More Women Artists for Art Museums' Permanent Collections

Hanna Hirsch-Pauli, Sweden, 1864-1940, "Breakfast." 


I want to savour the art of women and so I'm cutting and pasting some of the great art posted by Christa Zaat's Female Artists in History, Rita H.Sjoholm's Celebration of Female Artists, and other wonderful online sites. 

  Women artists have long been in the shadows of men, their work shunned, negatively critiqued and belittled, prevented from wide public view.  At one time women were not allowed to study anatomy.  Nonetheless, women artists persisted, since time immemorial. The process of unearthing and showcasing their work, begun in earnest in the 1970s, continues to this day, with fabulous results. Their work is every bit as fine and accomplished as any of their contemporary male artists. Women artists are being studied, their biographies written, their work publicized. Galleries are showing and selling their work, and Auction houses are finding them to be among their best sellers. It's a sea change. Art museums are starting, slowly but surely, to add women artists from all eras and places, in all mediums, to their permanent collections.  

It's about time. 

Plautilla Nelli, The  Last Supper, c.1568. I love this.

It's like the sound of one hand clapping. If you don't hear it, does it exist?  And the art of Plautilla Nelli in the 16th century? If you don't see it, does it exist?  Uncovering, recovering and discovering women's art is critical, and enriches the human esperience. That's why I was happy to learn about another project that does just that. It's called AWARE.  https://www.artfixdaily.com/news_feed/2020/02/23/8993-aware-archives-of-women-artists-research-and-exhibitions-to-debut?   "AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, a Paris-based nonprofit with a mission to reposition women artists in the canon of 20th century art history. It will make its US debut in partnership with The Armory Show next month in New York. The partnership will culminate in the award of a juried prize, The AWARE Prize at The Armory Show to a solo presentation of work by a woman artist." (The Armory Show is open to the public from March 5-8, 2020, at Piers 90 and 94, New York City).
How I wish I could make it to NYC, but it's too close to my Peace Corps project in Immokolee. But I will send this link to my museum, the Toledo Museum of Art. Meanwhile, below are a few more women artists whose oeuvre the museums, including TMA, might consider purchasing.

Hannah Hirsch-Pauli, Morning, in a similar style to
"Breakfast" above

Hannah Hirsch-Pauli, Sweden. #hannapaulihirsch #frukostdags

Art History has been written by men for centuries. Until the beginning of the 20th century, women hardly appeared at famous exhibitions with their paintings. The Swedish Hannah Pauli (her name is spelled in different ways) is one of the exceptions: her painting "Breakfast" was presented at the Paris World exhibition in 1889, and at the 1894 world exhibition in Chicago.She went to Paris after the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. Impressionists inspired her use of colorful lights and shadows. Her contemporary Swedish artists dismissed her art as "too dramatic;" they were shocked by the vivid brush work, the colorful shadow spots taken without a crossing. Some joked that the  painter might have used the breakfast table earlier to clean her brush. However, time confirmed the artist's talent, and this creation became one of the most popular paintings in the Swedish National Museum.

Elaine de Kooning was a prolific and versatile painter, writer and teacher.  Though she was closely associated with the  New York School and Abstract Expressionism, de Kooning eschewed developing a singular style and instead painted in a range of modes from realism to abstraction. “Style is something I’ve always tried to avoid. I’m more interested in character,” she said. The subjects in her work also varied, including mythology, landscapes and portraiture. One of her later bodies of work was inspired by the cave paintings in Lascaux. She studied widely with different artists including Milton Resnick and Willem de Kooning, whom she married in 1943. Wikipedia.

Barbara Regina Dietzsch, German, Gooseberry bough with butterfly, dragonfly, 1706-1783 . Born in September 1706 in the so-called Free Imperial City of Nuremberg, she came from a family of artists. Her father Johann Israel, brother Johann Christoph, and sister Margareta were artists employed by the City courts. An interesting tidbit. Dietzsch taught Margareta how to paint. Dietzsch married painter Nikolaus Matthes and moved to Hamburg. She eventually returned to Nuremberg, where she died in May 1783. Dietzsch specialized in watercolor and gouache paintings of animals and plants which she also turned into engravings. Her works sold in Germany, England, Holland, and France. She is being rediscovered. Wikipedia

Teresa Rowzskowska, Alley in Naples

Teresa Rowzskowska, born 1904 in Poland, lived through the tumultuous war years, working with the artistic underground. She was a painter, theatre stage designer & filmmaker. She devoted her final years to painting. She was murdered in her home in 1992, a sad end to a difficult life. This painting, Alley in Naples, Italy, represents a peaceful time in her life. WikiPoland

