17 Painters Who Were Women, Despite Art History Making You Think It Has Always Mostly Been Men

There have always been women artists, it's just that historically they've gotten less attention.

1. Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson (1847–1906)

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Sarah Dodson was an American artist. Her father opposed the idea of women creating art, despite his daughter's clear and early indications of talent, and so Dodson's formal training did not start until the death of her father.

2. Alma Thomas (1891–1978)

Frances Young Tang Museum, Michael Fischer

Alma Thomas was an American artist who spent most of her life as an arts educator, and did not fully dedicate herself to her painting until she was in her 60s. She found acclaim towards the end of her life and in 1972, at the age of 88, she had a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, making her the first African-American woman to do so. However, despite this status, she refused to be defined by her identity and demanded to be seen as an artist first and foremost.

3. Marie Guillemine Benoist (1768–1826)

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Marie Guillemine Benoist was a Parisian painter. The painting above, Portrait d'une négresse, was exhibited six years after the abolition of slavery and quickly became a symbol of women's liberation and black rights. She soon became a very popular painter and even opened an art school for women. Tragically, her career was cut short during the Bourbon Restoration, and in the face of growing European conservatism she put a stop to her painting and her art school, despite being at the height of her popularity.

4. Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852–1936)

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Phoebe Anna Traquair was an Irish artist who was an incredibly influential part of the Art and Crafts movement in Scotland during the 1800s and early 1900s. This was a movement that valued traditional creative and decorative skills, such as woodworking, embroidery, and tapestry, and looked towards the medieval eras for inspiration. The above two images are huge embroidered works of art know as "The Progress of a Soul", made between 1895-1902. In real life, they are iridescent and seem to glow.

5. Mary Cassatt (1844 – 1926)

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Mary Cassatt was an American painter and an outspoken supporter of women's rights, she campaigned for equal scholarship rights and the right to vote. Though her work did not make any explicit political statements, there was always a suggestion of a deeper inner life in her mostly female subjects.

6. Rachel Ruysch (1664 – 1750)

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Rachel Ruysch was a very influential still-life painter that had a successful career spanning over six decades. She was internationally known in her lifetime and had her own distinctive style. She was a key figure in the Dutch Golden Age.

7. Zinaida Serebriakova (1884–1967)

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Zinaida Serebriakova was born to a noble and artistic family. For most of her youth, her paintings were optimistic and bold, capturing the beauty of both the Russian landscape and the people who inhabited it. However, the October Revolution in 1917 sent her life into turmoil and she had no income after her husband died. She was eventually commissioned to create a piece of work in Paris and was not permitted to return to the Soviet Union after. She never moved back to the Soviet Union, and her works were not exhibited there until 1966, when they were received with great praise.

8. Sophie Gengembre Anderson (1823–1903)

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Sophie Gengembre Anderson was a French-born British artist who also lived in the United States. She was incredibly commercially successful during her life, and her painting "No Walk Today" (on the right), sold for £1 million in 2008.

9. Maria van Oosterwijck (1630–1693)

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Maria van Oosterwijck was an influential Dutch painter who specialised in still life paintings of flowers. Her studio was opposite that of Willem van Aelst, another influential Dutch flower painter, who courted her. He proposed to her, and not wishing to offend him by rejecting him outright, she told him she would only marry him if he painted every single day for a year. From her studio window, she could see van Aeist at his easel, and would make a mark on her window sill every time he missed a day of painting. After the year passed, van Aeist saw the large amount of marks on her windowsill and conceded defeat; she remained single and very successful as an artist throughout her life.

10. Louise Abbéma (1853 – 1927)

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Louise Abbéma was a French artist who was born into a noble and well-connected family. Her first work that received public recognition was a portrait of her lifelong friend and actress, Sarah Bernhardt, who some speculate was also her lover.

11. Marie Laurencin (1883 – 1956)

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Marie Laurencin was a French artist and one of the few female cubist painters. Her work was influenced by that of other avant-garde painters of the time, but she was differentiated by her focus on female subjects and a unique approach to abstraction.

12. Madeleine Jeanne Lemaire (1845 – 1928)

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Madeleine Jeanne Lemaire was a French painter. She was very commercially successful, especially when it came to her paintings of flowers – so much so that she became known as the "Empress of Roses".

13. Henriette Browne (1829 – 1901)

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Born Sophie de Bouteiller, she took the pseudonym Henriette Browne to keep her personal life and work life separate – it was deemed unseemly for a woman to be an artist at the time. She travelled extensively across much of North Africa, as her husband was a diplomat. Her paintings document much of what she saw across her travels.

14. Evelyn De Morgan (1855 – 1919)

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Evelyn De Morgan was an English painter influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She focused on ambitious and cerebral subjects that exhibited spirituality and mythology in her work; most of it fantastical.

15. Julia Beck (1853 – 1935)

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Julia Beck was a Swedish artist and one of the first to be able to support herself financially entirely through her work.

16. Florine Stettheimer (1871 – 1944)

Florine Stettheimer was an American painter who achieved m uchof her acclaim after her death. She had one solo exhibition during her lifetime, in which she exhibited twelve works, none of which sold. She was cushioned by her wealthy upbringing and continued to pursue painting as a purely private interest and had little need to make money from it; her privileged position is evidenced in her paintings, which often depict society events. Though she wished for all her paintings to be destroyed after her death, this was opposed by her sister, and there have been retrospectives of her work at the MOMA and ICA Boston.

17. Dame Laura Knight (1877 – 1970)

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The above painting, "Self Portrait With Nude", was highly controversial when it was first exhibited in 1913 and offended many critics. However, it was a political and radical statement – an artist who was a woman dared to present herself exactly as that, an artist foremost, in her every day clothes, painting her subject. She presented herself in the same way male artists presented themselves in their self-portraits for centuries, rather than in her best clothes, in a flattering pose that is easily-digestible by a patriarchal audience. She was the first woman to be elected as a full member of the Royal Academy in 1936.