Your Tour of Women Artists at the National Gallery

This work celebrates the talents and connected stories of two creative women: its painter Lavinia Fontana and her subject, lute player and singer Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni. Fontana and Garzoni were successful artists in Bologna, Italy, during the second half of the 1500s. They were popular in spite of the constraints of a male-dominated society.

Fontana was one of the most productive women artists of the period. She became famous for portraits of noblewomen like this one. But she also painted church altarpieces, portraits of scholars, and mythological nudes—a subject that was unheard of for women artists at the time. Thanks to her success, she was able to support her family, including 11 children, with profits from her painting.

Main Floor, Gallery 33

More artists nearby: Clara Peeters, Judith Leyster, Gesina ter Borch

Roldán's father was one of the most accomplished sculptors in Seville.  She established her own workshop and style and went on to be the official court sculptor to not one but two Spanish kings in the 17th century.

Roldán created elaborately painted wood and clay sculptures of individual figures and interacting groups. Her expressive compositions are remarkably carved and modeled. A professional painter (probably her brother-in-law) applied the elaborate decoration. Take a close look at the overlapping layers and prints of fabric.

Main Floor, Gallery 34

Vigée Le Brun was a prodigy and established a painting career in her teens. She became a successful portraitist during the reign of French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI. Queen Marie Antoinette took note of her talents and became one of her primary patrons. Vigée Le Brun painted some 30 portraits of Marie Antoinette. The queen helped Vigée Le Brun enter France’s prestigious royal art academy, then a rare feat for a woman.

Vigée Le Brun also painted several portraits of Madame du Barry, King Louis XV’s official mistress. Du Barry’s presence at the royal court had always been controversial. Royal mistresses typically came from nobility or wealth, but she came from neither. After Louis XV’s death, Marie Antoinette (wife of his grandson, Louis XVI) pushed her husband to banish Madame du Barry from the court. Vigée Le Brun painted Madame du Barry after she was allowed to return to France. Tthe artist disavowed the face when she saw the painting again two decades later. She believed that a subsequent owner of the painting had added rouge to her cheeks. She remained proud of the rest of the painting though which shows her remarkable skill at painting textures.

Main Floor, Gallery 54

This still life showcases Spencer’s technical skills: each raspberry’s form is carefully painted. Recent research suggests that a member of abolitionist Reverence Henry Ward Beecher’s clergy may have requested this painting after seeing a similar one in Beecher’s personal collection.

Spencer had started with portraits and literary subjects. But she became one of the most famous American painters of family life in the mid-19th century. She drew on her experience as a wife and mother of seven to create domestic paintings. These lively and highly detailed scenes of ordinary people and everyday life appealed to Victorian sensibilities. Spencer was her family’s primary breadwinner, a savvy businesswoman who reproduced her paintings as lithographs.

Main Floor, Gallery 69A

More artists nearby: Gretchen W. Rogers and Cecilia Beaux

Ursula von Rydingsvard transforms stacks of 4 × 4 cedar beams into monumental abstract sculptures. When she turned to wood in the 1970s, the prominent sculptors of the time (mostly men) were working with metal. Von Rydingsvard was frustrated with the limitations of steel, but inspired by the possibilities of carving wood into forms “that felt like the earth, or felt fleshy.”

Since then, Von Rydingsvard has been using cedar to create organic forms like Five Cones. The sculptures often defy gravity to breathe new life into the material. They can feel fluid or alive.

Mezzanine, Landing

After the tragic death of her husband Jackson Pollock in 1956, Krasner moved into his barn studio and began making larger-scale paintings. Cobalt Night is part of her Umber series. At the time Krasner was suffering from severe insomnia. Unable to sleep, she painted massive compositions like this one. She covered the canvas with broad sweeping gestures and thick strokes of earthier tones and added flecks of fuchsia and lilac. Krasner described the process as deeply personal: “When I painted a good part of these things, I was going down deep into something which wasn’t easy or pleasant.”

Krasner was a leading abstract expressionist artist—one who valued expressing emotions over representing forms. She was at the center of the New York movement. Krasner studied with influential teacher Hans Hoffman and exhibited with the American Abstract Artists group.

Mezzanine

More artists nearby: Chakaia Booker, Louise Bourgeois, Anne Truitt, and Pat Steir

Betye Saar believes that art can be made from anything. The Los-Angeles–based artist is a pioneer of assemblage, which combines sculpture and collage and uses found materials. For more than 55 years, Saar has explored race, gender, ancestry, and spirituality through her art.

Saar made Twilight Awakening from scavenged and sculpted pieces of plastic, ceramic, and glass on the wooden base of a recycled printer’s block. The central figure is Aquarius, the water bearer. She hovers between sea and land, the moon and star. Saar shows Aquarius pouring water from an urn, as she appears in ancient and medieval images.

Upper Level, Gallery 415B

More artists nearby: Kay Sage, Lee Bontecou, Georgia O’Keeffe

Quick-to-See Smith began painting versions of US maps in 1996. By adding text, she uses the maps to tell new stories. When the artist made Adios Map, she thought of 2021 as a year of goodbyes—to lives lost in the pandemic, to land destroyed by climate disasters, and more.

A Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Quick-to-See Smith is one of the most influential Native American artists living today. In addition to her art, she is an educator, and curator. Quick-to-See Smith has devoted her career to bringing attention to the work of Native American artists.

Upper Level, West Terrace

More artists nearby: Mimi Herbert, Niki de Saint Phalle, Faith Ringgold, Marjorie Strider, Bridget Riley, Alma Thomas  

We see the spider in much of the art French American artist Bourgeois made during the last decade of her life. Spiders reminded Bourgeois of her mother, who died when she was a young woman. As a spider weaves a web, so her mother was a weaver and a restorer of tapestries. While spiders frighten or disgust many people, Bourgeois saw them as clever and protective.

Bourgeois is a significant figure in modern and contemporary art. Through a variety of mediums, from drawing to sculpture, she made works based personal memories and experiences. She often used art to process her emotions.

Sculpture Garden, northwest corner

Polish artist Abakanowicz was a pioneer of fiber and installation art in the 1960s and ’70s. After gaining attention for her hanging textile “Abakans” (named for herself), she turned to making figural works. Abakanowicz created several works of headless figures in groups, like this sculpture.

She made these 30 headless bronze sculptures from individually sculpted wax forms based on a body cast of a single child model. Abakanowicz applied burlap to each form before casting it in bronze. Puellae refers to a tragic story about a group of children who froze to death while being transported in cattle cars from Poland to Germany during World War II. What she heard and saw as a child living in Poland under Nazi occupation, and later under a communist regime, deeply impacted the artist.

Sculpture Garden, northeast corner