitions and books, and strategically sought to exclude women. It took the clever Laura Herford who, in 1860, signed her drawings with her initials rather than her full name, to bust through that fraternity. 

Even then, the Royal Academy saw women as intruders and strictly limited their admission to make sure they never outnumbered male students. The painter Annie Swynnerton, whose work appears in the exhibition, was 75 years old by the time she was finally voted into the academy in 1922. She was invited to join as a “retired associate.”

Laura Knight, also featured in Now You See Us, was the first woman to become a full member in 1936—some 168 years after the Academy's founding. It was only in 2011 that female professors were allowed to teach at the school. And it wasn’t until 2019, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, that it got its first woman president, the printmaker Rebecca Salter. 

The show also demonstrates how the slow campaign for women’s parity in the art world has been led by—of course!—women scholars. Art historians such as Letizia Treves and Sheila Barker, for example, have led renewed interest in Gentileschi.

There’s a strain of art criticism that rejects the idea of implicating an artist’s biography in appraising a work. But in the case of works created by women under extraordinary circumstances, it seems almost impossible to avoid it.

Too bad the exhibition’s coy title—Now You See Us, like a cheeky game of peek-a-boo—masks its radical potential. If museums and galleries truly wish to contribute to the advancement of women, the challenge is in finding direct and captivating ways to ensure that its underrepresented artists are not just seen, but heard.

Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 is on view at Tate Britain until 13 October 2024. 

Curator’s Picks

Now You See Us curator Tabitha Barber on her favorite discoveries from the show:

The Portrait. Early in her career, the portraitist Mary Black was commissioned to paint the portraits of a physician and his cousin. Outraged by her suggested fee of £25, (which was half that of the leading contemporary portraitist Joshua Reynolds), they felt the honor of their commission should be reward enough. Black ended up never completing the sale, despite the sitter being happy with the quality of her work. That painting stayed with Black for the rest of her life and serves as a reminder of the professional challenges women faced when setting up their businesses. 

The Petition. An 1859 petition from leading women artists of the day including Barbara Bodichon, Eliza Florance Bridell Fox, Rebecca Solomon, Emily Mary Osborn and Florence Claxton, petitioned all 40 members of the Royal Academy to allow women students to be admitted to Royal Academy Schools, citing the lack of adequate artistic training as holding women back. Their petition was denied, but a year later, one signatory, Laura Herford, was accepted to the school after she submitted an application under only her initials.

Anne Quito is a journalist and design critic whose writing appears in Quartz, The Atlantic, CNN, and Architectural Digest, among other publications. She is the first recipient of the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary.