WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.990 --> 00:00:02.520 Thanks so much, Gill. 2 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:06.870 It's a real delight for me to be here in chilly Canberra 3 00:00:06.870 --> 00:00:09.090 and talking to Jennifer Higgie, 4 00:00:09.090 --> 00:00:13.200 who I believe is in a very warm sunny London this morning. 5 00:00:13.200 --> 00:00:14.033 Welcome Jennifer. 6 00:00:14.033 --> 00:00:16.440 Thanks so much for joining us for this discussion 7 00:00:16.440 --> 00:00:20.370 about some of the self-portraits in our current exhibition 8 00:00:20.370 --> 00:00:21.420 Shakespeare to Winehouse, 9 00:00:21.420 --> 00:00:23.310 which is a fabulous selection of works 10 00:00:23.310 --> 00:00:27.030 from the National Portrait Gallery in London 11 00:00:27.030 --> 00:00:28.617 that we have here for. 12 00:00:28.617 --> 00:00:29.490 Thank you so much for having me. 13 00:00:29.490 --> 00:00:30.693 Another month or so. 14 00:00:31.830 --> 00:00:33.630 It's for anyone who doesn't know Jennifer. 15 00:00:33.630 --> 00:00:36.570 She's an art historian and a writer. 16 00:00:36.570 --> 00:00:39.870 You might be familiar with the Bow Down podcast, 17 00:00:39.870 --> 00:00:41.880 which Jennifer hosts. 18 00:00:41.880 --> 00:00:43.800 It's a fabulous series of interviews 19 00:00:43.800 --> 00:00:47.280 about women artists to whom we should all bow down. 20 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:48.113 It's fabulous. 21 00:00:48.113 --> 00:00:49.470 I highly recommend it. 22 00:00:49.470 --> 00:00:51.660 And just recently, just last year, 23 00:00:51.660 --> 00:00:53.790 she's published a wonderful book called 24 00:00:53.790 --> 00:00:55.680 The Mirror and the Palette 25 00:00:55.680 --> 00:00:57.600 Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 26 00:00:57.600 --> 00:01:00.210 500 Years of Women's self-portraits. 27 00:01:00.210 --> 00:01:03.510 And a number of the artists that Jennifer discusses 28 00:01:03.510 --> 00:01:07.530 in the book are represented in Shakespeare to Winehouse. 29 00:01:07.530 --> 00:01:11.940 And so we're really fortunate for Jennifer to be here 30 00:01:11.940 --> 00:01:14.640 and to start sort of telling us a little bit more 31 00:01:14.640 --> 00:01:16.980 about some of these intriguing women 32 00:01:16.980 --> 00:01:18.390 represented in the exhibition. 33 00:01:18.390 --> 00:01:19.680 And there's a very good chance. 34 00:01:19.680 --> 00:01:21.630 We might sort of stray off to portraits 35 00:01:21.630 --> 00:01:23.850 which aren't in the exhibition, 36 00:01:23.850 --> 00:01:26.580 but which Jennifer discusses in her book. 37 00:01:26.580 --> 00:01:29.940 So it'll be a fabulous discussion and we've all been 38 00:01:29.940 --> 00:01:34.320 really looking forward to talking to Jennifer. 39 00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:36.180 So let's go. 40 00:01:36.180 --> 00:01:38.400 I thought what a good way to start, Jennifer 41 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:41.613 would be to start with a quote from your book, 42 00:01:42.720 --> 00:01:45.630 because if nothing else I believe this exhibition 43 00:01:45.630 --> 00:01:48.820 that we have from London is a really fabulous 44 00:01:49.800 --> 00:01:53.160 sort of demonstration, I guess, of that idea 45 00:01:53.160 --> 00:01:56.280 that a portrait and perhaps particularly a self-portrait 46 00:01:56.280 --> 00:01:58.920 is never just an artwork. 47 00:01:58.920 --> 00:02:03.450 It's never just a representation of what someone looks like, 48 00:02:03.450 --> 00:02:07.440 but a fabulous lens onto all of the other histories 49 00:02:07.440 --> 00:02:11.040 that are sort of existing and going on around it. 50 00:02:11.040 --> 00:02:13.110 And there's one point in your book 51 00:02:13.110 --> 00:02:16.080 where I'll just quote if that's okay. 52 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:18.690 And then I'll sort of hand over to you to sort of take over, 53 00:02:18.690 --> 00:02:20.010 if you like, 54 00:02:20.010 --> 00:02:22.710 where you say, "a painting will always reveal something 55 00:02:22.710 --> 00:02:26.100 about the life of its creator, even if it's the last thing 56 00:02:26.100 --> 00:02:28.200 the artist intended. 57 00:02:28.200 --> 00:02:30.120 A self-portrait isn't simply a rendering 58 00:02:30.120 --> 00:02:32.190 of an artist's external appearance. 59 00:02:32.190 --> 00:02:35.190 It's also an invocation of who she is 60 00:02:35.190 --> 00:02:36.870 and the time she lives in, 61 00:02:36.870 --> 00:02:38.580 how she sees herself, 62 00:02:38.580 --> 00:02:41.640 and what she understands about the world. 63 00:02:41.640 --> 00:02:44.820 And you use those phrases to introduce 64 00:02:44.820 --> 00:02:48.510 discussion of artists, such as Angelica Kauffman, 65 00:02:48.510 --> 00:02:50.940 who was one of the first two women admitted 66 00:02:50.940 --> 00:02:53.400 to the Royal Academy in 1768. 67 00:02:53.400 --> 00:02:56.190 And we are very fortunate that a beautiful self-portrait 68 00:02:56.190 --> 00:03:01.140 by Angelica is represented in the exhibition. 69 00:03:01.140 --> 00:03:03.420 I'm wondering if you could sort of tell us a little bit 70 00:03:03.420 --> 00:03:08.280 about that work and how it is that Angelica's self-portrait, 71 00:03:08.280 --> 00:03:11.310 as you say, sort of tells us about the times 72 00:03:11.310 --> 00:03:15.120 that she's living in and how she sees herself in the world. 73 00:03:15.120 --> 00:03:16.050 Yeah, absolutely. 74 00:03:16.050 --> 00:03:17.650 Thank you so much for having me. 75 00:03:18.660 --> 00:03:21.510 Angelica Kaufman was a really remarkable artist. 76 00:03:21.510 --> 00:03:24.030 She was a child prodigy in Switzerland. 77 00:03:24.030 --> 00:03:26.790 She travelled around with her father who was also an artist. 78 00:03:26.790 --> 00:03:29.280 And when she came to London, she set up 79 00:03:29.280 --> 00:03:32.700 as a professional artist and did very well. 80 00:03:32.700 --> 00:03:34.830 She was good friends with Joshua Reynolds. 81 00:03:34.830 --> 00:03:36.930 And as you mentioned, she became one of the first 82 00:03:36.930 --> 00:03:39.750 two women to be admitted to the Royal Academy, 83 00:03:39.750 --> 00:03:41.980 but she was admitted to the Royal Academy 84 00:03:43.050 --> 00:03:45.740 not as a full member, but as an associate member. 85 00:03:45.740 --> 00:03:48.030 So she and her fellow artists, Mary Moosa, 86 00:03:48.030 --> 00:03:52.263 who was a brilliant painter of still lives and flowers. 87 00:03:53.610 --> 00:03:56.760 While they were, oh, isn't this amazing, 88 00:03:56.760 --> 00:03:58.860 two women have been admitted to the Royal Academy? 89 00:03:58.860 --> 00:04:00.570 They weren't allowed to attend meetings 90 00:04:00.570 --> 00:04:04.590 or the formal dinners, and they were constantly sidelined. 91 00:04:04.590 --> 00:04:08.370 So I think what's wonderful in this, in this self-portrait 92 00:04:08.370 --> 00:04:10.950 from the national portrait gallery in London 93 00:04:10.950 --> 00:04:13.350 is that, ostensibly, it seems like 94 00:04:13.350 --> 00:04:15.540 quite a demure self-portrait. 95 00:04:15.540 --> 00:04:18.720 She's gazing at her, she's at work. 96 00:04:18.720 --> 00:04:20.970 You know, she's a woman who is skilled, 97 00:04:20.970 --> 00:04:23.040 but it's quite modest in a way, 98 00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:25.590 but you dig a bit deeper and there are certain signs 99 00:04:25.590 --> 00:04:28.500 within the painting that I think are really telling. 100 00:04:28.500 --> 00:04:31.560 For example, she's not depicting herself 101 00:04:31.560 --> 00:04:33.330 in fashionable garb. 102 00:04:33.330 --> 00:04:36.120 She's depicting herself in loose robes 103 00:04:36.120 --> 00:04:38.760 that sort of allude to classicism. 104 00:04:38.760 --> 00:04:42.180 So she's saying that she knows about the precedence 105 00:04:42.180 --> 00:04:45.333 of painting, but also she's in very comfortable clothes. 106 00:04:46.170 --> 00:04:49.170 She's depicting herself at work. 107 00:04:49.170 --> 00:04:53.070 Now this is a time when women had no political agency, 108 00:04:53.070 --> 00:04:54.750 they were barred from the life room, 109 00:04:54.750 --> 00:04:56.700 they weren't allowed to be in a room with an naked man. 110 00:04:56.700 --> 00:05:00.750 So, she wasn't initially able to get those skill sets 111 00:05:00.750 --> 00:05:03.450 that were necessary to become a professional artist. 112 00:05:03.450 --> 00:05:06.180 She was constantly patronised and sidelined, 113 00:05:06.180 --> 00:05:07.890 but still she's a professional artist. 114 00:05:07.890 --> 00:05:12.890 So I see this painting of herself at work 115 00:05:12.900 --> 00:05:16.860 as a sort of quiet rebellion in a way, 116 00:05:16.860 --> 00:05:19.740 because she's saying, yes, I am sidelined, 117 00:05:19.740 --> 00:05:22.230 yes, I have no political agency, but look at me, 118 00:05:22.230 --> 00:05:24.060 I'm a woman and I'm at work. 119 00:05:24.060 --> 00:05:26.160 And so I think it's a very beautiful and powerful 120 00:05:26.160 --> 00:05:28.530 self-portrait in that sense. 121 00:05:28.530 --> 00:05:29.363 Mm. 122 00:05:29.363 --> 00:05:30.840 And even just sort of by the fact 123 00:05:30.840 --> 00:05:33.570 that she's painting herself and she painted herself 124 00:05:33.570 --> 00:05:35.640 quite frequently, as I understand. 125 00:05:35.640 --> 00:05:37.650 She was one of her main subjects, 126 00:05:37.650 --> 00:05:40.800 she's making a statement about her lack of access 127 00:05:40.800 --> 00:05:45.800 to the training and the facilities and so forth 128 00:05:45.900 --> 00:05:49.770 that her male counterparts and that the other. 129 00:05:49.770 --> 00:05:52.890 How many men was it that were admitted to the Royal Academy 130 00:05:52.890 --> 00:05:57.848 in 1768, compared to just sort of Mary and Angelica? 131 00:05:57.848 --> 00:05:59.357 Yeah, there were 34 men. 132 00:06:00.233 --> 00:06:01.066 34 men. 133 00:06:01.066 --> 00:06:04.290 But of course the 34 men had full membership, 134 00:06:04.290 --> 00:06:05.550 whereas the women didn't. 135 00:06:05.550 --> 00:06:08.280 There wasn't a full member of the Royal Academy 136 00:06:08.280 --> 00:06:11.790 until Laura Knight in 1936, and so, 137 00:06:11.790 --> 00:06:14.031 which is sort of extraordinary really. 138 00:06:14.031 --> 00:06:17.525 And women were pounding on the doors of the Royal Academy, 139 00:06:17.525 --> 00:06:20.730 not only to be allowed to be members of it, 140 00:06:20.730 --> 00:06:23.310 but also to study there, because it was the preeminent 141 00:06:23.310 --> 00:06:24.780 art school in London. 142 00:06:24.780 --> 00:06:29.490 And, you read the sort of increasingly despairing petitions 143 00:06:29.490 --> 00:06:31.710 that groups of women across the ages 144 00:06:31.710 --> 00:06:33.480 presented to the Royal Academy. 145 00:06:33.480 --> 00:06:35.760 They were begging that they were allowed to study 146 00:06:35.760 --> 00:06:38.912 and they were polite and they're fervent, 147 00:06:38.912 --> 00:06:39.745 and they're respectful, 148 00:06:39.745 --> 00:06:41.580 but they're increasingly desperate. 149 00:06:41.580 --> 00:06:44.670 And it wasn't until 1860. 150 00:06:44.670 --> 00:06:46.380 It's a rather wonderful story 151 00:06:46.380 --> 00:06:51.060 where a young artist called Laura Herford was so incensed 152 00:06:51.060 --> 00:06:54.270 by this lack of access to the Royal Academy 153 00:06:54.270 --> 00:06:56.430 that she actually applied as a student 154 00:06:56.430 --> 00:07:00.450 using only her initials, LH, and she was accepted. 155 00:07:00.450 --> 00:07:03.990 And then when this was discovered 156 00:07:03.990 --> 00:07:07.170 that LH was actually Laura Herford, 157 00:07:07.170 --> 00:07:10.380 they had to let her in, because bizarrely, 158 00:07:10.380 --> 00:07:12.600 they discovered that it actually wasn't written 159 00:07:12.600 --> 00:07:14.910 into their constitution that women weren't allowed 160 00:07:14.910 --> 00:07:15.810 to study there. 