Women Artists: Artemisia Gentileschi To Tracey Emin

This lecture by Lynne Gibson MA, which lasts one hour followed by a Q&A, will consider how women artists accessed training and sustained careers. It will ask what happened to their works and their reputations in following centuries.

Until recently it was quite easy believe there were no significant women artists in the entire history of Western Art. None appeared in key texts, such as Ernst Gombrich’s ‘The Story of Art’ (first published, 1950) or H.W. Janson’s ‘The History of Art’ (1963) and few were represented in major art collections.

Feminist art historians faced a challenging detective task. Where was the evidence? Where were the art works? Were they correctly signed and attributed? Did they even use techniques, or depict subjects, acceptable to the Academies as ‘Fine Art’?

Join Lynne Gibson to discover Old Mistresses from the Renaissance court portraitist Sofonisba Anguissola and the pioneering history painter Artemisia Gentileschi to well-known contemporary artists such as Tracey Emin.

Lynne Gibson has held posts at the Universities of Sussex and Bristol. As a professional artist specialising in oil painting and etching, her work has been exhibited widely and used in a range of publications.