Helen Kiner McCarthy, Autumn Glow

Helen Kiner McCarthy, Poppies 

Helen Kiner McCarthy, American, 1884-1927. McCarthy was born in small town Ohio and was a founder of the Philadephia 10, a group of women artists who worked and showed together. Its first exhibit was at the Art Club of Philadelphia in 1917. She began her studies at the Philadelphia School of Design in 1904, studying under Elliott Dangerfield and Henry B. Snell.  After graduation she shared a Philadelphia studio with  Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton for several years and then Edith Lucile Howard.  From 1910 through 1926 McCarthy exhibited widely, which makes me wonder why we don't see more of her art in museums. She was a member of several art groups that focused on promoting women's art, including the Plastic Club and the National Association of Women Artists and its predecessor the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. She was also a member of the International Society of Arts and Letters and the New York Society of Painters. Wikipedia

Anita Clara Ree, 1885, was a painter of the German Avant-garde during the Weimar Republic. 

Anita Clara Ree was born into an old Jewish family of Hamburg merchants. She was the daughter of Israel Rée and Clara Hahn.  According to Wikipedia article, Anita and her sister Emilie were baptized and raised as Lutherans, in accordance with the social norms of assimilated upper middle class and upper class Jewish families in Germany at the time. I never knew this and need to check it out. In 1905, she studied with the Hamburg painter Arthur Siebelist. In 1906, she met Max Liebermann, who recognized her talent and encouraged her to continue her artistic career. During the winter of 1912–1913, she studied with Fernand Léger in Paris. From around 1914, Anita Rée gained recognition as a portrait painter. She took her own life in 1933, partly as a result of having been subjected to hostility from various groups and harassment by antisemitic forces, partly due to disappointments on the personal level. In a note to her sister, she decried the insanity of the world. In 1937, the Nazis designated Rée's work as "degenerate art" and began purging it, as well as the work of many other artists, from museum collections. Wilhelm Werner, a groundskeeper at the Kunsthalle Hamburg preserved several of Rée's paintings by hiding them in his apartment.  Anita Clara Ree, Female Artists in History, and Wikipedia

Bertha Boynton Lum, American, 1869-1954.

Bertha Boynton Lum, "Wind and Water." Lum studied woodblock printmaking in Japan  and China and popularized it in America. Her prints are lovely. Lots of information online. 

Mary-Russell Ferrell COlton, Arizona, 1889-1971

 Colton, Hopi dwelling. 

Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, Indian girl

A founder of the Museum of Northern Arizona.
This is a biography. Glad to know about this.

I've been discovering more about the Philadelphia 10 women artists group that Helen Kiner McCarthy was a member of. Another Philadephia 10 artist was Mary-Russell Colton, 1889-1971, born in Louisville, KY, moved to Arizona, and became a true Arizona artist who reminds me of Georgia O'Keefe. She should be recognized right up there with her. Colton was a founder of the Museum of Northern Arizona, as well as an advocate of Native American rights. She devoted her life to promoting their art and culture. I love these Southwest scenes.

Mary -Russell Ferrell Colton

* https://www.artfixdaily.com/news_feed/2020/02/23/8993-aware-archives-of-women-artists-research-and-exhibitions-to-debut?

* https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/kunsthalle-schirn-surrealist-women-1779669?fbclid=IwAR3r8QNvUTFccOz6nqI7JBT_oOpex6bnQB78H0SUY3Un4AuD4Urm2twX00g

"Female artists’ contributions to the Surrealist movement may be well known, but only a handful have received the recognition they deserve. A scholarly new exhibition in Frankfurt has brought together works by 34 important artists, several of whom have been long overlooked and excluded from the male-dominated art historical canon.

The quantity and diversity of their work shows how a female perspective was central to Surrealism from its birth in the aftermath of World War I. Included in “Fantastic Women. Surreal Worlds from Meret Oppenheim to Frida Kahlo” at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in Germany are a staggering 260 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, photographs, and films, some rarely seen before.

On show are works by lesser known artists, such as the Toyen, Bridget Tichnor, Alice Rahon, Kay Sage, and Ithell Colquhoun, alongside their more famous contemporaries, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Lee Miller, Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Dora Maar, and Dorothea Tanning. Highlights include a screening of pioneer French filmmaker Germaine Dulac’s The Seashell and the Clergyman. Made in 1927, it is considered to be the first Surrealist work in the history of film.

“To this day, the names and works of the huge number of important women artists throughout the world are missing in many reference guides and survey exhibitions on Surrealism,” writes the exhibition’s curator, Ingrid Pfeiffer, in the publication that accompanies the show. “The reasons for this are many, including the endless repetition of an outdated canon in spite of recent research—a problem which pertains to art history in general.”

Many of the artists are connected through their association with Surrealist co-founder André Breton, or through their participation or contributions to key group exhibitions, and publications. The exhibition also explores the network of friendships of these female pioneers that stretched from Europe, to the US, and Mexico."