161 00:07:15.810 --> 00:07:18.270 Everyone had just assumed that that was the case. 162 00:07:18.270 --> 00:07:22.020 So anyway, Laura Herford, first female student, 163 00:07:22.020 --> 00:07:22.953 that's, yeah. 164 00:07:25.320 --> 00:07:28.500 But I think, as you say, one of the reasons 165 00:07:28.500 --> 00:07:30.840 I think that so many women did self-portraits 166 00:07:30.840 --> 00:07:32.580 from the 16th century on, 167 00:07:32.580 --> 00:07:35.010 is that because they weren't allowed to study 168 00:07:35.010 --> 00:07:36.600 in the life class. 169 00:07:36.600 --> 00:07:39.720 They turned to the subject that was always available, 170 00:07:39.720 --> 00:07:41.013 which was themselves. 171 00:07:42.510 --> 00:07:43.680 And that's why I called my book, 172 00:07:43.680 --> 00:07:44.550 The Mirror and the Palette, 173 00:07:44.550 --> 00:07:48.210 because if they had a mirror and a palette, they could, 174 00:07:48.210 --> 00:07:51.033 they had access to a subject that they could explore. 175 00:07:53.490 --> 00:07:54.600 And further to that point, 176 00:07:54.600 --> 00:07:57.810 Hector's just put on the screen this painting, 177 00:07:57.810 --> 00:07:59.040 which is now in the Royal collection. 178 00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:02.010 It's a picture by Johan Zoffany 179 00:08:02.010 --> 00:08:06.600 of the inaugural members of the Royal Academy. 180 00:08:06.600 --> 00:08:09.870 And you can see there on the right hand side 181 00:08:09.870 --> 00:08:13.260 of the composition, Mary and Angelica represented 182 00:08:13.260 --> 00:08:14.790 as images on the wall, 183 00:08:14.790 --> 00:08:17.460 because as you pointed out, Jennifer, 184 00:08:17.460 --> 00:08:19.860 they wouldn't have been allowed in this room 185 00:08:19.860 --> 00:08:23.103 with sort of semi-naked and naked men. 186 00:08:24.240 --> 00:08:28.080 I mean, this painting is so inadvertently hilarious, 187 00:08:28.080 --> 00:08:28.913 really. 188 00:08:28.913 --> 00:08:30.535 It is. 189 00:08:30.535 --> 00:08:33.720 I mean, first of all, Zoffany is commissioned to do 190 00:08:33.720 --> 00:08:36.000 a portrait of the Royal Academy missions. 191 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:38.580 And you'd think knowing the rules that women weren't allowed 192 00:08:38.580 --> 00:08:40.770 in the life room that he might have chosen 193 00:08:40.770 --> 00:08:42.750 a different location for his portrait. 194 00:08:42.750 --> 00:08:45.480 No, he decided to have all of the men 195 00:08:45.480 --> 00:08:47.310 surrounding one naked man. 196 00:08:47.310 --> 00:08:49.650 And then there are these rather glum little portraits 197 00:08:49.650 --> 00:08:52.620 up on the wall of Mary Moser and Angelica Kaufman. 198 00:08:52.620 --> 00:08:54.690 And I mean, these are extraordinary women 199 00:08:54.690 --> 00:08:58.680 who were blazing with life and were blazing with society, 200 00:08:58.680 --> 00:09:00.540 but in those little portraits they look sort of 201 00:09:00.540 --> 00:09:04.263 dour and a bit dead, really, like portraits of. 202 00:09:05.160 --> 00:09:07.830 So, I mean, what an insult! 203 00:09:07.830 --> 00:09:10.710 I mean, you can't imagine how infuriating 204 00:09:10.710 --> 00:09:12.603 that must have been for them, anyway. 205 00:09:15.540 --> 00:09:20.100 But you mentioned that idea of having a mirror 206 00:09:20.100 --> 00:09:23.700 and a palette and being able, and having yourself 207 00:09:23.700 --> 00:09:27.840 as the such an accessible, always available subject. 208 00:09:27.840 --> 00:09:29.340 And as you also pointed out, 209 00:09:29.340 --> 00:09:31.710 Angelica was hardly the first woman. 210 00:09:31.710 --> 00:09:33.630 I mean, the portrait that's in the exhibition 211 00:09:33.630 --> 00:09:35.040 is from the 1770s, 212 00:09:35.040 --> 00:09:39.900 but 300 years or before that, 213 00:09:39.900 --> 00:09:42.390 there are women making self-portraits. 214 00:09:42.390 --> 00:09:45.120 And there's a beautiful little image, 215 00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:49.530 which is reproduced in your book 216 00:09:49.530 --> 00:09:53.790 from the early 15th century, if I remember correctly 217 00:09:53.790 --> 00:09:57.180 and it's a woman sort of seated at a table, 218 00:09:57.180 --> 00:09:59.550 painting her self-portrait, and you can see her, 219 00:09:59.550 --> 00:10:01.590 you can see her face reflected in the mirror 220 00:10:01.590 --> 00:10:03.300 and in the portrait that she's painting. 221 00:10:03.300 --> 00:10:05.430 So I was wondering if you could sort of elaborate 222 00:10:05.430 --> 00:10:10.050 on some of those, some of Angelica's predecessors. 223 00:10:10.050 --> 00:10:11.043 Hmm, yeah. 224 00:10:13.200 --> 00:10:16.560 You know, one of the sort of lies that has been taught 225 00:10:16.560 --> 00:10:18.540 with the stories of traditional art history 226 00:10:18.540 --> 00:10:20.400 is that women really only came into their own 227 00:10:20.400 --> 00:10:25.020 in the 20th century, whereas there are strong documents, 228 00:10:25.020 --> 00:10:27.600 documentation, rather, of women painting 229 00:10:27.600 --> 00:10:29.073 since the beginning of time. 230 00:10:30.312 --> 00:10:32.940 And there's even a theory that a lot of cave painting 231 00:10:32.940 --> 00:10:35.842 was done by women, because of the shape of their hands. 232 00:10:35.842 --> 00:10:36.870 There have been studies on that, 233 00:10:36.870 --> 00:10:39.510 but this rather wonderful little painting, 234 00:10:39.510 --> 00:10:42.390 and we're not quite sure who made this painting, 235 00:10:42.390 --> 00:10:44.910 it's an illuminated manuscript, 236 00:10:44.910 --> 00:10:48.510 is really, it's basically a triple portrait 237 00:10:48.510 --> 00:10:51.180 because you've got an illustration of Marcia 238 00:10:51.180 --> 00:10:54.399 who was meant to be one of a major painter 239 00:10:54.399 --> 00:10:56.580 from classical times. 240 00:10:56.580 --> 00:11:00.420 But the painter of this, the artist of this picture 241 00:11:00.420 --> 00:11:03.120 has depicted her in mediaeval dress. 242 00:11:03.120 --> 00:11:05.130 And she's looking at herself in the mirror 243 00:11:05.130 --> 00:11:06.960 and she's also painting herself. 244 00:11:06.960 --> 00:11:10.291 So you can see herself in her painting in this painting, 245 00:11:10.291 --> 00:11:11.493 in her mirror. 246 00:11:12.737 --> 00:11:17.737 And, it's a clear documentation of a woman painting 247 00:11:18.780 --> 00:11:21.543 a very long time ago and painting herself. 248 00:11:22.560 --> 00:11:25.470 But the first, really the first self-portraits 249 00:11:25.470 --> 00:11:28.800 that we know of that are authored were, 250 00:11:28.800 --> 00:11:31.524 if we go to 1548, and there's a really 251 00:11:31.524 --> 00:11:35.490 radical and wonderful, but seemingly modest little painting 252 00:11:35.490 --> 00:11:38.100 by an artist called Catharina van Hemessen. 253 00:11:38.100 --> 00:11:41.820 And here she is, and Catharina van Hemessen was born 254 00:11:41.820 --> 00:11:45.660 in Antwerp, and her father was quite a successful painter. 255 00:11:45.660 --> 00:11:48.060 And this is actually a story that we hear again and again, 256 00:11:48.060 --> 00:11:50.730 that because women were barred from training, 257 00:11:50.730 --> 00:11:54.810 apprenticeships, academies, you name it, 258 00:11:54.810 --> 00:11:56.957 a lot of them, not all of them, but some of them 259 00:11:56.957 --> 00:12:00.570 who were to become successful artists were born 260 00:12:00.570 --> 00:12:03.044 into a family of artists. 261 00:12:03.044 --> 00:12:06.780 And Catharina van Hemessen's father was a well-known artist. 262 00:12:06.780 --> 00:12:09.960 And so therefore she immediately had access to a studio 263 00:12:09.960 --> 00:12:13.890 and also it's important to stress access to mirrors 264 00:12:13.890 --> 00:12:17.010 because mirrors at this time were actually luxury items. 265 00:12:17.010 --> 00:12:20.190 They were very, very expensive and very rare, 266 00:12:20.190 --> 00:12:22.260 but they were often to be found in artist studios 267 00:12:22.260 --> 00:12:23.430 because they were so useful, 268 00:12:23.430 --> 00:12:26.910 obviously for the tools of the artist. 269 00:12:26.910 --> 00:12:28.667 And so here she depicts herself. 270 00:12:28.667 --> 00:12:30.570 It's a rather clumsy little painting. 271 00:12:30.570 --> 00:12:31.683 It's quite small. 272 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:35.280 She looks rather startled. 273 00:12:35.280 --> 00:12:36.600 She's in her finery. 274 00:12:36.600 --> 00:12:38.700 She's painting in velvet, which would've been unusual 275 00:12:38.700 --> 00:12:40.650 at the time because normally she would have 276 00:12:40.650 --> 00:12:42.120 some kind of smock on. 277 00:12:42.120 --> 00:12:44.880 But so she's saying many things in this picture, 278 00:12:44.880 --> 00:12:48.900 she's saying, I am a woman of modesty 279 00:12:48.900 --> 00:12:50.250 because she's dressed very modestly, 280 00:12:50.250 --> 00:12:52.710 but I am also a woman who is respectable. 281 00:12:52.710 --> 00:12:54.600 I am dressed in velvet. 282 00:12:54.600 --> 00:12:56.850 She's painting a picture of the Virgin 283 00:12:56.850 --> 00:12:59.520 because it was very important for women in pre-modern times 284 00:12:59.520 --> 00:13:01.920 to stress that they weren't loose women, 285 00:13:01.920 --> 00:13:04.320 that they were respectful women 286 00:13:04.320 --> 00:13:06.600 because to be an artist was to be a bohemian 287 00:13:06.600 --> 00:13:08.913 and could have been perceived as being very, 288 00:13:10.290 --> 00:13:12.720 to have what might have been perceived at the time 289 00:13:12.720 --> 00:13:13.770 as loose morals. 290 00:13:13.770 --> 00:13:16.290 So she's painting a picture of the Virgin to reiterate 291 00:13:16.290 --> 00:13:19.710 that she's a religious woman, and up at the top 292 00:13:19.710 --> 00:13:21.180 of the painting, you can't quite see it here, 293 00:13:21.180 --> 00:13:22.860 but you can see the inscription. 294 00:13:22.860 --> 00:13:25.290 She says, "I, Catharina van Hemessen, 295 00:13:25.290 --> 00:13:28.620 painted this age 20 in 1548". 296 00:13:28.620 --> 00:13:32.580 Now to our 21st-century eyes, this picture looks quite, 297 00:13:32.580 --> 00:13:33.720 it's a nice little picture, 298 00:13:33.720 --> 00:13:36.270 but it's quite modest and it's a little bit clumsy, 299 00:13:36.270 --> 00:13:37.920 but what is radical about this 300 00:13:37.920 --> 00:13:40.530 is that it's the first painting we know of 301 00:13:40.530 --> 00:13:43.920 by anyone of any gender of an artist 302 00:13:43.920 --> 00:13:46.710 painting themselves at an easel. 303 00:13:46.710 --> 00:13:49.980 So there were self-portraits by men at the time, 304 00:13:49.980 --> 00:13:51.210 although they were quite unusual 305 00:13:51.210 --> 00:13:54.570 because most artists at the time are working to commission 306 00:13:54.570 --> 00:13:57.990 and they're painting religious subjects or still lives 307 00:13:57.990 --> 00:13:59.940 or paintings that would sell. 308 00:13:59.940 --> 00:14:01.770 And so it was rare for them to turn their lens 309 00:14:01.770 --> 00:14:02.850 on themselves. 310 00:14:02.850 --> 00:14:06.060 But Durer, of course, had made his remarkable self-portraits 311 00:14:06.060 --> 00:14:08.550 around 1500, but they're very Christlike. 312 00:14:08.550 --> 00:14:12.000 He depicts himself as his rather otherworldly creature, 313 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:14.370 Jan van Eyck famously painted himself. 314 00:14:14.370 --> 00:14:17.700 It's considered a self-portrait with a turban. 315 00:14:17.700 --> 00:14:19.650 But Catharina van Hemessen, this young woman 316 00:14:19.650 --> 00:14:23.220 is the first person to depict herself as an artist 317 00:14:23.220 --> 00:14:26.040 at an easel, and again, a bit like the Angelica Kaufman 318 00:14:26.040 --> 00:14:26.873 self-portrait. 319 00:14:26.873 --> 00:14:30.060 I think she's saying, "look at me, I am painting. 320 00:14:30.060 --> 00:14:32.550 And isn't this remarkable, I am a woman." 321 00:14:32.550 --> 00:14:35.940 And one of the reasons I think that she might have inscribed 322 00:14:35.940 --> 00:14:38.580 her painting with "I Catharina van Hemessen painted this", 323 00:14:38.580 --> 00:14:41.640 is because the history of art is the history of women 324 00:14:41.640 --> 00:14:43.740 being excluded or mis-attributed. 