Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920 – stunning in scope but celebrating female artists with exhibitions isn’t enough

Women have worked as professional artists in Europe for hundreds of years. Yet we are often told that, prior to the 20th century, those who did so successfully were rare exceptions – they were the lucky ones who had financial advantages, family connections or unusual bravery to defy social conventions. And while some of that narrative is true, it’s not the whole story.

Tate Britain’s new exhibition, Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920, amasses over 200 works by more than 100 professional women artists. These artists lived and worked in Britain and many were as celebrated in their own time as their male contemporaries. That so few of them are remembered today says more about the biases of the last 100 years than it says about the realities of women’s art practice in the previous 400.

Women artists were often omitted from 20th-century art writing (the three principal mid-century surveys did not include a single female artist). Much women’s art is therefore misattributed, uncatalogued, unidentified or simply “lost,” making it seem as though female artists hardly existed.

Fifty years after second wave feminist art historians launched projects to recover and integrate women artists into academic and public discourses, most professional women artists of the past are still missing from the historical record.

Now You See Us is an attempt to set the record straight.

The years of research behind the exhibition scrutinised the archives to recover lost works and piece together forgotten histories of women artists. A highlight of this endeavour is Through the Looking-Glass, the 1875 self portrait of Louise Jopling (1843–1933), which was recently acquired by the Tate for the nation.

A hugely successful portraitist and genre painter, Jopling was the first woman to be elected to the Royal Society of British Artists, founded her own school for women artists and produced more than 750 works of art – nearly all of which remain lost. Her marvellous, impressionistic self portrait should have been the exhibition’s headline image. Swathed in azure ruffles, the artist pauses with brushes and palette in hand to inspect her reflection. She appears to see us. And now, at last, we see her.

The exhibition is peppered with familiar figures – Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman, Julia Margaret Cameron and Gwen John – but most of the display features artists who are far from household names, even if they once were.

Not all of their works are equal in visual interest, at least according to modern tastes. However, some are revelations. With scientific precision, botanical artist Augusta Innes Withers (1792–1877) captured sunlight glowing through the succulent flesh of ripe grapes. Portrait miniaturist Sarah Biffin (1784–1850), born without arms, conjured a winsome self-portrait using only her mouth and shoulder. And the UK’s first official female war artist, Anna Airy (1882–1964), loaded canvases with the heat and heft of the munitions factories she documented.

The exhibition is persuasive in its argument, stunning in its scope. And yet, one question looms over the whole: how can such an exhibition still be necessary?

In 1976, Women Artists: 1550–1950 was the first exhibition dedicated to art created by professional female artists. Touring to four American venues, its enormous influence inspired the rediscovery of hundreds of previously neglected women artists and galvanised efforts to integrate minoritised artists into the canon. As one of its curators, art historian Ann Sutherland Harris, wrote, the aim was to “remove once and for all the justification for any future exhibitions with this theme”.

Yet nearly 50 years later, Tate Britain isn’t the only gallery “rediscovering” the existence of successful professional women artists. The last year alone has seen major shows on the theme at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Is it still a revelation to find that, despite systemic inequalities, many women artists were as capable and successful as men? Or do these shows, in fact, reveal the recent agendas of art institutions as much as they reflect gaps in public knowledge of art history?

While there is still much recovery work to be done, today’s art historical canon is far less male, white and western than it once was. But art institutions are only beginning to seriously grapple with the role they have historically played (and continue to play) in homogenising art history by collecting, exhibiting and promoting certain artists over others.

The recent rehang of Tate Britain’s permanent collection, with wall texts that are explicitly self-critical and decolonial, is one example of this reckoning. Now You See Us is another. And with only two non-white female artists (Edmonia Lewis and Zaïda Ben-Yusuf) appearing among the exhibition’s 110, Tate Britain, and other institutions, have more work to do to recover the intersectional experiences that would further enrich our understanding of art history.

Professional women artists of the past have been scrubbed from history. And while Tate Britain’s celebration of their achievements is to be welcomed, ephemeral exhibitions without true institutional change are no longer enough. The time for women artists to take their rightful place in our permanent collections is long overdue.

This article first appeared in 'The Conversation' on 20 May 2024.