![]() They are restricted by domesticity and diminished by critics. Women aren’t merely left out, they are actively excluded - from studios, from workshops, from art colleges, clubs and academies. In the index, under ‘woman’ are listed: ‘condemnations of crouching old nudes of prehistoric statues of as virgin.’ Kenneth Clark’s The Nude (1956) musters not one woman painter or sculptor. Janson’s History of Art (1962) not a single woman artist is mentioned. ![]() Gombrich’s The Story of Art (1950) and H.W. The prologue opens with a modern translation from Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies (1405): ‘Anyone who wanted could cite plentiful examples of exceptional women in the world today: it’s simply a matter of looking for them.’ Higgie has looked and she has found. There are big names - Artemisia Gentileschi, Sofonisba Anguissola, Judith Leyster, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Angelica Kauffman, Gwen John, Leonora Carrington - and hidden gems such as Helene Schjerfbeck, Margaret Preston and the Australian Nora Heysen. Jennifer Higgie’s The Mirror and the Palette follows an interesting, original line: ‘If she had access to a mirror, a palette, an easel and paint, a woman could endlessly reflect on her face and, by extension, her place in the world.’ Higgie, editor-at-large at frieze magazine and the host of the (excellent) art history podcast Bow Down, considers the lives and ambitions of a series of women artists in the light of the self-portraits they painted. Oughtn’t I to like books by other lady art historians about lady artists and ladies in art? Why don’t I? Why so out of sync with the sisterhood? ![]() I’m a lady, I kept thinking, reading these two books.
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