325 00:14:43.740 --> 00:14:45.930 And so it's quite, it often happened 326 00:14:45.930 --> 00:14:49.830 that if they painted themselves, then after they died, 327 00:14:49.830 --> 00:14:51.930 their self-portrait might have been attributed 328 00:14:51.930 --> 00:14:53.460 to a male painter. 329 00:14:53.460 --> 00:14:55.173 So we know they did this. 330 00:14:56.040 --> 00:14:58.320 And I think it's something that we'll no doubt see 331 00:14:58.320 --> 00:15:00.090 throughout the discussion 332 00:15:00.090 --> 00:15:03.660 is that the use women painting themselves 333 00:15:03.660 --> 00:15:05.100 with their brushes, with the easel, 334 00:15:05.100 --> 00:15:06.600 with the palette, like you say, 335 00:15:06.600 --> 00:15:08.520 really sort of making a statement. 336 00:15:08.520 --> 00:15:10.080 I'm not just an amateur, 337 00:15:10.080 --> 00:15:12.840 I'm not just doing this because it's an accomplishment, 338 00:15:12.840 --> 00:15:16.260 I'm a professional serious painter. 339 00:15:16.260 --> 00:15:17.093 Exactly. 340 00:15:17.093 --> 00:15:17.926 Yeah. 341 00:15:17.926 --> 00:15:18.759 And it's one of those things. 342 00:15:18.759 --> 00:15:20.550 And this is another thing which I think comes across 343 00:15:20.550 --> 00:15:23.070 really beautifully in the exhibition, 344 00:15:23.070 --> 00:15:24.090 as well as in your book 345 00:15:24.090 --> 00:15:29.090 is the persistence of these motifs and these themes 346 00:15:29.220 --> 00:15:33.210 from 400 years worth of portraiture. 347 00:15:33.210 --> 00:15:35.940 This need, particularly on the part of women, 348 00:15:35.940 --> 00:15:39.180 this sort of strident, really quite strident statement 349 00:15:39.180 --> 00:15:42.960 that you can make that sort of quiet rebellion 350 00:15:42.960 --> 00:15:45.090 just by portraying yourself, 351 00:15:45.090 --> 00:15:47.013 holding the tools of your trade. 352 00:15:48.120 --> 00:15:50.070 Absolutely, absolutely. 353 00:15:50.070 --> 00:15:51.990 And as you say, we see this again and again 354 00:15:51.990 --> 00:15:53.880 that women are painting themselves with the tools 355 00:15:53.880 --> 00:15:57.167 of their trade to say, "I can work, I can do this", 356 00:15:57.167 --> 00:15:59.760 because at this point in time, women were expected 357 00:15:59.760 --> 00:16:01.989 to be wives or mothers or nuns. 358 00:16:01.989 --> 00:16:05.477 They won't be professional artists. 359 00:16:05.477 --> 00:16:09.510 And so the women who did achieve a role 360 00:16:09.510 --> 00:16:12.060 as a professional artist, I mean, I can't imagine 361 00:16:12.060 --> 00:16:14.327 how phenomenal these women were. 362 00:16:14.327 --> 00:16:16.920 And Catharina van Hemessen herself became, 363 00:16:16.920 --> 00:16:19.680 she had a remarkable career. 364 00:16:19.680 --> 00:16:23.040 She went to Spain and with her husband and then, 365 00:16:23.040 --> 00:16:26.130 he was an organist and she was working 366 00:16:26.130 --> 00:16:28.533 as a professional artist in the court of Spain. 367 00:16:29.370 --> 00:16:31.383 But then we lose sight of her. 368 00:16:31.383 --> 00:16:32.550 We don't even know when she died. 369 00:16:32.550 --> 00:16:34.710 She went back to Holland and it's possible 370 00:16:34.710 --> 00:16:36.120 then she started having children 371 00:16:36.120 --> 00:16:38.610 and that put an end to her career or she died. 372 00:16:38.610 --> 00:16:39.960 We don't know. 373 00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:41.880 Hmm, and once again, 374 00:16:41.880 --> 00:16:46.880 these are all the sort of having to give away one's career 375 00:16:47.160 --> 00:16:49.200 because you've had children or because you've married 376 00:16:49.200 --> 00:16:52.590 and you've got a home to run, is another thing 377 00:16:52.590 --> 00:16:54.690 which sort of persists throughout the centuries as well. 378 00:16:54.690 --> 00:16:56.820 We might sort of talk about that a little bit 379 00:16:56.820 --> 00:16:59.250 perhaps when we come to Nora Heysen, 380 00:16:59.250 --> 00:17:01.290 a little bit further down the track. 381 00:17:01.290 --> 00:17:04.500 But you were mentioning about how amazing these women 382 00:17:04.500 --> 00:17:06.900 must have been to have made a living from their art 383 00:17:06.900 --> 00:17:10.680 at this time, which I think leads us naturally 384 00:17:10.680 --> 00:17:14.790 to artists like Artemisia Gentileschi. 385 00:17:14.790 --> 00:17:17.730 Would you like to tell us a little bit more about her? 386 00:17:17.730 --> 00:17:18.563 Yeah. 387 00:17:18.563 --> 00:17:19.403 Amazing woman. 388 00:17:20.360 --> 00:17:22.650 What an extraordinary, extraordinary woman. 389 00:17:22.650 --> 00:17:27.000 Yeah, she was born in 1593 in Rome, again, 390 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:29.580 her father was a painter, which is why she had access 391 00:17:29.580 --> 00:17:33.840 to training materials, but she was remarkably gifted. 392 00:17:33.840 --> 00:17:35.850 I mean she was accomplished paintings 393 00:17:35.850 --> 00:17:38.370 by the age of 15 and 16. 394 00:17:38.370 --> 00:17:39.390 Wow. 395 00:17:39.390 --> 00:17:44.143 Tragically she was raped by her tutor when she was 17, 396 00:17:45.180 --> 00:17:47.583 who was a famous artist called Tasso. 397 00:17:49.020 --> 00:17:50.670 Anyway, there's been a lot written about this, 398 00:17:50.670 --> 00:17:52.200 so I won't go into it in great depth. 399 00:17:52.200 --> 00:17:57.200 But she went to trial and awfully one of the reasons 400 00:17:59.427 --> 00:18:02.490 she went to trial wasn't so much that she was raped, 401 00:18:02.490 --> 00:18:06.990 but rather that she had her father's property, i.e. her 402 00:18:06.990 --> 00:18:10.820 had been damaged and possibly stopped her 403 00:18:12.420 --> 00:18:14.460 from becoming a married woman later on 404 00:18:14.460 --> 00:18:16.170 because she had been defiled. 405 00:18:16.170 --> 00:18:18.480 Anyway, she was tortured during the trial, 406 00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:19.830 which went for about a year. 407 00:18:19.830 --> 00:18:21.480 But in the end she actually won the trial. 408 00:18:21.480 --> 00:18:26.370 And her rapist was banned from Rome as a punishment. 409 00:18:26.370 --> 00:18:27.992 But because he was friends with the Pope, 410 00:18:27.992 --> 00:18:29.160 he didn't really go. 411 00:18:29.160 --> 00:18:31.320 So he didn't really have any punishment at all. 412 00:18:31.320 --> 00:18:34.740 She married immediately after her trial was over 413 00:18:34.740 --> 00:18:37.955 because she had to reclaim her reputation 414 00:18:37.955 --> 00:18:40.173 as a virtuous woman. 415 00:18:41.100 --> 00:18:44.130 And you know this terrible, terrible thing that happened 416 00:18:44.130 --> 00:18:46.500 to her rather than crushing her, she rose above it. 417 00:18:46.500 --> 00:18:48.519 She threw herself into painting 418 00:18:48.519 --> 00:18:52.860 and she made an extraordinary series of, 419 00:18:52.860 --> 00:18:55.680 it's hard not to see them as revenge paintings 420 00:18:55.680 --> 00:18:58.530 where she depicts herself as Judith 421 00:18:58.530 --> 00:19:00.690 in the story of Judith and Holofernes, 422 00:19:00.690 --> 00:19:04.170 where it depicts the biblical story of this woman 423 00:19:04.170 --> 00:19:08.340 who crept into a camp of an invader to seduce the general 424 00:19:08.340 --> 00:19:10.830 and then ended up decapitating him. 425 00:19:10.830 --> 00:19:14.561 And her versions of this story, they're more violent 426 00:19:14.561 --> 00:19:16.920 than Caravaggio's versions of the story. 427 00:19:16.920 --> 00:19:20.310 I mean, they're very, very graphic, extraordinary painter, 428 00:19:20.310 --> 00:19:23.820 but here she depicts herself as St. Catherine of Alexandria, 429 00:19:23.820 --> 00:19:27.570 again, another woman who was spurned and brutalised 430 00:19:27.570 --> 00:19:29.883 by male power. 431 00:19:31.020 --> 00:19:34.140 In this picture, she depicts herself as St. Catherine, 432 00:19:34.140 --> 00:19:37.830 who was an intellectual, who was a Christian, 433 00:19:37.830 --> 00:19:40.758 who managed to convert hundreds of people 434 00:19:40.758 --> 00:19:45.210 including great intellectuals of the day to Christianity, 435 00:19:45.210 --> 00:19:49.177 and who was eventually put to death for her beliefs. 436 00:19:49.177 --> 00:19:51.513 But when she bled, she bled milk. 437 00:19:52.500 --> 00:19:54.210 And then she was sanctified. 438 00:19:54.210 --> 00:19:57.780 And this was bought by the National Gallery in London 439 00:19:57.780 --> 00:20:00.570 a few years ago, and then did actually a national tour. 440 00:20:00.570 --> 00:20:03.810 And it toured around to prisons and schools 441 00:20:03.810 --> 00:20:06.150 and community centres and church halls, 442 00:20:06.150 --> 00:20:08.670 has promoted discussions around the role of women 443 00:20:08.670 --> 00:20:11.880 in the past, and to discuss the role of mythical women 444 00:20:11.880 --> 00:20:13.560 as she depicts herself here. 445 00:20:13.560 --> 00:20:17.280 And it was a really remarkable, I think, initiative 446 00:20:17.280 --> 00:20:18.180 by the National Gallery, 447 00:20:18.180 --> 00:20:21.450 which only has a tiny, tiny percentage of work 448 00:20:21.450 --> 00:20:23.850 by women in its collection. 449 00:20:23.850 --> 00:20:26.760 And the exhibition that they devoted 450 00:20:26.760 --> 00:20:28.710 to Artemisia Gentileschi two years ago, 451 00:20:28.710 --> 00:20:30.750 which was absolutely fabulous. 452 00:20:30.750 --> 00:20:33.930 That was the first exhibition the National Gallery in London 453 00:20:33.930 --> 00:20:37.710 had ever devoted to a woman painter. 454 00:20:37.710 --> 00:20:41.970 So, yeah, but she was great when she, during the trial, 455 00:20:41.970 --> 00:20:43.980 it came out that she was actually illiterate. 456 00:20:43.980 --> 00:20:46.620 After the trial, she not only became one of 457 00:20:46.620 --> 00:20:48.330 the great painters of the Baroque, 458 00:20:48.330 --> 00:20:50.190 but she also taught herself to read and write. 459 00:20:50.190 --> 00:20:51.780 And her letters are really wonderful. 460 00:20:51.780 --> 00:20:54.090 She became a great letter writer with friends, 461 00:20:54.090 --> 00:20:56.160 such as Galileo, the astronomer, 462 00:20:56.160 --> 00:20:58.472 who she was close friends with. 463 00:20:58.472 --> 00:21:02.100 And she was an absolute powerhouse 464 00:21:02.100 --> 00:21:05.610 and she also had children, all of whom died except for one, 465 00:21:05.610 --> 00:21:08.430 a daughter who also trained as a painter, 466 00:21:08.430 --> 00:21:10.630 but we know nothing about what she achieved. 467 00:21:12.030 --> 00:21:13.980 I'm still quite staggered that 468 00:21:13.980 --> 00:21:15.900 it's only in very, very recent memory 469 00:21:15.900 --> 00:21:18.090 that an institution like the National Gallery in London 470 00:21:18.090 --> 00:21:21.600 has done a single artist show about a woman artist. 471 00:21:21.600 --> 00:21:23.310 That's extraordinary. 472 00:21:23.310 --> 00:21:24.143 Yeah. 473 00:21:25.260 --> 00:21:27.690 And actually just before the pandemic, 474 00:21:27.690 --> 00:21:30.777 I went to Madrid to see another fantastic exhibition 475 00:21:30.777 --> 00:21:32.493 at the Prado. 476 00:21:33.900 --> 00:21:37.050 And that was an exhibition of two Renaissance women artists, 477 00:21:37.050 --> 00:21:41.250 because there were 120 women working as professional artists 478 00:21:41.250 --> 00:21:43.320 during the Renaissance, something that I was never taught 479 00:21:43.320 --> 00:21:44.643 when I was at art school. 480 00:21:46.620 --> 00:21:49.260 And anyways, Sofonisba Anguissola who was the most prolific 481 00:21:49.260 --> 00:21:52.560 self-portraitist between Durer and Rembrandt, 482 00:21:52.560 --> 00:21:54.270 and also Lavinia Fontana, 483 00:21:54.270 --> 00:21:57.210 who, I mean remarkably had 11 children, 484 00:21:57.210 --> 00:22:00.210 but still was one of the great artists of the Renaissance, 485 00:22:00.210 --> 00:22:02.760 and she was another trail blazer. 486 00:22:02.760 --> 00:22:05.280 But the Prado had put on an exhibition 487 00:22:05.280 --> 00:22:07.200 of these two remarkable women. 488 00:22:07.200 --> 00:22:10.710 And it was only the second time in their 200-year history 489 00:22:10.710 --> 00:22:12.600 that they had devoted exhibitions to women. 490 00:22:12.600 --> 00:22:14.880 The first was of Clara Peeters, 491 00:22:14.880 --> 00:22:18.480 who was a great Netherlandish, still-life painter 492 00:22:18.480 --> 00:22:19.830 16th century, 17th century. 493 00:22:25.380 --> 00:22:29.553 We've got a couple of images of Sofonisba, I think. 494 00:22:30.630 --> 00:22:34.827 Yeah, her story is fantastic, Sofonisba Anguissola. 495 00:22:36.524 --> 00:22:37.710 Wonderful. 496 00:22:37.710 --> 00:22:39.150 And there's a wonderful self-portrait actually 497 00:22:39.150 --> 00:22:42.240 by Anthony van Dyck in the exhibition. 498 00:22:42.240 --> 00:22:43.980 And I understand as a young artist, 499 00:22:43.980 --> 00:22:46.230 he sought advice from Sofonisba. 500 00:22:46.230 --> 00:22:47.820 Is that correct? 501 00:22:47.820 --> 00:22:49.890 Yes, that's a really great story. 502 00:22:49.890 --> 00:22:52.080 So, I mean, just to give a bit of background 503 00:22:52.080 --> 00:22:53.220 to Sofonisba. 504 00:22:53.220 --> 00:22:58.220 She was born in 1532 in Cremona to an inter-nobility, 505 00:22:59.130 --> 00:23:01.530 but her family was quite poor, but her father, 506 00:23:01.530 --> 00:23:02.760 although he wasn't an artist, 507 00:23:02.760 --> 00:23:06.090 he was extremely encouraging of his five daughters, 508 00:23:06.090 --> 00:23:08.580 three or four of whom became artists, 509 00:23:08.580 --> 00:23:12.753 but actually Sofonisba was an absolute powerhouse. 510 00:23:13.590 --> 00:23:17.760 She showed great talent from an early age. 511 00:23:17.760 --> 00:23:21.690 It's pretty clear now, it's not absolutely verified, 512 00:23:21.690 --> 00:23:23.850 but there's a lot of information around the fact 513 00:23:23.850 --> 00:23:26.343 that she probably studied with Michelangelo. 514 00:23:27.570 --> 00:23:30.810 She went and worked in the court of Philip II 515 00:23:30.810 --> 00:23:34.980 and there are great stories of her starting the dancing 516 00:23:34.980 --> 00:23:35.880 at his wedding. 517 00:23:35.880 --> 00:23:39.870 I think she was a lot of fun, Sofonisba Anguissola. 518 00:23:39.870 --> 00:23:42.420 And she married at the age of 40, 519 00:23:42.420 --> 00:23:44.310 which was considered scandalously old. 520 00:23:44.310 --> 00:23:47.310 And it's most likely that Philip II decided 521 00:23:47.310 --> 00:23:48.360 that it was time she married 522 00:23:48.360 --> 00:23:51.330 because it was not respectable at all 523 00:23:51.330 --> 00:23:52.163 that she wasn't married, 524 00:23:52.163 --> 00:23:55.230 but she painted remarkable paintings when she was in Spain. 525 00:23:55.230 --> 00:23:58.260 So she married and then her husband died 526 00:23:58.260 --> 00:24:00.720 in mysterious circumstances, possibly murdered 527 00:24:00.720 --> 00:24:03.630 by Albanian pirates off the coast of Sicily. 528 00:24:03.630 --> 00:24:08.630 And she went back to Italy and on the way 529 00:24:09.330 --> 00:24:12.630 she fell in love with a much younger sea captain. 530 00:24:12.630 --> 00:24:14.970 And without asking permission from her family, 531 00:24:14.970 --> 00:24:16.380 she ran off with him and married him. 532 00:24:16.380 --> 00:24:19.080 And she was by now well into her forties. 533 00:24:19.080 --> 00:24:21.270 And they had a really, really happy marriage actually. 534 00:24:21.270 --> 00:24:23.520 And he was greatly supportive of her. 535 00:24:23.520 --> 00:24:25.800 Anyway, she ended up in Palermo 536 00:24:25.800 --> 00:24:28.920 and she was very, very old and van Dyck came to Palermo, 537 00:24:28.920 --> 00:24:31.080 which was in the middle of a plague. 538 00:24:31.080 --> 00:24:36.080 And he sought out Sofonisba Anguissola to do her portrait 539 00:24:36.870 --> 00:24:39.660 because by now she was famous across Europe. 540 00:24:39.660 --> 00:24:42.690 She had painted so many remarkable portraits. 541 00:24:42.690 --> 00:24:46.560 She was the first person to paint portraits of her sisters 542 00:24:46.560 --> 00:24:48.330 in a domestic setting, playing chess. 543 00:24:48.330 --> 00:24:49.980 I think we have an image of that. 544 00:24:52.158 --> 00:24:54.480 And, she was also, she inspired people 545 00:24:54.480 --> 00:24:56.910 like Lavinia Fontana to become artists. 546 00:24:56.910 --> 00:24:58.380 So yeah, this is a wonderful portrait 547 00:24:58.380 --> 00:25:00.513 that she painted in 1554. 548 00:25:02.099 --> 00:25:04.230 The Italian artist historian Giorgio Vasari, 549 00:25:04.230 --> 00:25:06.540 who wrote his famous Lives of the Artist. 550 00:25:06.540 --> 00:25:10.260 He praises this in his book of 1568. 551 00:25:10.260 --> 00:25:11.370 And so we see here, 552 00:25:11.370 --> 00:25:13.830 she's painting her sisters who are laughing, 553 00:25:13.830 --> 00:25:15.990 who are having fun, and they're playing chess, 554 00:25:15.990 --> 00:25:18.960 which at the time was seen as a very intellectual game 555 00:25:18.960 --> 00:25:20.040 and a strategic game. 556 00:25:20.040 --> 00:25:22.680 So it wasn't a usual one for women to be playing. 557 00:25:22.680 --> 00:25:26.880 And so Sofonisba here again in a very coded portrait 558 00:25:26.880 --> 00:25:29.130 is saying, "these are women, they're clever. 559 00:25:29.130 --> 00:25:30.810 They can play chess". 560 00:25:30.810 --> 00:25:31.950 But anyway, back to van Dyck, 561 00:25:31.950 --> 00:25:35.730 So he goes to Palermo, which is in the middle of the plague 562 00:25:35.730 --> 00:25:39.180 and seeks out Sofonisba, who by now is half-blind 563 00:25:39.180 --> 00:25:41.760 and very old, but still really feisty. 564 00:25:41.760 --> 00:25:44.070 And very unusually, he actually wrote a new piece 565 00:25:44.070 --> 00:25:46.050 in his diary about meeting her. 566 00:25:46.050 --> 00:25:49.350 And he says that he learned more from this very elderly 567 00:25:49.350 --> 00:25:52.890 blind woman than he had from all the teachers he'd ever had. 568 00:25:52.890 --> 00:25:56.550 And there's a rather lovely report of her backseat painting 569 00:25:56.550 --> 00:25:58.827 a bit and telling him how to shade things in 570 00:25:58.827 --> 00:26:01.990 and how to under-paint or highlight things. 571 00:26:01.990 --> 00:26:02.910 So, she was a great character. 572 00:26:02.910 --> 00:26:04.980 I mean, wouldn't it be great if someone like Netflix 573 00:26:04.980 --> 00:26:08.220 did a series on, dramatised her life 574 00:26:08.220 --> 00:26:11.460 instead of endless stories about women being murdered. 575 00:26:11.460 --> 00:26:12.303 Exactly. 576 00:26:13.650 --> 00:26:16.650 And, for van Dyck, to say that bearing in mind that 577 00:26:16.650 --> 00:26:21.240 Rubens was one of his teachers, is quite extraordinary. 578 00:26:21.240 --> 00:26:24.090 We've heard endless amounts of about van Dyck 579 00:26:24.090 --> 00:26:26.100 and Peter Paul Rubens, van Dyck rather, 580 00:26:26.100 --> 00:26:31.100 and Peter Paul Rubens, but not about this woman artist 581 00:26:31.920 --> 00:26:34.260 whom he admired. 582 00:26:34.260 --> 00:26:35.093 Revered. 583 00:26:35.093 --> 00:26:38.072 So much and travelled to Italy during a plague 584 00:26:38.072 --> 00:26:40.170 to go and visit. 585 00:26:40.170 --> 00:26:41.720 Yeah, it's quite extraordinary. 586 00:26:42.690 --> 00:26:44.133 Yeah, great story. 587 00:26:45.840 --> 00:26:47.423 Yeah, so Mary Beale. 588 00:26:48.377 --> 00:26:51.750 First, she considered the UK's or England's 589 00:26:51.750 --> 00:26:54.153 first professional woman artist, do you think? 590 00:26:55.650 --> 00:26:58.110 I think she's considered the second 591 00:26:58.110 --> 00:26:59.430 professional women artist. 592 00:26:59.430 --> 00:27:01.060 The first one was Joan Carlile 593 00:27:02.190 --> 00:27:04.590 and she was a little bit older than Mary Beale, 594 00:27:04.590 --> 00:27:06.840 but at one point they were both living in Covent Garden 595 00:27:06.840 --> 00:27:08.850 and it's lovely to think that they might have met. 596 00:27:08.850 --> 00:27:12.390 I'm sure they must have met, but there's no record of it. 597 00:27:12.390 --> 00:27:16.500 But Mary Beale was far more prolific than Joan Carlile 598 00:27:16.500 --> 00:27:19.710 and she left behind a much greater body of work. 599 00:27:19.710 --> 00:27:24.600 And she's also famous for being the first artist, 600 00:27:24.600 --> 00:27:28.450 I think, not just woman in Britain to have written 601 00:27:30.141 --> 00:27:32.820 a very brief piece on how to paint. 602 00:27:32.820 --> 00:27:36.150 So it's the first record with having written of an artist, 603 00:27:36.150 --> 00:27:38.850 giving instruction through writing about how to paint. 604 00:27:38.850 --> 00:27:39.683 And she wrote this. 605 00:27:39.683 --> 00:27:41.970 It's only about 250 words, and it was about 606 00:27:41.970 --> 00:27:44.670 how to paint a peach basically, 607 00:27:44.670 --> 00:27:47.223 and what kind of paint to use. 608 00:27:48.467 --> 00:27:49.770 And she possibly wrote it for her sons, 609 00:27:49.770 --> 00:27:52.650 because her sons trained as artists. 610 00:27:52.650 --> 00:27:55.503 And she led a remarkable life, wonderful life. 611 00:27:56.415 --> 00:27:59.100 And she lucked out because she married a man 612 00:27:59.100 --> 00:28:01.950 who was extremely supportive of his wife 613 00:28:01.950 --> 00:28:06.950 and he was something of a chemist and he experimented a lot 614 00:28:07.320 --> 00:28:11.430 with pigments and opened a very important pigment shop 615 00:28:11.430 --> 00:28:14.100 for painters in London. 616 00:28:14.100 --> 00:28:16.260 And he also helped on her studio. 617 00:28:16.260 --> 00:28:20.973 And basically Mary was the main breadwinner in the family. 618 00:28:22.170 --> 00:28:25.290 Again, she found it hard to get training at the beginning, 619 00:28:25.290 --> 00:28:30.290 but she persevered and she came of age 620 00:28:30.720 --> 00:28:34.290 sort of just after the Civil War had finished in England. 621 00:28:34.290 --> 00:28:36.930 And it actually was a time where, I mean, 622 00:28:36.930 --> 00:28:40.620 despite the awful tragedies of many deaths, 623 00:28:40.620 --> 00:28:42.300 the Civil War was a time when women 624 00:28:42.300 --> 00:28:43.530 who were often left behind 625 00:28:43.530 --> 00:28:46.107 when their husbands or fathers went off to war, 626 00:28:46.107 --> 00:28:49.200 had to run the house or had to run households 627 00:28:49.200 --> 00:28:52.170 or till the fields or do the work that men had been doing. 628 00:28:52.170 --> 00:28:54.810 So a bit like after the First World War, 629 00:28:54.810 --> 00:28:57.480 after the Civil War in Britain, women actually achieved 630 00:28:57.480 --> 00:29:00.000 sort of greater prominence in public life 631 00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:02.550 because they were dependent upon to run the country 632 00:29:03.450 --> 00:29:05.910 because so many men were dead or fighting. 633 00:29:05.910 --> 00:29:10.910 So she sort of bloomed at a moment of rare support 634 00:29:12.090 --> 00:29:13.560 for women. 635 00:29:13.560 --> 00:29:17.040 But again, she often turned to herself and painted herself 636 00:29:17.040 --> 00:29:21.180 and she often painted her family, her husband and her sons. 637 00:29:21.180 --> 00:29:23.190 And she did about, I think, 638 00:29:23.190 --> 00:29:24.810 hundreds of paintings were left behind. 639 00:29:24.810 --> 00:29:28.830 She was extremely prolific and again, 640 00:29:28.830 --> 00:29:31.950 she had to reiterate to her public 641 00:29:34.440 --> 00:29:35.850 in order to get commissions. 642 00:29:35.850 --> 00:29:37.260 She had to make it very clear 643 00:29:37.260 --> 00:29:39.963 that she was a woman of honour and virtue. 644 00:29:41.478 --> 00:29:44.430 And I think it was some distant relation of hers 645 00:29:44.430 --> 00:29:47.160 was a reverend, a vicar. 646 00:29:47.160 --> 00:29:51.510 And he wrote recommendation of her in a pamphlet 647 00:29:51.510 --> 00:29:53.100 that was publicly read. 648 00:29:53.100 --> 00:29:55.800 And so this reiterated that Mary was a most 649 00:29:55.800 --> 00:29:58.920 honourable and virtuous woman and also could paint, 650 00:29:58.920 --> 00:30:01.980 which meant that she ended up getting lots of commissions 651 00:30:01.980 --> 00:30:03.360 because she was deemed respectable. 652 00:30:03.360 --> 00:30:05.430 And that's why she also ended up painting 653 00:30:05.430 --> 00:30:07.470 quite a lot of religious figures. 654 00:30:07.470 --> 00:30:11.190 So like vicars and bishops and people like that. 655 00:30:11.190 --> 00:30:13.800 So yeah, she was great. 656 00:30:13.800 --> 00:30:15.180 Yeah, and once again, 657 00:30:15.180 --> 00:30:18.300 you have in this self-portrait by Mary, 658 00:30:18.300 --> 00:30:21.600 which is in NPG London's collection, 659 00:30:21.600 --> 00:30:24.150 she's again, that's a portrait of her sons, 660 00:30:24.150 --> 00:30:27.030 I think in that she's holding in her hand. 661 00:30:27.030 --> 00:30:30.660 So once again, an artist, a woman artist sort of 662 00:30:30.660 --> 00:30:33.150 reasserting her professionalism, I suppose, 663 00:30:33.150 --> 00:30:38.150 or using a tool of her trade to reassert her legitimacy 664 00:30:39.630 --> 00:30:42.431 as an artist, I suppose, you could say. 665 00:30:42.431 --> 00:30:43.833 Yeah, absolutely. 666 00:30:44.790 --> 00:30:48.603 You mentioned the effects of the Civil War, 667 00:30:49.590 --> 00:30:51.240 the English Civil War and what that meant 668 00:30:51.240 --> 00:30:54.900 for women's work generally and sort of women's access 669 00:30:54.900 --> 00:30:56.520 to all sorts of professions and things 670 00:30:56.520 --> 00:30:59.070 that they wouldn't ordinarily get to do. 671 00:30:59.070 --> 00:31:00.060 That's of course another thing 672 00:31:00.060 --> 00:31:02.340 which sort of persists and there's some works 673 00:31:02.340 --> 00:31:03.333 in the exhibition. 674 00:31:04.500 --> 00:31:07.890 Well, one portrait in particular by an artist 675 00:31:07.890 --> 00:31:12.890 named Doris Zinkeisen, which I mean, she was someone 676 00:31:13.410 --> 00:31:17.340 who, she volunteered as a nurse during World War I, 677 00:31:17.340 --> 00:31:18.690 and then during World War II, 678 00:31:18.690 --> 00:31:20.220 she volunteered as a nurse again. 679 00:31:20.220 --> 00:31:21.960 And then towards the end of the war, 680 00:31:21.960 --> 00:31:25.350 she was part of a group of artists 681 00:31:25.350 --> 00:31:28.440 who were sort of contracted by Sir Kenneth Clark. 682 00:31:28.440 --> 00:31:30.690 And they were sent to Europe. 683 00:31:30.690 --> 00:31:33.784 She was based in Brussels to observe, 684 00:31:33.784 --> 00:31:36.780 there she's to observe the activities 685 00:31:36.780 --> 00:31:40.990 of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John 686 00:31:42.090 --> 00:31:42.993 in Europe. 687 00:31:44.010 --> 00:31:48.090 So she's a woman who was among other things, 688 00:31:48.090 --> 00:31:51.600 she was there to document the liberation 689 00:31:51.600 --> 00:31:55.770 of the Bergen Bellson concentration camp 690 00:31:55.770 --> 00:31:59.340 when it was liberated by the allies in 1945. 691 00:31:59.340 --> 00:32:02.760 And in London prior to that, she and her sister, 692 00:32:02.760 --> 00:32:05.880 Anna Zinkeisen, who was an amazing artist too, 693 00:32:05.880 --> 00:32:09.870 were very much engaged in war work 694 00:32:09.870 --> 00:32:11.490 not just in the volunteer nursing, 695 00:32:11.490 --> 00:32:15.960 but sort of documenting the activities of doctors 696 00:32:15.960 --> 00:32:19.770 and medical hospitals and repatriation facilities 697 00:32:19.770 --> 00:32:21.033 and so forth. 698 00:32:23.182 --> 00:32:26.910 So it's, I guess, a really, really wonderful demonstration 699 00:32:26.910 --> 00:32:31.910 of several, a few centuries after Mary Beale's experience 700 00:32:33.900 --> 00:32:36.540 that women are still sort of making use of 701 00:32:36.540 --> 00:32:40.800 these kind of traumatic events in history 702 00:32:40.800 --> 00:32:45.030 to create opportunities for themselves. 703 00:32:45.030 --> 00:32:47.070 This beautiful portrait by Doris Zinkeisen, 704 00:32:47.070 --> 00:32:50.980 which is in the exhibition is painted in 1929 705 00:32:51.840 --> 00:32:56.840 and was exhibited at the Royal Academy 706 00:32:57.060 --> 00:32:59.133 in the summer exhibition in 1929. 707 00:33:00.030 --> 00:33:03.360 She and her sister both were very much kind of 708 00:33:03.360 --> 00:33:05.223 society portraitists. 709 00:33:06.764 --> 00:33:09.540 And, Doris Zinkeisen, among other things, was 710 00:33:09.540 --> 00:33:12.150 she was someone who was involved in costume design 711 00:33:12.150 --> 00:33:13.680 and design for the theatre. 712 00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:17.010 So she moved in these quite sort of luminous circle. 713 00:33:17.010 --> 00:33:19.560 She knew Lawrence Olivier and Ralph Richardson 714 00:33:19.560 --> 00:33:22.013 and Mark Howard. 715 00:33:22.013 --> 00:33:25.470 And for that reason, she and her sister were talked about 716 00:33:25.470 --> 00:33:28.980 in the social pages as these kind of cocktail-sipping 717 00:33:28.980 --> 00:33:32.610 kind of society ladies and bright young things. 718 00:33:32.610 --> 00:33:35.940 And indeed when she came to Sydney in 1929, 719 00:33:35.940 --> 00:33:37.560 which is where she painted this work, 720 00:33:37.560 --> 00:33:40.890 she rigged up a backdrop in her hotel room in Sydney 721 00:33:40.890 --> 00:33:44.130 and painted this portrait. 722 00:33:44.130 --> 00:33:47.400 To a considerable degree, it was largely created in Sydney. 723 00:33:47.400 --> 00:33:49.410 She's written about in the social pages 724 00:33:49.410 --> 00:33:51.240 in Australian newspapers, as you know, 725 00:33:51.240 --> 00:33:53.970 this delightful Mrs. Graham Johnson, 726 00:33:53.970 --> 00:33:57.810 she was never referred to by her artist's name, of course. 727 00:33:57.810 --> 00:34:00.510 So very much this sort of construction of women artists 728 00:34:00.510 --> 00:34:03.690 as almost sort of dilettantes, if you know what I mean, 729 00:34:03.690 --> 00:34:06.780 like painting portraits of people 730 00:34:06.780 --> 00:34:08.850 who were their social equals, 731 00:34:08.850 --> 00:34:11.880 because that was an appropriate thing for them to do. 732 00:34:11.880 --> 00:34:14.250 But when you sort of really get down to the nitty gritty 733 00:34:14.250 --> 00:34:17.910 of both Doris and her sister, 734 00:34:17.910 --> 00:34:22.470 they're creating these incredibly, incredibly gritty, 735 00:34:22.470 --> 00:34:24.510 incredibly sort of strident work. 736 00:34:24.510 --> 00:34:27.060 So this is Anna Zinkeisen, 737 00:34:27.060 --> 00:34:27.990 and this is another self-portrait. 738 00:34:27.990 --> 00:34:30.360 This is from 1944. 739 00:34:30.360 --> 00:34:33.180 And once again, she's the way she's got. 740 00:34:33.180 --> 00:34:37.075 She's sort of brandishing those brushes in her hand 741 00:34:37.075 --> 00:34:40.710 It's just really I think, this is such a wonderful 742 00:34:40.710 --> 00:34:42.300 sort of strident portrait. 743 00:34:42.300 --> 00:34:45.540 She's got that real kind of Rosie-the-Riveter 744 00:34:45.540 --> 00:34:50.490 sort of attitude happening, but yeah, just really fantastic. 745 00:34:50.490 --> 00:34:52.380 I'm just sort of wondering if you would 746 00:34:52.380 --> 00:34:56.460 from your experience of writing the book and your research, 747 00:34:56.460 --> 00:34:59.717 if you wanted to sort of comment a little bit further on 748 00:34:59.717 --> 00:35:04.717 that sort of notion that portraiture was something 749 00:35:04.830 --> 00:35:08.790 that was appropriate for women artists to do, 750 00:35:08.790 --> 00:35:10.170 it was something, for example, 751 00:35:10.170 --> 00:35:12.900 that didn't sort of compromise their reputation, 752 00:35:12.900 --> 00:35:16.410 or there's also that factor, I suppose. 753 00:35:16.410 --> 00:35:19.260 And I think this must play into the sort of 754 00:35:19.260 --> 00:35:22.440 historical construction of women artists. 755 00:35:22.440 --> 00:35:25.110 A great deal is that portraiture itself 756 00:35:25.110 --> 00:35:29.610 in the hierarchy of artistic genres was towards the bottom 757 00:35:29.610 --> 00:35:31.921 of the latter. 758 00:35:31.921 --> 00:35:33.930 So, Thomas Lawrence, for example, 759 00:35:33.930 --> 00:35:35.160 referred to portrait painting 760 00:35:35.160 --> 00:35:37.260 as this dry-mill horse business, 761 00:35:37.260 --> 00:35:40.380 something that didn't require any kind of creativity 762 00:35:40.380 --> 00:35:41.610 or intellect. 763 00:35:41.610 --> 00:35:42.443 They were the sort of things 764 00:35:42.443 --> 00:35:44.430 that you could just churn out. 765 00:35:44.430 --> 00:35:46.170 And I think that comes into play 766 00:35:46.170 --> 00:35:48.930 with a lot of women artists. 767 00:35:48.930 --> 00:35:50.880 This idea that it was okay to paint portraits, 768 00:35:50.880 --> 00:35:52.680 that was a way that you could still retain your 769 00:35:52.680 --> 00:35:55.050 sort of femininity and your delicacy 770 00:35:55.050 --> 00:35:58.350 and not compromise your reputation. 771 00:35:58.350 --> 00:36:01.440 And I'm wondering if you can think of other examples 772 00:36:01.440 --> 00:36:04.890 from your research and your experience 773 00:36:04.890 --> 00:36:08.733 of that kind of phenomenon in action. 774 00:36:09.810 --> 00:36:12.510 Yeah, I mean, God, what an ignorant comment that was, 775 00:36:12.510 --> 00:36:13.350 wasn't it? 776 00:36:13.350 --> 00:36:16.860 One about diminishing, what a portrait can be? 777 00:36:16.860 --> 00:36:19.200 Because I think it's important to remember too, 778 00:36:19.200 --> 00:36:23.970 that portraits and self-portraits have infinite amounts 779 00:36:23.970 --> 00:36:25.830 of functions in a way. 780 00:36:25.830 --> 00:36:28.440 A portrait can be propaganda. 781 00:36:28.440 --> 00:36:32.340 It can be a calling card to show say, 782 00:36:32.340 --> 00:36:34.080 this is how well I can paint myself. 783 00:36:34.080 --> 00:36:36.240 I can paint you equally well. 784 00:36:36.240 --> 00:36:39.780 It can be an exploration of a psychological reality. 785 00:36:39.780 --> 00:36:43.080 Or it can be a portrait of, or an illusion 786 00:36:43.080 --> 00:36:45.300 to cultural exclusion. 787 00:36:45.300 --> 00:36:48.510 Or it can be coded in an allegorical sense, 788 00:36:48.510 --> 00:36:50.220 or it can be photographic. 789 00:36:50.220 --> 00:36:52.770 It's this is what I look like and here I am now. 790 00:36:52.770 --> 00:36:57.690 So I think there are so many things a portrait can be 791 00:36:57.690 --> 00:37:00.990 that it's almost, you have to go on a case by case basis 792 00:37:00.990 --> 00:37:05.990 on what is the function and role of each of these pictures 793 00:37:06.210 --> 00:37:07.890 that we're looking at. 794 00:37:07.890 --> 00:37:11.910 As you said, an artist can once be glamorous 795 00:37:11.910 --> 00:37:13.320 and be in the society pages, 796 00:37:13.320 --> 00:37:17.700 but can also be responding to the horrors of World War II 797 00:37:17.700 --> 00:37:22.700 or representing a woman as a powerful maker of things 798 00:37:22.830 --> 00:37:27.300 in the midst of a global war where women's strength, 799 00:37:27.300 --> 00:37:30.003 moral and physical was depended on. 800 00:37:30.960 --> 00:37:33.150 You've got someone like Nora Heysen 801 00:37:33.150 --> 00:37:36.360 who was a fantastic painter, who was the first woman 802 00:37:36.360 --> 00:37:40.230 to win the Archibald Prize in Australia. 803 00:37:40.230 --> 00:37:43.527 And, she became Australia's first female war artist, 804 00:37:43.527 --> 00:37:46.083 and she travelled extensively for years, 805 00:37:47.490 --> 00:37:52.490 making really amazing records of nurses and doctors 806 00:37:52.710 --> 00:37:54.810 and soldiers on the field. 807 00:37:54.810 --> 00:37:56.400 She travelled a lot around the Pacific. 808 00:37:56.400 --> 00:37:57.750 She became quite ill, actually. 809 00:37:57.750 --> 00:38:01.590 She travelled so hard, was exposed to a lot of illness. 810 00:38:01.590 --> 00:38:04.140 And in this self-portrait from 1932, 811 00:38:04.140 --> 00:38:07.020 she depicts herself in her father's studio. 812 00:38:07.020 --> 00:38:09.810 And what I love about this self-portrait is, 813 00:38:09.810 --> 00:38:11.850 she's got some of her references on the wall, 814 00:38:11.850 --> 00:38:14.340 artists that she loved like Vermeer, 815 00:38:14.340 --> 00:38:17.280 but she's in a brown velvet jacket and again, 816 00:38:17.280 --> 00:38:20.760 talking, thinking about coded self-portraits. 