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An exhibition celebrating female artistic pioneers
A new exhibition celebrates women who were determined to paint in a time when art was dominated by men.
Another View: Landscapes by Women Artists at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, Wirral highlights their place in the history of British landscape art.
It tells the story of the growing ambition of female artists and how they gained a greater foothold in the art world.
About 40 works from the early 1800s to the 1980s feature.
The exhibition questions the term “lady amateur”, which has often been used in contrast to the title of “professional” artist usually reserved for men.
Melissa Gustin, curator of British Art, said the exhibition promoted work by female artists who were determined to fulfill their creativity but were often ridiculed by the establishment.
She said: “They have gone from being laughed at at every tea table, as Thomas Gainsborough said, to being some of the most recognizable women and artists in the world.”
She said: “This exhibition shows how female landscape painters used their art to express their individual gaze, representing many scenes along the way.
“They explored and questioned the landscape around them, developing important networks and experimenting with new media and techniques in the process.”
Elizabeth Campbell, whose watercolors were painted recording her journey through the Alps between 1818 and 1827, is among the relatively unknown artists featured in the exhibition.
Ms Gustin said the artist, from Yorkshire, was radical for her time.
“She married a Scottish soldier, and after he died in the Napoleonic Wars … she took her young daughter, Thomasina, to the Continent and spent the next 20 or 30 years having adventures,” he said.
Ms Gustin said she was doing everything from “climbing a mountain to speaking new languages ​​and meeting new people and painting everything along the way”.
“They include a document from her trip over Mont Blanc,” he said.
“They were the first women to do this and they did it in corsets and hoop skirts, painting all the way.”
Work by the decorated artist Dame Ethel Walker (1861-1951) is also included in the exhibition.
She exhibited her work at the Venice Biennale several times, was elected to the Royal Academy, and was honored for her services to the arts in 1943.
She wanted to be known as an artist, not a female artist, Ms Gustin said.
“She felt that the discussion of female artists by male artists was counterproductive, and that what really mattered was the quality of one’s painting or sculpture,” she said.
She said she felt “they shouldn’t focus on the gender of the person but on how well they actually paint and whether they had originality and talent”.
Work by Sheila Fell (1931-1979) is also on display.
The Cumbrian artist preferred the local scenery to anywhere else despite traveling in Europe, Ms Gustin said.
“She loved where she came from in Cumbria and painted that more than anything else.
“She visited Greece, she visited France and she found them uninspiring compared to Aspatria and the country she had grown up in,” he added.
The exhibition runs until 18 August.
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