Observations: A Studio of Her Own (1500-1900) Recommended Reading List

Further your own research or learn more about the artists and subjects that most interest you, with our reading and podcast recommendations.

Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614) the first professional female painter in the Italian history of art

Speaker: Dr Maria Teresa Cantaro

Reading Highlights:
Lavinia Fontana bolognese ‘pittore singolare’, 1552–1614 (Milan: Jandi Sapi, 1989).

‘Aggiornamenti e precisazioni sul catalogo di Lavinia Fontana.’ Bollettino d’arte, 6. Ser. 78.1993, 79, 85-102.

‘Lavinia Fontana : il primo “Autoritratto alla spinetta” ritrovato e una breve disamina sugli autroritratti della pittrice.’ Bollettino d’arte. 7. Serie, anno 99, 24 (ottobre-dicembre 2014), Seite 99-110.

[Video in Spanish] Bologna in the time of Lavinia Fontana, Conference at Museo del Prado January 28, 2020.

Additional resources: 

Murphy, Caroline P. Lavinia Fontana; An Artist and her society in late sixteenth-century Bologna, University College London, 1996.

Cheney, Liana De Girolami. ‘Chapter 1: Allegories, Personifications, Mythologies, and Emblematic Traditions’. Lavinia Fontana’s Mythological Paintings: Art, Beauty, and Wisdom, Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2020): 1-8.

Lavinia Fontana and Elisabetta Sirani

Speaker: Dr Adelina Modesti

Reading highlights:

‘Elisabetta Sirani of Bologna (1638–1665)‘, Art Herstory, November 2020.

Elisabetta Sirani ‘Virtuosa’: Women’s Cultural Production in Early Modern Bologna (Brepols Publishers, 2015).

Elisabetta Sirani “Pittrice Eroina”: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, paper from the Società Italiana delle Storiche inaugural international conference June 1995.

Mary Beale’s Family Workshop

Speaker: Dr Penelope Hunting

Reading highlight: 

My Dearest Heart: The artist Mary Beale (1633-1699), Chicago Press, 2021.

Additional resources: 

[Review] Barrington, Breeze. ‘In praise of Mary Beale – one of Britain’s first women artists,’ Apollo, 28 October 2019.

[NGV podcast] Mansfield, Lisa. Mary Beale: pioneer of portraiture.

[NGV essay] Mansfield, Lisa. Mary Beale: pioneer of portraiture. April 2020.

[NGV essay] Gott, Ted. Portrait of a Lady: Mary Beale.

[NGV essay] Gott, Ted. Portrait of the artist’s son, Bartholomew Beale.

[NGV tour] Quirk, Maria. Art tour – women in art: 17th – 18th century.

Women Silversmiths in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Britain

Speaker: Philippa Glanville, OBE, FSA

Reading highlights: 

Women Silversmiths (with Jennifer Faulds Goldsborough), National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1990.

‘Curiously enchased: Goldsmiths & diplomats in Baroque Europe,’ The International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, 2010.

Goldsmiths and Diplomats; Battles in Silver between the Baltic courts, Haughton seminar June 2018.

Additional resources: 

[NGV essay] Dunsmore, Amanda. Hester Bateman: An eighteenth-century entrepreneur, April 2020.

Studio Business: Women Artists and Professionalism

Speakers: Dr Maria Quirk, Dr Zoë Thomas, Julia Hartmann and Dr Paris Spies-Gans

Reading highlights: 

Quirk, Maria. Women, Art and Money in Late Victorian and Edwardian England: The hustle and the scramble, New York; Bloomsbury, 2019.

Quirk, Maria. ‘Portraiture and Patronage: Women, Reputation and the Business of Selling Art, 1880-1914’, Visual Culture in Britain, 17, no.2 (2016): 181-199.

Thomas, Zoë. Women Art Workers and the Arts and Crafts Movement, Manchester Press, 2020.

Thomas, Zoë. ‘Between art and commerce: women, business ownership, and the arts and crafts movement,’ Past & Present, 2020, vol. 247, no.1, pp. 151-196.

Hartmann, Julia.’ Bold characters: Motherhood and censorship in Chinese art and curating,’ Radicalising Care Feminist and Queer Activism in Curating, 2021.

Hartmann, Julia. ‘Nudes in 1920s China: Emancipation and agency in the works of female artists,’ Aware Women Artists, September 2020.

Spies-Gans, Paris. A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830, Yale University Press: 2022.

Spies-Gans, Paris. ‘Exceptional, but not exceptions: Public Exhibitions and the rise of the women artist in London and Paris, 1760-1830,’ Eighteenth-century studies 51, no. 4, Summer 2018: 393-416.