Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thanks for sharing part of your day with us. Later in the week, we'll have some live music for you. We have an in-studio performance from the New Orleans rock band, The Revivalists, one of my favorites. They have a new album coming out, and they'll join us for a preview. That is happening on Thursday. On Friday, we'll be joined by actor Nick Mohammed. You know him as Nate from Ted Lasso. He's also a comedian. He'll be performing in New York, and he'll join us on Friday. That is in the future. Right now, let's get into this hour, and we'll get it started with The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel.

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Women are missing from art museums. A recent Williams College study found that 87% of the art found in major museums was made by male artists, and 85% of all art of these museums is from white and/or European artists. A major offender, London's National Gallery, where just 1% of the art is from women. The study goes on to say the balance is largely due to the dominance of male artists from the 19th century and earlier. That narrative is nonsense according to British art historian, Katy Hessel. Hessel has made it her mission to write women back into art history, going as far back as the 1500s in her New York Times bestseller, The Story of Art Without Men. Hessel spends more than 500 pages documenting the contributions to fine art. The book is in five parts, so we thought we'd talk about a section dedicated each day this week.

I've lost my second page of this introduction, so I'm looking for it right now. I'm stalling, and I'm stalling, and I'm stalling, and here it is. We begin with the book's origins, and then a conversation about the section she calls Paving the Way, which covers the Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo eras.

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Katy, I understand this book started from an Instagram account you began. What was the catalyst for the account?

Katy Hessel: Really, it began in October 2015. I was 21 years old, and I walked into an art fair, and I looked around me and realized out of all the artworks in front of me, not a single one was by a woman. Then I had to ask myself a series of questions. Could I name 20 women artists off the top of my head? Could I name 10 pre-1950, any pre-1850? The answer was no. I realized that I had essentially been looking at art history from a male perspective. Really what I wanted to do, I went home that night, it is what any millennial budding art historian would do, and I typed the words women artists into Instagram, and nothing appeared. I began my Instagram, the Great Women Artists.

Alison Stewart: When you decided to dive into this book and make this book, why did you choose the title The Story of Art Without Men versus The Story of Women in Art?

Katy Hessel: It's a great question. There's a very famous book where I live in England called The Story of Art by E H Gombrich, and it was first published in 1950. Really it was a book that I grew up and loved reading. I loved it for its pictures. I loved it for its accessible prose. When I was in my mid-20s, when I made this timeline of women artists from the last 1,000 years for the Tate Modern, and I looked up Gombrich's book, because he's got a great timeline at the back as a reference point, and I realized that he didn't include a single woman artist in the entire book. Only does his 16th edition, the most recent one, include just one, that being Kata Kolbert. Really, when we're thinking about the story of art, what we have been led to believe is essentially the story of art without women.

Alison Stewart: Hence the title, The Story of Art Without Men. The good news, bad news of this book is, the good news is that it is so thick and full of information and full of the names of women's artists. The bad news is we could never get to all of them. We can certainly look at some of the cultural influences, some themes, and name and collect a few names and stories along the way. Let's start with the Renaissance. One of the first, if not the first recognized female Renaissance painter, was a Dominican nun. Would you tell us her name, and what were the conditions that led her to becoming an artist?

Katy Hessel: Yes. The first section of my book is called Paving the Way, and really the book spans from the last 500 years, the present day. I begin in the Renaissance because really this is the time when we start to know about the names of women artists especially. Oftentimes, history books will tell you that the Renaissance begins in the 1300s, but really we first start to know about women in the 1500s.

One of the first known Florentine women artists is Plautilla Nelli, who was extraordinary. She was born at the beginning of the 16th century. Unlike many female artists of her generation whose access to art and access to an artist's studio was actually through their father, she was a nun, and so she had access to manuscripts. She could copy works. Actually, as a result, she could form an all-female workshop from her fellow nuns. What was extraordinary is that she made the first-ever known last supper by a woman. This is a work that was probably executed in around 1568, and it is remarkable. It is 7 by 2 meters. It shows Jesus and his apostles, this such acute accuracy to lifelikeness. The tragedy is, is that it was hidden from view for 450 years until 2019 when it was first ever put on view in 450 years in the refractory of the Santa Maria Novella in Florence, which, again, we have been starved by these stories for too long.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned fathers, and I found that to be interesting that so many of the women who are mentioned in this book during this time period of the Renaissance or the Renaissance, did you say, their fathers encouraged them, or their fathers made it possible for them. Who's an example of someone whose father was of great aid to her artistic pursuits, and are there any examples where family got in the way?

