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London Art Week / Winter 2024
Four Women: Four Centuries
29th November—20th December 2024
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The reputation of Britain’s women artists has been greatly reconsidered of late, partly thanks to Tate’s recent landmark exhibition, Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain.
Inspired by Tate’s exhibition, our display for London Art Week continues the conversation around the work of women artists. This focused display highlights a notable artist from each of the last four centuries: Mary Beale, Maria Verelst, Sarah Biffin, and Dame Laura Knight.
Each artist epitomises the prevailing tastes of her era while simultaneously setting herself apart. Mary Beale’s portraiture typifies the formality of seventeenth century baroque tastes, yet her intimate paintings of her family reveal a rare intimacy for the period. Maria Verelst built a loyal circle of clients, including many influential women, by developing a distinctive compositional style, often on an impressively large scale. Sarah Biffin gained international acclaim for her miniature paintings and celebrated her own status as a disabled artist. Dame Laura Knight, lauded for her vivid realism, became the first woman elected to full membership of the Royal Academy of Arts, crossing a gender boundary.
Together, the works in this focused display trace a dynamic progression in British art, highlighting the varied achievements of four inspirational painters.
17th century | Mary Beale
This characteristically sensitive head study was executed in the early 1660s by Mary Beale, Britain's first professional woman artist. It depicts her son Bartholomew, and was painted when the family lived in Hind Court, just off Fleet Street. Beale is not known to have received formal paid commissions at this date, but we do know that she was actively painting portraits of friends and family. This is one of around twelve surviving studies of Bartholomew painted at this date and similar examples can be found in public and private collections worldwide.[1] These works are notable for their immediacy and rank amongst the most affecting studies in oil in British art of the period.
18th century | Maria Verelst
On loan from a Private Collection.
Maria Verelst was one of the most talented female immigrant artists of the late Stuart/early Georgian era and the present work is an important addition to her much neglected oeuvre.
Stylistically, Maria’s work follows the English eighteenth century tradition of portrait painting, epitomised by the likes of Kneller and Dahl and therefore has led to much confusion over authorship. On closer inspection however one notices how the highlighting on the draperies in Maria’s portraits are far more pronounced and brighter in tone, no doubt an influence from her uncle Simon Verelst. The present work also displays Maria’s masterful combination of elegant grandeur and refined form, more specifically in the way she brings the landscape through to the front perspective plane; her sitter seems to be not just sitting in, but immersed entirely in the natural setting, quite at odds with the work of Kneller whose landscapes play only a secondary, passive role to the sitter.
19th century | Sarah Biffin
This delicate depiction of feathers was painted by Sarah Biffin, one of the most accomplished and entrepreneurial British artists at work during the nineteenth century.
Meticulously rendered studies of feathers constitute a substantial, if fleeting, trope within Biffin’s early oeuvre. All her known feather studies were painted between 1811 and 1812 when she was travelling under the employment of Dukes. She likely adopted feathers as a subject for their visual complexities as well as their availability – feathers were readily used as decorative adornments to ladies’ hats and accessories throughout the nineteenth century.
The excellent condition of the present watercolour offers an unquestionable indication of Biffin’s remarkable artistic aptitude as a young artist. The verisimilitude of the colourfully barred stripes, mottled patterns, and soft, downy barbs at the base of every plume amount to trompe l'oeil, creating the impression the feathers might spontaneously float off the paper. This level of technical competence and handling of watercolour was a remarkable achievement for a young artist at the beginning of her training and demonstrates her early propensity for detailed observation.
20th century | Dame Laura Knight
Dame Laura Knight’s enamels are a surprising departure from her oil paintings. They are miniature in scale but grand in ambition, requiring a sharp level of precision and patience. She had turned to enamel work under the watchful eye of her friend Ella Naper, who guided her through the challenging, almost alchemical process. Naper, working from her studio above Cornwall’s Lamorna Valley, became Knight’s collaborator and muse; she modelled for Knight’s notable 1913 Self Portrait with Model and several of her celebrated coastal scenes, including Spring in Cornwall. The outbreak of the First World War brought constraints that restricted landscape painting along the coast, perhaps prompting Knight to turn her creativity inward. Together with Naper, she produced a series of dazzling enamels depicting ballet dancers and scenes of the Ballet Russes, now held in both private and public collections.
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