Women painters. Learning and working

Clara Peeters · ca. 1612

Peeters helped establish European still life, a field accessible to women excluded from nude-model training. Precise flowers include fading blooms and insect damage. Observation of plants accompanies signs of change, while her signature on the ledge asserts authorship.

Judith Leyster · c. 1630

Leyster presents herself at work, though the elaborate collar would have been impractical while painting. It demonstrates her ability to render lace alongside velvet and sheer fabric. The portrait addresses prospective collectors as evidence of professional skill. Later, some of her works were sold under male contemporaries' names.

Kiyohara Yukinobu · late 17th century

Yukinobu, daughter of Kusumi Morikage, adapted inherited ink-painting themes. Quails and grain occupy an asymmetrical arrangement with open space around them. The museum proposes domestic harmony as a reading of the grouping within flower-and-bird tradition.

Katsushika Ōi · 1840s

In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, poison is scraped from Guan Yu's arm after an arrow wound while he continues a game. Oi contrasts his composure with the attendants' reactions. Hokusai's daughter collaborated with him and made her own paintings. This is her largest surviving work.

Noguchi Shohin · 1900

The screens revisit a Chinese gathering of scholars in 353. Guests composed poetry while wine cups floated down a stream. Shōhin became a leading Japanese woman painter, an Imperial Household artist and a prizewinner at Chicago’s 1893 exposition. An old literary subject entered her internationally recognised work.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard · 1785

Labille-Guiard portrays herself working with Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond. Successfully exhibited in 1785, the picture has been read as advocacy for women’s artistic education at a time when their Royal Academy membership was restricted.

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun · 1789

The countess’s white muslin dress reflects a fashion popularised by Marie Antoinette. Her pose probably responds to British portraiture. Painted in 1789, the picture preserves a setting both sitter and painter would leave during the French Revolution.

Sarah Goodridge · 1828

According to Daniel Webster’s descendants, Goodridge made this miniature self-portrait for the statesman. The museum preserves that family account without presenting the commission as independently established. The small object’s private history remains only partly known.

Rosa Bonheur · 1852–55

Bonheur studied the Paris horse market on Boulevard de l’Hôpital twice a week for eighteen months. The huge painting won acclaim at the Salon of 1853. Careful observation of animals supports a monumental composition informed by classical sculpture and earlier animal painting.

Lilly Martin Spencer · 1854

Spencer used her husband as the model for a newly married man struggling with groceries. The comedy concerns the practical work of establishing a household. Produce and an awkward load make everyday labour and expectations of spouses visible.

Berthe Morisot · 1869

Edma Pontillon, Morisot's sister, sits beside a window. The painting passed from the artist to Edma and remained in the family. The sisters had studied painting together, and Edma frequently posed indoors and outdoors. This portrait belongs to that sustained relationship between painter and model.

Berthe Morisot · 1873

Morisot's sister Edma posed for this woman reading in a field. X-rays show that she originally looked toward the viewer; Morisot later redirected her eyes to the book. The white dress reflects outdoor light and shadow. The revision makes reading the figure's sustained activity within the landscape.

Berthe Morisot · 1875–80

A Parisian woman takes down her hair after a ball, still wearing earrings and a velvet ribbon. Morisot examined the private side of the modern life that interested the Impressionists. Her blurred mirror complicates the familiar association between a woman’s reflection and vanity. The painting was shown at the group’s fifth exhibition in 1880.

Berthe Morisot · About 1879

Two women travel across a lake in the Bois de Boulogne. Morisot painted them around 1879. The loose brushwork suggests a quick outdoor sketch, but the National Gallery considers that at least part of the painting was made in the studio.

Berthe Morisot · 1882–83

Morisot probably began this painting in summer 1882, when her family rented a house at Bougival. The child in the straw hat is thought to be her daughter Julie; the adult model is unidentified. Figure and garden receive equally free brushwork. Patches of sunlight cross the clothes as they do the foliage.

Mary Cassatt · 1878–79

A woman in a morning dress reads a newspaper among flowers. Cassatt exhibited the painting with the Impressionists in 1880. The enclosed private garden belonged to the spaces available to women of her social circle. The newspaper connects the sitter with public life beyond the railing while preserving an informal domestic activity.

Mary Cassatt · 1878

The model was the daughter of Degas's friends. She sits freely rather than holding a formal adult pose. Cassatt treated children as individuals with their own states of attention. Large chairs and a dog establish the surroundings in which the girl spends her time.

Mary Cassatt · 1884

Coastal subjects are unusual in Cassatt's work. This painting is associated with the period after a trip to Spain with her ailing mother in 1884. X-rays reveal extensive studio revisions. The apparently spontaneous scene emerged through sustained choices about poses and the figures' relationship.

Mary Cassatt · 1893

After the major exhibition of Japanese prints in Paris in 1890, Cassatt explored new viewpoints and flatter compositions. Those experiments continued in painting. A downward view brings clothing, carpet and wallpaper patterns together. The everyday bath conveys physical closeness through hands, posture and the adult’s bent head.

Mary Cassatt · 1893/1894

Stays in Antibes strengthened Cassatt's interest in bright decorative color. The high viewpoint and compressed planes reflect her study of Japanese prints. The painting became the centerpiece of her first American solo exhibition in 1895. Large color shapes organize the boat and its passengers.