Famous Female Artists: 12 Who Changed Art History
The most famous female artists include Artemisia Gentileschi, Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Yayoi Kusama and Hilma af Klint. Here are twelve who changed art history, and the fights behind the work.
For centuries their names were left out of the story. That is finally changing.
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The first woman in Florence's painting academy was Artemisia Gentileschi, in 1616.
Hilma af Klint painted pure abstraction years before Kandinsky, then hid it.
Rosa Bonheur needed a police permit to wear trousers.
Yayoi Kusama has lived in a psychiatric hospital by choice since 1977.
Several of these women were erased, then rediscovered a century later.
The stories behind these stories
These go past the caption and into what actually happened:
Ten women artists you need to know, the names the textbooks skipped
Twelve famous portraits and the real people, the faces behind the paintings
The darker truth about Gauguin, the part of the Tahiti story that never makes the wall label
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 to 1653)
The greatest woman painter of the Baroque. Her Judith Slaying Holofernes shows a woman beheading a general with total control.
At seventeen she was raped by her tutor Agostino Tassi. At the 1612 trial she gave evidence while her hands were squeezed with thumbscrews. Four years later she became the first woman admitted to Florence's Accademia.
Frida Kahlo (1907 to 1954)
Mexico's most famous painter turned her own body into her subject. Most of her work is self portraits.
A 1925 bus crash drove an iron rail through her pelvis and led to about thirty operations. She painted from bed using a mirror fixed above her. Her full story is in the tragic life of Frida Kahlo.
Mary Cassatt (1844 to 1926)
The only American, and one of the few women, invited to show with the Impressionists.
Degas asked her to join them in 1877. They were close for decades, then fell out, and she burned their letters. Cataracts left her nearly blind at the end.
Berthe Morisot (1841 to 1895)
A founder of Impressionism who showed in seven of its eight exhibitions.
She married Eugene Manet, brother of Edouard, who painted her again and again, told in Manet and Morisot. Her death certificate listed her profession as none.
Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755 to 1842)
Marie Antoinette's favorite painter, with around thirty portraits of the queen.
She fled Paris the night the royal family was arrested in October 1789. Over twelve years of exile across Europe she painted some 660 portraits, and her self portraits were her calling card.
Sofonisba Anguissola (1532 to 1625)
The first woman artist to win fame across Europe, during the Renaissance.
Michelangelo mentored her by letter. She became court painter to Philip II of Spain. Van Dyck visited her at 92 and said he learned more from her than from many famous men.
Hilma af Klint (1862 to 1944)
She painted pure abstraction in 1906, before Kandinsky, Mondrian or Malevich.
The work grew out of seances with a group she called The Five. Sure the world was not ready, she ordered it hidden for twenty years after her death. Symbolism shaped her early years.
Rosa Bonheur (1822 to 1899)
The most celebrated animal painter of the 1800s. The Horse Fair, from 1853, made her a star on two continents.
To sketch at horse markets and slaughterhouses she carried a police permit to wear trousers. In 1894 she was promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honour, the first woman artist to reach that rank.
Leonora Carrington (1917 to 2011)
A Surrealist born in Britain who spent most of her life in Mexico.
Her lover was Max Ernst. When the Nazis seized him she broke down and was locked in a Spanish asylum, which she later wrote about in Down Below.
Her Surrealist work set a record near 28 million dollars in 2024, and there is more in the woman they tried to erase.
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 to 1986)
The mother of American modernism, known for giant flowers and desert bones.
She always rejected the sexual reading critics forced on her flowers. She moved to New Mexico, painted into old age, and lived to 98. Alfred Stieglitz first showed her drawings in 1916, before the two had even met.
Yayoi Kusama (born 1929)
Japan's polka dot pioneer and one of the best selling living artists in the world.
The dots come from hallucinations she has had since childhood. Since 1977 she has lived, by choice, in a Tokyo psychiatric hospital and walks to her studio each day.
At the 1966 Venice Biennale she staged an uninvited piece, Narcissus Garden, selling mirror balls on the lawn until officials stopped her.
Judith Leyster (1609 to 1660)
A master of the Dutch Golden Age who painted lively figures by candlelight.
After her death she vanished from the record for over two hundred years. In 1893 her star shaped monogram was found under a painting sold as a Frans Hals, and her name came back.
Where to find their work
The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington is the only major museum devoted to them. Mary Cassatt and many others fill the collection of the Met.
The questions people ask about women in art
Who is the most famous female artist? Frida Kahlo and Yayoi Kusama are the most recognized today. Artemisia Gentileschi leads the old masters.
Who was the first famous woman painter? Sofonisba Anguissola, in the 1500s, was the first to win fame across Europe.
Who painted the first abstract art? Hilma af Klint, from 1906, years before Kandinsky.
Why are there so few famous women artists? For centuries women were kept out of training and academies and their work was credited to men. Many were rediscovered only recently.
Which woman artist sells for the most? Georgia O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed sold for 44.4 million dollars in 2014, then a record for a woman artist.
The names the history books skipped
In 1893 a curator found Judith Leyster's monogram under a painting sold as a man's work.
That one mark wrote her back into art history. Her Self Portrait now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
If these women pulled you in, keep going: