Laura Knight (1877–1970)

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

There have always been women artists. However, women artists have been overlooked and denied access to arts training and opportunities throughout art history. While many institutions are taking steps to redress this historic imbalance, it remains that most of the art in UK public collections was made by men, yet there are still many thousands of women artists to discover on Art UK.

Self Portrait 2000

Barbara Walker (b.1964)

The Collection: Art & Archaeology in Lincolnshire (Usher Gallery)

Discover women artists on Art UK

There are many thousands of women artists represented on Art UK – it is difficult to know exactly how many, as there are lots of artworks with incomplete artist details. However, you can start exploring artists filtered by gender from the Discover Artists page.

Another way to find women artists is to look through our 26 Curations of women artists, divided by surname, from A to Z.

For in-depth features on women artists, visit our Discover Stories section: you'll find articles about women throughout art history – from the famous to the lesser known – and interviews with contemporary women artists.

Timeline

1575

Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614) – widely considered to be the first professional woman artist – paints her earliest known work at the age of 23.

1616

Artist Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653) was admitted to the Florentine academy.

1780

Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) and Mary Moser (1744–1819) become founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts.

1876

African-American and Native American sculptor Edmonia Lewis (c.1844–1907) exhibits her monumental work The Death of Cleopatra at the Centennial Exposition in Philadephia.

1922

Annie Swynnerton (1844–1933) becomes the first female associate member of the Royal Academy (though the first full Academician was Laura Knight in 1936).

1971

Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro co-found the Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts.

2023

The Royal Academy of Arts exhibits the work of Marina Abramović in its first major solo exhibition by a woman in the institution's main galleries.

Why are there so few female artists?

The ten most expensive paintings in history were painted by men. And of the $196 billion spent on art at auction in the last decade, women accounted for only 2% of sales. So why are so few female artists represented in the world of art?

_{Video credit: National Galleries of Scotland}

Image credit: West Suffolk Heritage Service

Self Portrait c.1675

Mary Beale (1633–1699)

West Suffolk Heritage Service

Who were the first professional women artists?

Though women had fewer work opportunities than men, the arts were historically seen as more suitable for women than other fields. As early as the sixteenth century, some worked as painters, in guilds and in crafts.

The Italian Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614) – widely considered to be the first professional artist – was a successful portraitist. The Flemish Renaissance painter Catharina van Hemessen (1528–after 1587) is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom there is dated, authorised work. Maria Faydherbe (1587–1643) was a Flemish sculptor whose appeal to join the artists' Guild of Saint Luke was refused.

In Britain, Joan Carlisle (c.1606–1679) was one of the first female professional painters, as was Mary Beale (1633–1699) – her skills as a portraitist were in considerable demand. Anne Killigrew (1660–1685) was a painter as well as a renowned poet.

Later, when the Royal Academy was founded in 1768, two women painters were among the 34 original Members – Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807) and Mary Moser (1744–1819).

Learn more about the first British women artists in Alicia Foster's story, Blazing a trail: Britain's first women artists deserve to be better known.

Where are the women?

Girls actress Jemima Kirke (known as Jessa Johansson in the HBO series) addresses the topic of women in art (or the lack of them). She looks at the changing role of female artists in a male-dominated art world over the centuries – and how some of them eventually took on the establishment in the 1970s.

_{Video credit: Tate}

A Face Covered with Spider Web* 1920–1960

Madge Gill (1882–1961)

London Borough of Newham Heritage Service

Famous women artists – and the lesser-known

You might recognise lots of famous women on Art UK – from contemporary artists such as Op Artist Bridget Riley (b.1931) or Young British Artist Tracey Emin (b.1963), to Baroque icon Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1654) or Rococo revolutionary Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842).

Popular women artists are represented across a range of styles and movements: from Impressionism – Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) and Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) – to Surrealism, such as Leonora Carrington (1917–2011).

But Art UK features many overlooked women artists who deserve to be more widely known.

From self-taught outsider artist Madge Gill (1882–1961), to Arts and Crafts practitioner Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852–1936), and from Mabel Nicholson (1871–1918), overshadowed by her husband, to the German émigré artist Eva Frankfurther (1930–1959), there are a great number of inspirational women explored in Art UK's stories section.