Perhaps you’ve heard of the 18th c. French artist who worked in the court of Louis XVI, one of only two women artists admitted into the Académie Royale during his reign. Mais oui, you may be saying. The artist who painted portraits of Marie-Antoinette. The one who was lovely and flirtatious, who doted on her sweet daughter as a woman should, the personification of la doceur de vivre: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. No, not that one. The other court painter, the unlovely, socially awkward, childless Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. The one who started as… Read More
Posts in Reviews
Showing Up
Director Kelly Reichardt and actress Michelle Williams have created previous films together, two set in Oregon (Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cut-off.) Their newest collaboration, Showing Up, is on one level an homage to the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, a much-loved institution nestled in the woods of northwest Portland. Reichardt lets the camera linger on scenes of artists weaving, spinning clay, setting up video installations, and cavorting in the sunlight during a class called Thought and Movement. That could be the title of the show Lizzie (Williams) is preparing…. Read More
Historical Fiction about Women Artists
The novels listed below are about historical women artists. Unless otherwise noted, all of them were painters. (There are lots more novels to read that involve characters who are artists or where art is a central part of the plot.) Also, you can see that this list is Eurocentric. I haven’t found English-language historical fiction about artists from other cultures. There’s a niche waiting to be filled! (I’d love to see a novelization of the fascinating life of Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil, for instance.) 16th century Lady in Ermine, Donna… Read More
Review: The Mirror and the Palette, by Jennifer Higgie
As long as there have been mirrors, there have been self-portraits. The practical advantages are obvious: an impoverished artist who paints herself doesn’t need to pay a model. And she’s always available. In The Mirror and the Palette, Rebellion, Revolution, and Resilience: Five Hundred Years of Women’s Self Portraits, author Jennifer Higgie also points out the psychological benefits of the self-portrait. For one thing, the artist has an outlet to express her pride in her profession, as seen in the many self-portraits that depict her at work before her easel…. Read More
Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan, by Deborah Reed
Violet Swan lives a peaceful life with her son and daughter-in-law in the little town of Nestucca Beach, on the Oregon coast, far from the fame she has earned as a celebrated abstract painter. At ninety-three years old, she still works every day, covering canvases with translucent colors held in place by ladders of repeated graphite lines. (Author Reed writes that she was inspired by minimalist Agnes Martin.) When an earthquake hits, long-buried memories—dormant as daffodils—of trials and travels shake loose and mingle with unresolved emotions. Violet’s son, Francisco, is… Read More
Review: The Miramonde Series
If your vacation plans have been scrubbed, there’s still a way for you to escape to another world for the rest of the summer. In the Miramonde Series, a trilogy, author Amy Maroney takes her readers to Spain at the turn of the 16thcentury, a world of castles and knights, mountain-dwelling Basque shepherds, and the merchants who built the cities of southern France. Miramonde de Oto is born in a castle, but rather than allow her unwanted infant girl to die, Mira’s mother has her spirited off to grow… Read More
Victorine, by Drēma Drudge
Victorine Meurent is born in Paris, a city that is itself a work of art. Haussmann is pushing out the poor to create broad avenues and elegant sandstone apartment buildings. The new department stores provide the clothing, cosmetics, and jewelry that allow—or oblige—every woman to look beautiful. How could Victorine have grown up without an eye for beauty? Her parents are almost-artists, a milliner and a lithographer who prints posters that paper the city. They discourage their daughter’s pursuit of art, which requires expensive art school training and supplies. But… Read More
Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Artist Marianne arrives at a remote chateau on an island off of Brittany, where she’s to paint a portrait for an aristocrat’s daughter to send to a potential husband. A previous portraitist failed to complete the commission due to his subject’s recalcitrance. Marianne is tasked with acting as young Héloïse’s companion, while painting in secret at night. Héloïse, freshly sprung from the convent, has lived her life repressed in every way. Her home is barren of books (she demands to read the one book Marianne has brought with her) or… Read More
Silent Water, by P.K. Adams
When Contessa Caterina Sanseverino is widowed, her family’s reduced circumstances dictate that she find another husband quickly; preferably wealthy, probably as old as her first. Instead she jumps at the chance to join Bona Sforza’s household as Lady of the Queen’s Chamber when Bona marries King Zygmunt of Poland and Lithuania. Donna Caterina’s primary responsibility is overseeing the queen’s Ladies in Waiting, a task comparable to chaperoning a group of teen-aged girls on a never-ending senior trip. While trying to maintain control of this gaggle of flirtatious girls, Donna Caterina… Read More
Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman Who Painted the Renaissance
If you were a girl of artistic inclinations, born in Renaissance Italy to a progressive Humanist father who believed that you were possessed of a mind as well as a soul and therefore worthy of a tutor to teach you how to paint, you would have been one of a fortunate few. But you still would have had societal obstacles to overcome. The first was modesty. A woman could not properly sign her own paintings, let alone accept payment for them. And she should not expect her work to be… Read More