817 00:38:20.760 --> 00:38:23.430 She bought that brown velvet jacket that she's in 818 00:38:23.430 --> 00:38:26.340 from the proceeds of an exhibition that she just had. 819 00:38:26.340 --> 00:38:28.530 So again, she's looking glamorous, 820 00:38:28.530 --> 00:38:30.750 but at the same time she's wearing a jacket 821 00:38:30.750 --> 00:38:33.832 that she has paid for through her own skills, 822 00:38:33.832 --> 00:38:37.560 this is a very beautiful self-portrait, 823 00:38:37.560 --> 00:38:41.220 but then 10 years later when she's in the midst 824 00:38:41.220 --> 00:38:43.830 of World War II and travelling around, 825 00:38:43.830 --> 00:38:48.510 she's not doing self-portrait so much as turning her gaze 826 00:38:48.510 --> 00:38:50.760 onto the suffering and the bravery 827 00:38:50.760 --> 00:38:54.480 of the servicemen and women that she encountered 828 00:38:54.480 --> 00:38:55.560 on her journeys around the war. 829 00:38:55.560 --> 00:38:58.290 So, also you think of someone like Lee Miller, 830 00:38:58.290 --> 00:38:59.550 a brilliant photographer who was also. 831 00:38:59.550 --> 00:39:00.900 Amazing. 832 00:39:00.900 --> 00:39:04.950 Yeah, it's, 833 00:39:04.950 --> 00:39:06.390 a woman might be glamorous 834 00:39:06.390 --> 00:39:09.480 and she might be in the society pages, 835 00:39:09.480 --> 00:39:12.380 but she might also be extremely brave and very perceptive. 836 00:39:14.910 --> 00:39:17.190 I can't help thinking of that. 837 00:39:17.190 --> 00:39:19.650 Nora Heysen's brown velvet jacket. 838 00:39:19.650 --> 00:39:21.240 I'm pretty sure that's the jacket she's wearing 839 00:39:21.240 --> 00:39:23.495 in this wonderful self-portrait 840 00:39:23.495 --> 00:39:25.530 that she did that's in our collection 841 00:39:25.530 --> 00:39:30.530 painted in 1934 just after she had been set up in a studio 842 00:39:31.560 --> 00:39:33.510 in London by herself. 843 00:39:33.510 --> 00:39:37.200 And it's just the most extraordinary little work 844 00:39:37.200 --> 00:39:40.800 and it is quite little, so when this work is installed 845 00:39:40.800 --> 00:39:44.580 at eye level, it really is as if you're looking at Nora 846 00:39:44.580 --> 00:39:47.520 sort of face-to-face, eye to eye. 847 00:39:47.520 --> 00:39:50.700 Our former director, Andrew Sayers used to say that 848 00:39:50.700 --> 00:39:53.163 this is a small painting, but it's monumental. 849 00:39:55.976 --> 00:39:58.800 And I love that sort of sense that 850 00:39:58.800 --> 00:40:02.940 this is unlike the other self-portraits that she did. 851 00:40:02.940 --> 00:40:05.160 In this, in the early 1930s, 852 00:40:05.160 --> 00:40:08.760 when she was in her early twenties, 853 00:40:08.760 --> 00:40:11.460 it's quite extraordinary that she was so accomplished 854 00:40:11.460 --> 00:40:12.903 at such a young age. 855 00:40:15.655 --> 00:40:17.993 She hasn't tried to portray herself as the artist, 856 00:40:17.993 --> 00:40:20.760 so that the palette and the references 857 00:40:20.760 --> 00:40:24.180 and the bottles of terps and the ease and so forth 858 00:40:24.180 --> 00:40:26.700 that you see in some of those other self-portraits 859 00:40:26.700 --> 00:40:30.120 from the early 1930s are completely absent from this one. 860 00:40:30.120 --> 00:40:33.930 She's just, she's not trying to convince anyone 861 00:40:33.930 --> 00:40:38.930 but herself now that she's in London, she's by herself, 862 00:40:38.940 --> 00:40:40.990 she's kind of looking herself in the eye. 863 00:40:42.213 --> 00:40:44.280 And so scrutinising herself rather than sort of 864 00:40:44.280 --> 00:40:46.320 presenting this kind of artist persona 865 00:40:46.320 --> 00:40:50.673 to an external audience or an external viewer. 866 00:40:52.920 --> 00:40:55.620 She had, I mean, she had a tough time in London 867 00:40:55.620 --> 00:40:56.453 during that trip. 868 00:40:56.453 --> 00:40:59.640 She was criticised by her, 869 00:40:59.640 --> 00:41:02.100 she was studying, even though she was so accomplished, 870 00:41:02.100 --> 00:41:04.050 she sort of went back to art school 871 00:41:04.050 --> 00:41:05.580 when she was here in London. 872 00:41:05.580 --> 00:41:08.370 And she was criticised by her teachers 873 00:41:08.370 --> 00:41:10.230 for not being sort of modern enough 874 00:41:10.230 --> 00:41:12.540 for not sort of like the modernist line, 875 00:41:12.540 --> 00:41:14.970 because she was never particularly interested in modernism. 876 00:41:14.970 --> 00:41:16.890 She saw friends of her father 877 00:41:16.890 --> 00:41:19.440 who was, of course, a famous painter 878 00:41:19.440 --> 00:41:22.320 of gum trees and landscapes, Hans Heysen. 879 00:41:22.320 --> 00:41:25.560 And they were very dismissive of her talent. 880 00:41:25.560 --> 00:41:28.980 She found London cold and she felt alienated. 881 00:41:28.980 --> 00:41:30.690 She was depressed about her work. 882 00:41:30.690 --> 00:41:33.480 So she'd had a very tough time here. 883 00:41:33.480 --> 00:41:36.300 And you can see this picture that 884 00:41:36.300 --> 00:41:39.030 it was a moment of great introspection 885 00:41:39.030 --> 00:41:44.030 and sort of analysing her place in the world, maybe. 886 00:41:45.377 --> 00:41:48.210 And she had to summon faith in herself, 887 00:41:48.210 --> 00:41:51.240 which is a very hard thing often to do it for an artist. 888 00:41:51.240 --> 00:41:54.600 Yeah, and she said that actually sort of later in life, 889 00:41:54.600 --> 00:41:58.140 she recalled that whenever she was starting out 890 00:41:58.140 --> 00:42:02.220 in a new place, she would paint a self-portrait as a way 891 00:42:02.220 --> 00:42:05.970 of creating herself and sort of marking out her territory, 892 00:42:05.970 --> 00:42:10.560 she said, and that is very much, I think, very significant 893 00:42:10.560 --> 00:42:11.940 at this sort of point of her life, 894 00:42:11.940 --> 00:42:14.160 because as you mentioned, her father, 895 00:42:14.160 --> 00:42:18.870 Hans Heysen was this celebrated Australian 896 00:42:18.870 --> 00:42:20.910 landscape painter. 897 00:42:20.910 --> 00:42:25.620 And even though he was very supportive of Nora 898 00:42:25.620 --> 00:42:27.450 and supportive of her becoming an artist 899 00:42:27.450 --> 00:42:30.870 and obviously very proud of her and encouraging. 900 00:42:30.870 --> 00:42:34.110 So she didn't have the same sort of barriers necessarily 901 00:42:34.110 --> 00:42:36.780 that other women of her generation might have experienced 902 00:42:36.780 --> 00:42:40.350 in wanting to pursue painting as a profession. 903 00:42:40.350 --> 00:42:45.350 I guess, having such a famous dad who was also an artist 904 00:42:45.420 --> 00:42:49.320 presented different sort of challenges in a way. 905 00:42:49.320 --> 00:42:54.090 So this is her really kind of staking out her own territory. 906 00:42:54.090 --> 00:42:58.258 He can have the gum trees and I'll have the faces 907 00:42:58.258 --> 00:42:59.490 and the figures. 908 00:42:59.490 --> 00:43:04.490 But yeah, I think probably in my top 10 favourites 909 00:43:05.070 --> 00:43:07.500 in our collection, it's absolutely wonderful. 910 00:43:07.500 --> 00:43:09.660 And she's such an extraordinary story. 911 00:43:09.660 --> 00:43:14.430 I think we could do a whole programme, talk for hours 912 00:43:14.430 --> 00:43:17.613 just about Nora Heysen and her portraiture. 913 00:43:18.720 --> 00:43:21.840 But as you say, she was one of those women, 914 00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:26.840 like the Zinkeisen sisters who demonstrated incredible 915 00:43:28.020 --> 00:43:32.947 sort of bravery and selflessness in her war art work, 916 00:43:33.990 --> 00:43:36.780 or her role as an official war artist. 917 00:43:36.780 --> 00:43:39.810 And you mentioned when we were talking about that briefly, 918 00:43:39.810 --> 00:43:43.440 you mentioned Leonora Carrington and Lee Miller, 919 00:43:43.440 --> 00:43:47.490 who of course were on the pretty much 920 00:43:47.490 --> 00:43:50.160 the very sort of pointy end of what was happening 921 00:43:50.160 --> 00:43:54.180 in France and Spain in the 1930s. 922 00:43:54.180 --> 00:43:57.060 Do you want to tell us a little bit more about Leonora? 923 00:43:57.060 --> 00:43:58.080 Leonora Carrington. 924 00:43:58.080 --> 00:44:02.250 She's born into a very wealthy upper-class English family 925 00:44:02.250 --> 00:44:04.500 who were very conservative and wanted her to tow the line 926 00:44:04.500 --> 00:44:06.180 and wanted to present it to the king and queen 927 00:44:06.180 --> 00:44:11.180 and basically live like a society woman and marry well 928 00:44:11.760 --> 00:44:14.970 and have babies, but she had other thoughts. 929 00:44:14.970 --> 00:44:19.230 When she was only 18, she met the surrealist Max Ernst 930 00:44:19.230 --> 00:44:21.900 at a dinner party in Highgate in London. 931 00:44:21.900 --> 00:44:24.630 And she ran away with him and they lived in the south 932 00:44:24.630 --> 00:44:28.920 of France where she painted some remarkable self-portraits, 933 00:44:28.920 --> 00:44:32.730 which were, she always associated with horses. 934 00:44:32.730 --> 00:44:35.190 She loved horses and her self-portrait, 935 00:44:35.190 --> 00:44:38.910 you can see the idea of there's a rocking horse on the wall, 936 00:44:38.910 --> 00:44:43.200 which perhaps she was identifying with as a young woman, 937 00:44:43.200 --> 00:44:45.780 as an animal that couldn't move, 938 00:44:45.780 --> 00:44:49.380 or at least couldn't be free of its shackles. 939 00:44:49.380 --> 00:44:52.410 But out of the window, we see a beautiful white horse 940 00:44:52.410 --> 00:44:55.230 galloping into the landscape, which essentially, 941 00:44:55.230 --> 00:44:57.870 which is what she did when she ran away from London 942 00:44:57.870 --> 00:45:01.110 and from high society to live with a surrealist 943 00:45:01.110 --> 00:45:03.300 in the south of France, who was a good 30 years older 944 00:45:03.300 --> 00:45:06.165 than her, and in front of her, there's a hyena. 945 00:45:06.165 --> 00:45:09.420 Animals are extremely important to Leonora Carrington. 946 00:45:09.420 --> 00:45:12.450 She always said that she preferred animals to humans. 947 00:45:12.450 --> 00:45:15.660 And in front of her is a female hyena 948 00:45:15.660 --> 00:45:18.310 who's coming towards her, and the hyena is lactating. 949 00:45:19.380 --> 00:45:21.210 Leonora is in her white jodhpurs. 950 00:45:21.210 --> 00:45:23.970 So she could ride the horse, she could escape. 951 00:45:23.970 --> 00:45:26.070 She's got her wild hair. 952 00:45:26.070 --> 00:45:28.440 Her hair is sort of lifting as if there's a wind, 953 00:45:28.440 --> 00:45:30.390 even though she's inside. 954 00:45:30.390 --> 00:45:32.940 So she's very much sort of identifying with the freedom 955 00:45:32.940 --> 00:45:35.343 of being outside and the natural world. 956 00:45:36.180 --> 00:45:38.940 And in the wonderful portrait that we see of 957 00:45:38.940 --> 00:45:40.590 that Lee Miller took of her 958 00:45:40.590 --> 00:45:45.590 and Lee Miller of course, was a Vogue model, a photographer, 959 00:45:45.630 --> 00:45:49.060 amused to many of the surrealists, such as Man Ray, 960 00:45:52.020 --> 00:45:52.853 for example. 961 00:45:54.060 --> 00:45:56.490 And when Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst 962 00:45:56.490 --> 00:45:59.490 living in the countryside in the south of France 963 00:45:59.490 --> 00:46:00.840 in the late 1930s, 964 00:46:00.840 --> 00:46:04.110 a lot of their friends came to visit them. 965 00:46:04.110 --> 00:46:06.270 And so Lee Miller came to stay with them 966 00:46:06.270 --> 00:46:09.240 and she took this wonderful portrait of Leonora Carrington 967 00:46:09.240 --> 00:46:11.310 who looks much older than her years actually. 968 00:46:11.310 --> 00:46:14.280 She's only sort of in her teens, early twenties here 969 00:46:14.280 --> 00:46:16.980 but she looks fierce and sort of something wonderfully 970 00:46:16.980 --> 00:46:18.150 ancient and powerful. 971 00:46:18.150 --> 00:46:19.620 And she always wore wonderful clothes, 972 00:46:19.620 --> 00:46:21.420 which were quite flamboyant. 973 00:46:21.420 --> 00:46:23.820 And there's another great photo by Lee Miller 974 00:46:23.820 --> 00:46:25.920 of Leonora Carrington cooking. 