Ruth Leon recommends… Mary Cassatt – Artemisia Gentileschi

Very few female painters have survived the male heirarchy of art history and come down to us with their reputations burnished and their talents finally recognised. There are only two who come to mind immediately and, coincidentally, both have anniversaries on June 14th. They died on the same day 273 years apart, Artemisia Gentileschi in 1653 and Mary Cassatt in 1926. That wasn’t all they had in common although the similarities aren’t immediately obvious.

American-born, Mary Cassatt lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. Her strongest work was in creating images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.
Artemisia Gentileschi painted women too, but her women are disguised as biblical or mythical characters. including victims, suicides, and warriors. Some of her best-known subjects are Susanna and the Elders, Judith Slaying Holofernes and Judith and Her Maidservant. Even her most famous self-portrait is her representation of herself as Saint Catherine of Alexandria.

Her women are not soft, gentle or motherly, they are fierce, determined, sometimes warlike, and always believable. They assert themselves across the centuries, making us see them as real women with strength and rage.

In an era when women had few opportunities to pursue artistic training or work as professional artists, Artemisia, daughter of a successful artist, Orazio Gentileschi, and trained in his Rome workshop along with her less talented brothers, was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.

She had an international clientele but her achievements as an artist were overshadowed for many years by the story of Agostino Tassi, a fellow painter working in her father’s studio, who raped her when she was 18. He was tried, not for rape but for violating the family honour, and Artemisia was tortured to give evidence during his trial.

Like Cassatt, Gentileschi had to leave home to achieve independent recognition for her art, Cassatt to Paris, Gentileschi to Florence and Naples.

Explore Mary Cassatt’s life and work, from her contributions to the French Impressionist movement to her bold experimentation in painting, pastels, and printmaking, in this film, The Radical Art of Mary Cassatt.   Through interviews with experts, archival footage and photography, and unpublished letters from the artist, step into the revolutionary world of Cassatt.

Here too is Artemisia Gentileschi in 8 Paintings, a film which was made to accompany the Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition at the National Gallery in 2020.
Letizia Treves, my favourite curator, tells the story of Artemisia’s life through her paintings.

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