Women artists at Tate Britain

Tate Britain. Photo by me

After my last blog post about Artemisia Gentileschi, I was itching to see the work of more women artists and so I dashed to Tate Britain, where I knew I would find a few, having read an article about the women artists represented at the Tate published on their website a while ago. I went on an impulse, it was already 4.30 pm by the time I got there and the gallery closes at 6 pm on a weekday. I had with me a list of the paintings I wanted to see and  had been able to note down the gallery number, so I walked in resolutely, determined to take my own pictures of the artworks on my list. There was a time  I used to do this kind of thing constantly, when I was a research student  and would make it a point to go and photograph every artefact, every art work relevant to my dissertation's topic. There is a routine one embodies: scanning the room  at a glance to locate immediately the work of one's interest, ignoring everything else and negotiating crowds (there is also the thing about getting into the habit of going early or at times when the gallery might be less crowded, but that depends on luck), the catalogue number having been memorised as well as having an idea of the object's position in the gallery from viewing published photographs taken by others - the point of taking your own photograph is usually to focus on some specific aspect of the work, a detail you intend to discuss in your dissertation.
 But art works are in  the 'habit' of travelling from their permanent home to some other gallery or museum that borrows them for a temporary exhibition or they are, from time to time, whisked away from display for some conservation work. A friend of mine keeps on being frustrated in his desire to view Canova's Three Graces permanently housed at the V&A, but constantly on the move, it seems. He told me that on all his recent visits to London he went to the museum and was told the work was not available.
I am currently not writing a dissertation, so yesterday I was a little more casual in my approach to the paintings, in the sense that I did not do all the necessary preparatory work, I just went and hoped to find them, though I had a list.

Mary Beale's Sketch  of the artist's son Own photo

Needless to say a couple of them had been moved. The very polite warden sitting in one corner of the room told me that The Deluge (1920) by Winifred Knights had just been taken away. I was obviously disappointed. But the others were all there and were so pretty. No photograph can ever do justice to the real thing. It seems such an obvious thing to say, but we are getting so used to seeing art works in reproductions. The original colours cannot be faithfully duplicated, no matter how good the camera and the photographer are. There is also something else to take into account: the way the light falls on the painting and the way it is displayed. Of course sometimes the only way to acquaint oneself properly with a painting is only by looking at reproduction: the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is surrounded by glass and there are throngs of people around it. The painting is actually quite small so when you finally get there, after elbowing and pushing, amidst a cacophony of clicks, you often end up seeing your own reflection in the glass and very little of the Mona Lisa itself.

Gwen John's Self portrait Own photo

But yesterday Tate Britain was quite empty.  The paintings I saw which represent women artists - still far too few - are as you may have guessed from the photos and their captions.: Mary Beale's Sketch of the Artist's son (1660 - a contemporary of Artemisia Gentileschi, the first female professional painter in Britain, her husband was her assistant; Gwen John's Self portrait (1902) - she trained at the Slade School of Art but predictably had to face discrimination throughout her career; Dora Carrington's Farm at Watendlath (1921) - the article published by the Tate focuses on her sexuality and sexual behaviour and I find that somewhat unnecessary; Winifred Nicholson's Sandpipers, Alnmouth (1933).

Christina Mackie's The filters Own photo

Then there is of course the installation by Christina Mackie The filters (2015) that is being  shown until October in the Duveen Galleries. Mackie is a British artist currently living in Canada.
I did expect to find a number of artists active in the 20th century but I am aghast at the lack of representation of female artists from the 18th and 19th century. Two entire centuries! I will look at other galleries and see what I find.
Certainly, it seems that the 17th century was a real turning point and marked the rise of the professional female painter in Europe. That is in itself most encouraging and we should salute these pioneers.

(The above photos were taken by me. I am an amateur photographer and only take snaps primarily to illustrate my blog. When not snapping away I am a professional model. For my modelling work please see here)

Photo of me by Aleksandra Kingo