975 00:46:25.920 --> 00:46:29.880 And she's in a sort of long-flowing silk dress. 976 00:46:29.880 --> 00:46:32.220 And, she's looking fiercely and independently 977 00:46:32.220 --> 00:46:33.900 out at the camera. 978 00:46:33.900 --> 00:46:38.900 But just soon after this, the World War II happened in 1939. 979 00:46:39.090 --> 00:46:41.880 Of course, Max Ernst was interned, 980 00:46:41.880 --> 00:46:45.060 Leonora tried to free him, but she couldn't succeed. 981 00:46:45.060 --> 00:46:46.770 She ended up fleeing to Spain 982 00:46:46.770 --> 00:46:49.980 where she had a nervous breakdown and was actually 983 00:46:49.980 --> 00:46:53.640 put into a sanatorium and had a dreadful time there. 984 00:46:53.640 --> 00:46:55.710 And she wrote about this at length. 985 00:46:55.710 --> 00:47:00.150 Her parents bizarrely sent her nanny to rescue her 986 00:47:00.150 --> 00:47:04.892 in a battleship, but Leonora escaped from her nanny 987 00:47:04.892 --> 00:47:05.973 at a toilet window. 988 00:47:07.122 --> 00:47:10.350 And she then married out of convenience a Mexican diplomat, 989 00:47:10.350 --> 00:47:13.270 who also was, he wrote a lot about bull fights 990 00:47:14.552 --> 00:47:17.100 and they fled to New York 991 00:47:17.100 --> 00:47:19.260 where Max Ernst Ted had escaped to as well. 992 00:47:19.260 --> 00:47:21.723 But by then he had married Peggy Guggenheim. 993 00:47:22.980 --> 00:47:26.850 Leonora Carrington then stayed for a while in New York. 994 00:47:26.850 --> 00:47:28.530 But then she ended up moving to Mexico 995 00:47:28.530 --> 00:47:30.960 where she spent the rest of her very long life, 996 00:47:30.960 --> 00:47:35.490 where she became an amazing artist and writer. 997 00:47:35.490 --> 00:47:39.810 She was also instrumental in the feminist movement 998 00:47:39.810 --> 00:47:40.833 in Mexico. 999 00:47:41.790 --> 00:47:44.910 And she became lauded as sort of a great Mexican artist. 1000 00:47:44.910 --> 00:47:49.140 Yeah, her life is really full of adventure and intrigue 1001 00:47:49.140 --> 00:47:51.270 and bravery and creativity. 1002 00:47:51.270 --> 00:47:53.490 She never really saw her family again. 1003 00:47:53.490 --> 00:47:55.320 She cut herself off from them 1004 00:47:55.320 --> 00:47:58.620 and she really became her own woman very rapidly 1005 00:47:58.620 --> 00:47:59.733 and very powerfully. 1006 00:48:00.720 --> 00:48:03.630 And of course, Leonora Carrington was part of a large group 1007 00:48:03.630 --> 00:48:06.840 of really extraordinary artists living in Mexico City 1008 00:48:06.840 --> 00:48:09.150 at the time postwar. 1009 00:48:09.150 --> 00:48:11.910 And of course, one of the most famous is Frida Kahlo, 1010 00:48:11.910 --> 00:48:14.760 who was one of the most prolific self-portraitists 1011 00:48:14.760 --> 00:48:16.053 in the 20th century. 1012 00:48:17.124 --> 00:48:20.460 And Frida had suffered a terrible accident on a bus 1013 00:48:20.460 --> 00:48:21.810 when she was in her late teens. 1014 00:48:21.810 --> 00:48:23.810 She'd also had polio when she was young. 1015 00:48:24.840 --> 00:48:26.940 This accident almost killed her. 1016 00:48:26.940 --> 00:48:28.530 And she spent the next few decades 1017 00:48:28.530 --> 00:48:30.570 before she essentially died of her injuries, 1018 00:48:30.570 --> 00:48:34.023 only a few, when she was in her late forties. 1019 00:48:36.780 --> 00:48:40.200 She painted this self-portrait with the portrait 1020 00:48:40.200 --> 00:48:43.500 of Dr. Farrell as a thank-you to one of her doctors 1021 00:48:43.500 --> 00:48:46.770 and surgeons, Dr. Farrell, who had operated on her 1022 00:48:46.770 --> 00:48:48.720 and helped alleviate some of the terrible pain 1023 00:48:48.720 --> 00:48:49.740 that she was in. 1024 00:48:49.740 --> 00:48:52.810 And she's depicting herself basically 1025 00:48:53.878 --> 00:48:57.180 as a homage to her doctor, but she's in her wheelchair. 1026 00:48:57.180 --> 00:48:59.490 You know, she's unable to walk. 1027 00:48:59.490 --> 00:49:04.490 She's essentially holding her own body together 1028 00:49:04.650 --> 00:49:06.050 with the help of her doctor, 1029 00:49:07.234 --> 00:49:10.830 and she's raw and unflinching in her depiction of the pain 1030 00:49:10.830 --> 00:49:13.230 that she was constantly in, but also in the solace 1031 00:49:13.230 --> 00:49:15.870 of the imagination and in the solace 1032 00:49:15.870 --> 00:49:17.340 that her creativity gave her 1033 00:49:17.340 --> 00:49:20.280 because basically it helped her hold herself together 1034 00:49:20.280 --> 00:49:23.970 during her decades of extreme pain. 1035 00:49:23.970 --> 00:49:26.010 But Frida Kahlo was also, you read about her, 1036 00:49:26.010 --> 00:49:27.960 she also had an incredible zest for life. 1037 00:49:27.960 --> 00:49:28.800 She loved jokes. 1038 00:49:28.800 --> 00:49:30.930 She loved watching Mark's brothers movies. 1039 00:49:30.930 --> 00:49:32.370 She loved singing. 1040 00:49:32.370 --> 00:49:33.330 She loved dressing up. 1041 00:49:33.330 --> 00:49:35.130 She loved holding dinner parties. 1042 00:49:35.130 --> 00:49:39.000 So she always managed to rise above the terrible misfortune 1043 00:49:39.000 --> 00:49:40.623 that life had flung at her. 1044 00:49:43.560 --> 00:49:47.760 Rita Angus, a woman from New Zealand 1045 00:49:47.760 --> 00:49:52.760 who also has a remarkable self-portrait tradition. 1046 00:49:53.280 --> 00:49:54.750 What can you tell us about her? 1047 00:49:54.750 --> 00:49:58.620 Yeah, Rita Angus is a fantastic artist 1048 00:49:58.620 --> 00:50:02.340 and she painted many, many self-portraits, 1049 00:50:02.340 --> 00:50:05.100 right from when she was young as an art student 1050 00:50:05.100 --> 00:50:08.550 in Christchurch to later in the fifties 1051 00:50:08.550 --> 00:50:13.140 where she painted this self-portrait, which is called Rutu. 1052 00:50:13.140 --> 00:50:16.230 And in this painting, Rita Angus is sort of 1053 00:50:16.230 --> 00:50:18.870 exploring her place in the world. 1054 00:50:18.870 --> 00:50:23.870 And also in New Zealand as a woman of Scottish descent, 1055 00:50:24.540 --> 00:50:26.670 she was very aware that she was part of sort of 1056 00:50:26.670 --> 00:50:28.890 colonial culture in New Zealand, 1057 00:50:28.890 --> 00:50:33.000 but she was also deeply fascinated and admiring 1058 00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:36.240 and reverential of Maori culture as well, 1059 00:50:36.240 --> 00:50:39.090 and more broadly Polynesian culture. 1060 00:50:39.090 --> 00:50:44.070 And so here, it's sort of a fusion of different cultures 1061 00:50:44.070 --> 00:50:47.790 in this one painting, which she's trying to sort of 1062 00:50:47.790 --> 00:50:51.150 forge her way in the world and work out what her place is 1063 00:50:51.150 --> 00:50:51.990 in the world. 1064 00:50:51.990 --> 00:50:56.430 So she depicts herself against a lush landscape 1065 00:50:56.430 --> 00:50:58.080 with palm trees. 1066 00:50:58.080 --> 00:51:00.482 There are references to Christianity in the fish 1067 00:51:00.482 --> 00:51:02.943 on her collar. 1068 00:51:03.780 --> 00:51:07.440 She has a halo around her head, which could also be seen 1069 00:51:07.440 --> 00:51:10.143 as the hot Sun of the Southern Hemisphere. 1070 00:51:11.040 --> 00:51:13.020 She was a white woman, but she depicts herself 1071 00:51:13.020 --> 00:51:14.700 as brown-skinned. 1072 00:51:14.700 --> 00:51:17.730 She's holding a flower, which could be a reference 1073 00:51:17.730 --> 00:51:20.430 to the Virgin Mary holding lilies, 1074 00:51:20.430 --> 00:51:25.230 or it could be a reference to a woman in New Zealand 1075 00:51:25.230 --> 00:51:28.113 who is enthralled to the local flora and fauna. 1076 00:51:29.520 --> 00:51:32.130 But I think too, it's important not to be too reductive 1077 00:51:32.130 --> 00:51:33.690 about self-portraits. 1078 00:51:33.690 --> 00:51:36.033 They don't necessarily have a single meaning. 1079 00:51:37.512 --> 00:51:40.020 And, Rita Angus was a very complicated woman. 1080 00:51:40.020 --> 00:51:42.060 She suffered a lot from mental health issues 1081 00:51:42.060 --> 00:51:43.830 later in her life. 1082 00:51:43.830 --> 00:51:47.700 She was a passionate and extremely hard-working artist 1083 00:51:47.700 --> 00:51:51.930 who spent a lot of her time in isolation. 1084 00:51:51.930 --> 00:51:56.040 And so this is a very sort of coded self-portrait 1085 00:51:56.040 --> 00:51:58.800 and the ultimate meaning of which only she would know. 1086 00:51:58.800 --> 00:52:01.380 But we can read things into it. 1087 00:52:01.380 --> 00:52:04.920 The title Rutu, it's almost as if she's trying 1088 00:52:04.920 --> 00:52:09.920 to rewrite her own name into possibly indigenous languages 1089 00:52:12.330 --> 00:52:14.973 or as an alter ego. 1090 00:52:17.400 --> 00:52:19.320 And I think from reading your book, 1091 00:52:19.320 --> 00:52:22.230 I remember rightly she made a lot of work, 1092 00:52:22.230 --> 00:52:24.840 but didn't necessarily sell much of it. 1093 00:52:24.840 --> 00:52:25.673 Is that true? 1094 00:52:26.790 --> 00:52:29.937 Yeah, she really didn't like letting go of her paintings 1095 00:52:29.937 --> 00:52:31.560 and she did become much better known 1096 00:52:31.560 --> 00:52:33.690 towards the end of her life. 1097 00:52:33.690 --> 00:52:38.580 But after she died, they found so much work in her studio. 1098 00:52:38.580 --> 00:52:41.430 She was deeply attached to her paintings 1099 00:52:41.430 --> 00:52:42.990 and she just didn't want to let them go 1100 00:52:42.990 --> 00:52:45.363 because in a sense they were her family. 1101 00:52:46.808 --> 00:52:48.630 And so getting rid of them would've been like 1102 00:52:48.630 --> 00:52:50.583 getting rid of a member of her family. 1103 00:52:51.930 --> 00:52:55.950 Yeah, and I guess a bit like Frida Kahlo too, 1104 00:52:55.950 --> 00:52:59.580 in that sort of health struggles and so forth 1105 00:52:59.580 --> 00:53:02.070 was something that she sort of sought to overcome 1106 00:53:02.070 --> 00:53:05.550 or worked through through her creativity, 1107 00:53:05.550 --> 00:53:07.470 through her painting. 1108 00:53:07.470 --> 00:53:10.710 And I'm sure many artists says definitely 1109 00:53:10.710 --> 00:53:14.220 a therapeutic aspect to painting and to being an artist, 1110 00:53:14.220 --> 00:53:17.340 because it's a way of having a conversation with the world, 1111 00:53:17.340 --> 00:53:19.260 without someone telling you to be quiet 1112 00:53:19.260 --> 00:53:20.400 or diminishing your power, 1113 00:53:20.400 --> 00:53:22.143 or telling you what to do. 1114 00:53:22.994 --> 00:53:25.020 When painting her self-portrait, 1115 00:53:25.020 --> 00:53:28.263 she is powerful and empowered. 1116 00:53:30.540 --> 00:53:32.640 Yeah, and in light of that, 1117 00:53:32.640 --> 00:53:33.870 would you like to tell us a bit 1118 00:53:33.870 --> 00:53:36.210 about Paula Modersohn-Becker? 1119 00:53:36.210 --> 00:53:38.250 Yeah, Paula Modersohn-Becker, 1120 00:53:38.250 --> 00:53:41.670 this extremely interesting self-portrait, 1121 00:53:41.670 --> 00:53:46.670 which is Self-portrait at Sixth Wedding Anniversary in 1906, 1122 00:53:47.340 --> 00:53:49.860 is not what it appears to be. 1123 00:53:49.860 --> 00:53:52.380 Firstly, it's one of the first self-portraits 1124 00:53:52.380 --> 00:53:54.480 which are naked or semi-naked that we know of 1125 00:53:54.480 --> 00:53:57.033 by a woman in the West. 1126 00:53:58.380 --> 00:54:00.720 She depicts herself as if she's pregnant, 1127 00:54:00.720 --> 00:54:02.373 but actually she's not pregnant. 1128 00:54:03.570 --> 00:54:05.940 She has just left her husband at this point. 1129 00:54:05.940 --> 00:54:08.100 Her husband was an artist and they lived together 1130 00:54:08.100 --> 00:54:10.803 in the German artist colony at Worpswede. 1131 00:54:12.509 --> 00:54:15.720 She had run away to Paris where she joined her friends, 1132 00:54:15.720 --> 00:54:18.450 Rilke the poet and his wife, Clara Westhoff, 1133 00:54:18.450 --> 00:54:19.920 who is Paula's best friend, 1134 00:54:19.920 --> 00:54:22.020 who was a sculptor who studied with Rodin. 1135 00:54:23.517 --> 00:54:25.920 And in this painting, Paula Modersohn-Becker is actually 1136 00:54:25.920 --> 00:54:28.620 celebrating her newfound freedom. 