Women love Roses

Sarah Blumenschein, American, contemporary, "Three Roses."

In memory of my mom, Rose Lynn Luchetti Curro, July 1915-March 2003, from whom her children inherited a love of flowers and gardening and a habit of looking for beauty in everything, everywhere. 

Women love roses, and women painters have given us the gift of beautiful roses in abundance since time immemorial. We know the flowers of Van Gogh, Matisse, Monet, Renoir, but there are so many more women still life artists emerging from their shadows into the light of day. Since I've been looking deeper, I have found that female artists paint the most roses of all, and they are exquisite, in diverse genres and styles, in delightful palettes and complex detail, and in hundreds of different arrangements. Here are a few women artists overtime who have given us a world of roses without end.  

Inessa Morozova, Ukraine.
 

Inessa Morozova (Инесса Морозова), was born in Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine, in 1981. I've written about her in previous blogs, enamoured because she is contemporary and from Ukraine. She graduated from the Solntsevo Art school and the Humanitarian  Applied Institute.  I didn't know of her when I lived there, but I'm sure if I returned to Kiev, I'd find her painting on the descent of Andreevsky Street near Maiden Square. She paints flowers and children, much like her predecessors. I love the lushness of her roses in this work. Though she is a modern-day artist, some of her works remind me of early 20th-century women artists on whose shoulders she stands, including that of Irene Klestova (see below).   

Catharina Klein, Germany 1861-1929, was born in Eylau in what was then East Prussia, which became a Russian province called Kallinigrad. She moved to Berlin to study art and begin painting in earnest. She "rode the crest of chromo lithography" at the end of the 19th and into the 20th Century. She was also known as Catherine Klein, "anglicized outside of Germany during WWI to avoid any disinclination to buy her work." I found this an interesting fact that echoes what many German-Americans did during the war, which unleashed an ugly anti-German hysteria. Her signature, "C.Klein,"  usually accompanies her work, especially in the hundreds of postcards and prints she did of her original paintings, which were in oil or gouache, an opaque watercolor paint.  Artists like Klein have found new audiences through Pinterest and other online sites. I can see why.

Suzanne Valadon, French, 1865-1938, born in poverty in Montmartre, worked all her life to earn her keep, including  with a circus for a time, and also modeling for artists like Renoir. She was mostly self-taught but learned from the many artists who lived in Montmartre, an artist colony to this day. According to Wikipedia she was the first woman artist admitted to the Societe National Beaux Arts. I like this simple red rose. 

Here she is (left), depicted in Renoir's 1883 painting Dance at Bougival, Lovely, isn't she? 

Ethel Elizabeth Foster, American, 1873-1928, "Mixed Bouquet."

Ethel Elizabeth Foster was born in Pennsylvania,  and raised and lived in Washington, DC until her death. Her father was employed for many years as a clerk for the Department of Justice. She attended Columbia University in NY and was awarded a Fine Arts Diploma in 1901. She is listed as a public school teacher in the 1990 census, supervisor of drawing and artist in the 1910 census. Washington was home to lots of wonderful women artists at this time, and  I like to think they knew each other and supported each others' work. Many were public school teachers like Ethel Foster. 

Irene Klestova, Polish-Russian, 1908-1989, is probably the #1 painter of roses! Google her name and up will come beautiful rose after beautiful rose. She was well known in Leningrad, moved to Italy where she lived for 20 years, and then to Paris in the 1950s. She exhibited regularly at the Salon d'Hiver and the Salon des Artistes Independents. Known for her roses then as now, her works sell well in galleries and at auction today. 

Nan Greacen

, French-American, 1909-1999, Roses in a Glass Bowl, was born in Giverny, France, where her father Edmund Greacen was an impressionist painter actively following Claude Monet. Nan Greacen became a noted oil painter and watercolorist in her own right. She began earning awards from 1936, when she received the Hallgarten Prize at the National Academy of Design. She studied at a school created by her father in NYC in 1921, the Grand Central Art School. First I've heard of it. She taught drawing and still life at the school and wrote and illustrated two books on painting technique: Still Life is Exciting (1965) and The Magic of Flower Painting (1971).

Rachel Ruysch, Netherlands, 1664-1750, Still Life Of Flowers with a Nosegay of Roses, Marigolds, Larkspur,  a Bumblebee and Other Insects. She specialized in painting flowers, inventing her own style, popular in the heyday of the Dutch Golden Age. Her talent is being revived in these times of unearthing the power of women's painting.  I'm beginning to be able to identify Dutch paintings in this style from this period. They are so distinctive. Although Van Gogh and the male painters seem to dominate art galleries in Amsterdam, and I love seeing them, it's good to know that museums and galleries seem to be diversifying and broadening their collections. 

Alida Withoos, c. 1659 to 1730, was born in the Netherlands as well, to a family of artists headed by her father Matthias, a well-known artist at the time. Maybe she knew Rachel Ruysch. Alida  set off on her own and apparently thrived as a still life painter and botanical illustrator during the late seventeenth century.  She became part of a significant network of artists and botanical experts and amateurs. Although today we know little about her life, Alida Withoos contributed to some of the most important botanical artistic projects of her time. Catherine Powell, art historian at the University of Texas, noted that she "displayed enormous skill in illustrating highly detailed, life-like specimens of flowers and plants. Her illustrations were scientifically accurate and could be used for identification. They were also aesthetically pleasing and exceptional works of art in their own right." Powell  righty said "There are many Withoos, but only one Alida." She traveled widely, loved Rome, and lived much of her adult life in Amsterdam. Some of her works hang in the Rjiksmuseum, I'll look for them next time I'm there. 

We all recognize by now this stunning White Rose (1930) by 

Georgia O'Keeffe, the popular and highly esteemed artist from the prairies of Wisconsin, who studied art in Chicago and NYC, and fell in love and embraced the American Southwest from her Taos studio in New Mexico's high desert.  I love her flowers: large, bold, sensuous. 

Some sources:

https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/famous-female-renaissance-artists

https://galleries.brenau.edu/2020/09/24/person-place-thing-paintings-by-women-artists-in-brenaus-collection/.  A lovely collection at Brenau University in  Gainesville, Georgia, which might have begun as a women's college in Augusta. The gallery and collection were begun under President John S. Burd in 1985, and it has grown and expanded.                                                     

https://gardencollage.com/inspire/art-design/women-artists-legacy-floral-paintings/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Ruysch . It's amazing to me the story of so many women artists who achieved recognition in their own time, like Rachel Ruysch, but were then sidelined, marginalized and forgotten, only to be re-discovered in modern times. It's a story of how the Western Art Canon  was shaped by men with intention to obscure the works of women artists. 

https://www.averygallery.com/nan-greacen

https://artherstory.net/alida-withoos-creator-of-beauty-and-of-visual-knowledge/ by Catherine Powell, University of Texas. 

https://artliveandbeauty.blogspot.com/2020/08/artist-inessa-morozova-ukrainian-artist.html

https://www.askart.com/artist/Ethel_Elizabeth_Foster/10018349/Ethel_Elizabeth_Foster.aspx,   This painting is also in the Brenau collection, interestingly enough. 

http://www.artnet.com/artists/irene-klestova/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/01/georgia-okeeffe-tate-modern-exhibition-wild-beauty