1137 00:54:28.620 --> 00:54:30.660 Her married name was Paula Modersohn-Becker, 1138 00:54:30.660 --> 00:54:35.100 but this painting, she actually signed PM, Paula Modersohn. 1139 00:54:35.100 --> 00:54:38.250 She reverts back to her maiden name 1140 00:54:38.250 --> 00:54:39.720 because she wanted to be alone. 1141 00:54:39.720 --> 00:54:41.160 She wanted to be painting in Paris. 1142 00:54:41.160 --> 00:54:43.410 She didn't want to have children with her husband 1143 00:54:43.410 --> 00:54:45.780 and she didn't want to be in a married state. 1144 00:54:45.780 --> 00:54:48.630 She was an absolutely brilliant painter. 1145 00:54:48.630 --> 00:54:51.210 Around this time she's making paintings 1146 00:54:51.210 --> 00:54:56.130 that rival those of Picasso, I think, and Matisse. 1147 00:54:56.130 --> 00:54:58.560 They're powerful, they're original. 1148 00:54:58.560 --> 00:55:03.093 They're enthralled to the past while looking forward. 1149 00:55:05.070 --> 00:55:07.560 But very sadly she found it too tough 1150 00:55:07.560 --> 00:55:09.210 to be in Paris financially. 1151 00:55:09.210 --> 00:55:12.360 She was begging everyone we know for money, 1152 00:55:12.360 --> 00:55:14.250 she knew, for money, rather. 1153 00:55:14.250 --> 00:55:16.140 She wrote, she was a wonderful letter writer. 1154 00:55:16.140 --> 00:55:18.720 And I really recommend that anyone who's interested in her 1155 00:55:18.720 --> 00:55:21.600 reads her letters because she wrote fantastically 1156 00:55:21.600 --> 00:55:24.480 wonderfully, lively, vivid impassioned letters 1157 00:55:24.480 --> 00:55:25.983 to her friends and her family. 1158 00:55:27.030 --> 00:55:29.190 So very sadly within a year, 1159 00:55:29.190 --> 00:55:30.960 she had to move back to Worpswede 1160 00:55:30.960 --> 00:55:34.320 because she just couldn't survive on her own. 1161 00:55:34.320 --> 00:55:36.000 It was too tough. 1162 00:55:36.000 --> 00:55:38.910 And very sadly she died 18 days after giving birth 1163 00:55:38.910 --> 00:55:42.450 to her daughter, Matilda, who was her first child. 1164 00:55:42.450 --> 00:55:44.490 She only had two exhibitions during her lifetime. 1165 00:55:44.490 --> 00:55:47.910 The first one was widely panned, the second one was ignored. 1166 00:55:47.910 --> 00:55:50.190 She only sold a few paintings in her lifetime. 1167 00:55:50.190 --> 00:55:52.410 She left behind hundreds and hundreds of 1168 00:55:52.410 --> 00:55:54.120 really extraordinary paintings. 1169 00:55:54.120 --> 00:55:57.660 And she's on the cover of my book, her self-portrait. 1170 00:55:57.660 --> 00:55:59.490 And because also she was broke, 1171 00:55:59.490 --> 00:56:02.730 because she didn't have access, all the usual stories, 1172 00:56:02.730 --> 00:56:05.850 she painted so many self-portraits 1173 00:56:05.850 --> 00:56:09.390 and they're all absolutely amazing pictures. 1174 00:56:09.390 --> 00:56:11.310 And even though she had a rather tragic life, 1175 00:56:11.310 --> 00:56:13.590 I think it's important not to look at her life 1176 00:56:13.590 --> 00:56:15.570 through the lens of sort of misery 1177 00:56:15.570 --> 00:56:18.000 because actually she blazed with life 1178 00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:20.133 and she was a lot of fun as well. 1179 00:56:21.232 --> 00:56:25.353 And she, a woman who really lived her life to the full. 1180 00:56:26.400 --> 00:56:30.210 And we mentioned that both Rita Angus and Paula 1181 00:56:30.210 --> 00:56:32.670 ending their lives with lots and lots of work 1182 00:56:32.670 --> 00:56:35.250 still in their possession. 1183 00:56:35.250 --> 00:56:38.130 I wonder if you want to sort of comment on how 1184 00:56:38.130 --> 00:56:43.130 if their works have entered public collections 1185 00:56:43.560 --> 00:56:46.110 and that sort of time lag, I guess, 1186 00:56:46.110 --> 00:56:48.840 between the creation of these, like you say, 1187 00:56:48.840 --> 00:56:52.604 incredibly lively and fresh and powerful works, 1188 00:56:52.604 --> 00:56:56.220 and why it took art history so long, I suppose, 1189 00:56:56.220 --> 00:57:00.180 to actually start embracing their work? 1190 00:57:00.180 --> 00:57:03.210 Yeah, I mean, Paula Modersohn-Becker now 1191 00:57:03.210 --> 00:57:04.920 is in major collections. 1192 00:57:04.920 --> 00:57:08.940 There's a museum dedicated to her in Germany. 1193 00:57:08.940 --> 00:57:11.190 The painting on the cover of my book is owned 1194 00:57:11.190 --> 00:57:13.473 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 1195 00:57:14.910 --> 00:57:18.300 And as to why women have been excluded from art history, 1196 00:57:18.300 --> 00:57:21.360 that's a very long conversation. 1197 00:57:21.360 --> 00:57:24.870 But essentially, art history reflects 1198 00:57:24.870 --> 00:57:27.060 or the way traditional art history was written 1199 00:57:27.060 --> 00:57:29.820 reflects the way history, traditional histories 1200 00:57:29.820 --> 00:57:34.080 were written, which was, it reflects a patriarchal 1201 00:57:34.080 --> 00:57:35.250 power structure. 1202 00:57:35.250 --> 00:57:36.750 It was a story of men about men 1203 00:57:36.750 --> 00:57:39.780 and mainly white men about white men. 1204 00:57:39.780 --> 00:57:42.150 But of course, the 20th century and the 21st century, 1205 00:57:42.150 --> 00:57:45.510 there's been a lot of very important revisionism happening 1206 00:57:45.510 --> 00:57:47.820 with feminist art historians, 1207 00:57:47.820 --> 00:57:50.970 such as Griselda Pollock, Rozsika Parker, 1208 00:57:50.970 --> 00:57:52.740 Germaine Greer, Linda Nochlin, 1209 00:57:52.740 --> 00:57:55.680 a lot of brilliant women exploring the role of women 1210 00:57:55.680 --> 00:57:58.200 and why they were excluded and also casting light 1211 00:57:58.200 --> 00:58:00.720 on the achievements of so many of these women. 1212 00:58:00.720 --> 00:58:02.070 There have been great initiatives now, 1213 00:58:02.070 --> 00:58:05.370 such as just across from the National Portrait Gallery, 1214 00:58:05.370 --> 00:58:06.720 the National Gallery of Australia's 1215 00:58:06.720 --> 00:58:07.830 Know My Name Initiative, 1216 00:58:07.830 --> 00:58:10.530 which was not only two amazing exhibitions, 1217 00:58:10.530 --> 00:58:13.860 but implemented also gender equity plan. 1218 00:58:13.860 --> 00:58:16.740 And a lot of museums across the world are implementing 1219 00:58:16.740 --> 00:58:19.650 gender equity plans and looking at their collections, 1220 00:58:19.650 --> 00:58:21.153 looking at the emissions, 1221 00:58:22.110 --> 00:58:25.140 proactively buying art work by women artists. 1222 00:58:25.140 --> 00:58:28.800 And they're being written into art history in a way 1223 00:58:28.800 --> 00:58:30.840 that should have happened a long time ago. 1224 00:58:30.840 --> 00:58:34.650 I mean, remarkably, Giorgio Vasari was talking about, 1225 00:58:34.650 --> 00:58:36.840 he talked about 13 women artists in his 1226 00:58:36.840 --> 00:58:38.100 Lives of the Artists, 1227 00:58:38.100 --> 00:58:40.110 but in two of the main 20th-century 1228 00:58:40.110 --> 00:58:43.983 art history books by, for example, by Gombrich, 1229 00:58:45.390 --> 00:58:47.040 no women are mentioned at all. 1230 00:58:47.040 --> 00:58:48.990 I remember in the art history books I learned 1231 00:58:48.990 --> 00:58:50.220 when I was at art school. 1232 00:58:50.220 --> 00:58:52.590 And women were entirely written out of history 1233 00:58:52.590 --> 00:58:54.603 until the 20th century. 1234 00:58:55.958 --> 00:58:59.070 So, it's exciting, I think, that finally women are 1235 00:58:59.070 --> 00:59:01.830 being discussed and included in the narrative, 1236 00:59:01.830 --> 00:59:02.880 and it's that bloody. 1237 00:59:04.980 --> 00:59:07.560 And hopefully we'll no longer have that situation. 1238 00:59:07.560 --> 00:59:10.290 I mean, so many of the artists that we've discussed 1239 00:59:10.290 --> 00:59:12.270 this evening, people like Nora Heysen, 1240 00:59:12.270 --> 00:59:15.600 I'm thinking of Australia here, Grace Cossington Smith, 1241 00:59:15.600 --> 00:59:20.100 all women artists who didn't really get sort of 1242 00:59:20.100 --> 00:59:24.720 major retrospective or major kind of state or public gallery 1243 00:59:24.720 --> 00:59:27.150 recognition until they were elderly ladies. 1244 00:59:27.150 --> 00:59:31.140 I mean, we know that Nora Heysen had very successful 1245 00:59:31.140 --> 00:59:32.880 exhibitions just before, 1246 00:59:32.880 --> 00:59:36.000 actually the success of her exhibitions in the early 1930s 1247 00:59:36.000 --> 00:59:38.850 enabled her to go to London to study. 1248 00:59:38.850 --> 00:59:42.270 But apart from that, she was sort of like, I'll say, 1249 00:59:42.270 --> 00:59:45.150 an elderly lady before she got a survey 1250 00:59:45.150 --> 00:59:47.340 or a retrospective exhibition in Australia. 1251 00:59:47.340 --> 00:59:49.890 And Cossington Smith, of course, was the same. 1252 00:59:49.890 --> 00:59:54.273 So hopefully that situation's been reversed. 1253 00:59:55.320 --> 00:59:58.170 And we can, I thought we might finish this afternoon 1254 00:59:58.170 --> 00:59:59.430 or this evening's discussion 1255 00:59:59.430 --> 01:00:03.210 with this wonderful self-portrait by Alice Neel, 1256 01:00:03.210 --> 01:00:08.161 fabulous American painter who's also the painter 1257 01:00:08.161 --> 01:00:11.433 who brings your book to a close. 1258 01:00:12.780 --> 01:00:13.740 Yeah, absolutely. 1259 01:00:13.740 --> 01:00:16.650 Alice Neel was born in 1900. 1260 01:00:16.650 --> 01:00:19.860 So her life sort of spanned the 20th century. 1261 01:00:19.860 --> 01:00:22.260 She led a very turbulent life. 1262 01:00:22.260 --> 01:00:25.230 She didn't achieve fame really until she was well into 1263 01:00:25.230 --> 01:00:26.063 her seventies. 1264 01:00:27.120 --> 01:00:31.980 She spent decades painting, painting the people who, 1265 01:00:31.980 --> 01:00:32.813 her neighbours. 1266 01:00:32.813 --> 01:00:34.560 She lived in quite poor areas in New York. 1267 01:00:34.560 --> 01:00:37.080 She painted people on the street, her neighbours, 1268 01:00:37.080 --> 01:00:41.280 mothers, artists, people from the queer community, 1269 01:00:41.280 --> 01:00:43.893 pregnant women, children. 1270 01:00:44.820 --> 01:00:47.658 She was an incredibly passionate and perceptive 1271 01:00:47.658 --> 01:00:51.690 portrait artist, but she very, very rarely painted herself. 1272 01:00:51.690 --> 01:00:53.910 She painted a few sort of sketchy pictures 1273 01:00:53.910 --> 01:00:55.890 when she was very young, but then never really 1274 01:00:55.890 --> 01:00:59.730 turned her lens on herself until she was 80. 1275 01:00:59.730 --> 01:01:02.820 And she's painted this picture, took her five years 1276 01:01:02.820 --> 01:01:04.620 to paint, she kept revising it. 1277 01:01:04.620 --> 01:01:07.110 She's painting herself in the chair 1278 01:01:07.110 --> 01:01:10.113 that she often put her sitters into in her studio. 1279 01:01:10.950 --> 01:01:13.290 And as you can see, she paints herself naked. 1280 01:01:13.290 --> 01:01:15.030 You know, she's 80 years old. 1281 01:01:15.030 --> 01:01:19.290 There's absolutely no shame about her ageing, sagging body. 1282 01:01:19.290 --> 01:01:23.310 She depicts herself holding her paint brush full of power, 1283 01:01:23.310 --> 01:01:25.050 full of energy, unabashed. 1284 01:01:25.050 --> 01:01:27.810 This is my body, I live in it, it's great. 1285 01:01:27.810 --> 01:01:32.130 And so I think it's a wonderfully empowering and empowered 1286 01:01:32.130 --> 01:01:33.150 self-portrait. 1287 01:01:33.150 --> 01:01:34.470 I love it. 1288 01:01:34.470 --> 01:01:36.360 Well, thanks so much for your time, Jennifer, 1289 01:01:36.360 --> 01:01:39.120 and for your insights and your knowledge. 1290 01:01:39.120 --> 01:01:42.970 It's been absolutely wonderful to have you 1291 01:01:44.220 --> 01:01:48.090 in the National Portrait Gallery via Zoom this evening, 1292 01:01:48.090 --> 01:01:50.220 and to hear about your wonderful research 1293 01:01:50.220 --> 01:01:52.320 and your fabulous book. 1294 01:01:52.320 --> 01:01:53.673 So thank you so much. 1295 01:01:54.660 --> 01:01:56.220 Oh, thank you so much for having me. 1296 01:01:56.220 --> 01:01:57.330 I really appreciate it. 1297 01:01:57.330 --> 01:01:59.480 And congratulations on your brilliant show. 1298 01:02:00.330 --> 01:02:01.163 Thank you.