Katy Hessel: That's a great question. In so many ways, I'm going to give you two examples. First of all, I'm going to tell you about Sofonisba Anguissola, who was a remarkable artist who works in portraiture and still life again, because I should add that women were banned from their life from until 1890s. That basic, education in order to create these grand multi-figured biblical and mythological scenes.

Really, they got around it by copying. Actually, Sofonisba Anguissola had the advantage of her father, was a wealthy nobleman from Cremona. Although he was actually cash poor, he was status rich, so he had access to that. He, interestingly, didn't have a son until his seventh child. Really, his first born was Sofonisba Anguissola. He did everything in order to get her an apprenticeship. He would write to Michelangelo, he would write to the Pope. He would send drawings across the Italian states to show the splendor of his daughter, and really, she became a household name in the Italian states in the 16th century. She was extraordinary because she worked in portraiture.

For example, there's a fantastic work in my book called Self-Portrait with Bernardino Campi. This is one of her first-ever teachers. It's from the 1550s. He was able to get her an education in that way. She painted her teacher dictating her appearance almost in a painting. Actually, when we think about it again, we see it's actually her dictating her teacher, dictating her appearance. Not only has she painted him 1.5 times as big as him, she's also painted him, painting the embellishment of the jacket, something normally assigned to an apprentice. If you look really closely, and actually a pentaman who discovered this in the 1990s, which is sort of X-ray, that you actually see her hand guiding his, their wrists meet, which is extraordinary. This was a woman who, although was restricted to still life and portraiture, was happy to, and found very interesting and canny ways to interweave different aspects, whether they'd be challenging gender conventions, or interweaving still lifes and landscapes in and around a self-portrait or a portrait of her sisters.

In that way, it was hugely advantageous for her to have a powerful man and her father who supported her. Then, like so many other artists, they actually were raised in their father's studio. An example of this is someone called Artemisia Gentileschi, who was an extraordinary 17th-century artist who worked in this Baroque movement, and the Baroque movement, it being this movement that was on the cusp of the 17th century, the greatest patron was the Catholic Church. It was really almost to have these propagandistic portraits of biblical scenes, dramatic, bloody, violent, exciting visceral scenes to steer people towards the Catholic Church because of what was happening in Northern Europe with the Reformation. She grew up in her father's studio. Her mother died when she was very young, and she was tasked with raising her three brothers, but also working as an assistant to her father.

She had this huge advantage. By the age of 17, she was creating towering works such as Susanna and the Elders. She made extraordinary Judith beheading Holofernes's works. You might say that one disadvantage to this was the fact that so much of her work was misattributed to her father after her death, which is also a huge issue when we think about women artists across history as well.

Although it was advantageous, it's only really since the '80s, thanks to a scholar called Mary Gerard, that really so much of her work has been unearthed for the first time, because it was attributed to her father, Orazio Gentileschi, who was a hugely successful and famous painter in the Baroque era who was friends with Caravaggio.

Alison Stewart: Artemisia Gentileschi also, she had this incredibly painful period of her life where she was raped, and the trial was really just a travesty. She used her pain in her paintings. Would you explain what happened to her and how we see it in some of her work after?

Katy Hessel: Yes. It's really interesting you raised this, but also because we have the documentation of this 40-page manuscript of the court case that lasted for seven months when she was forced to prove her innocence. We hear her courageous voice, she says, "È vero, è vero, è vero. It's true, it's true, it's true." It's as though these people aren't believing her. She was raped by her father's friend, Agostino Tassi, who was an artist probably within the studios as well. Again, this woman being exposed as a young woman to these men, is obviously hugely a disadvantage as well, but it's the fact that during this trial, she was tortured with a utensil called [unintelligible 00:11:36], which is essentially ropes tied around her fingers and tightened, almost like a modern lie detector, but when we think about the hand of the artist as the most important thing, and that is the most abhorrent persecution for an artist.

Really the trial lasted seven months from between in 1611 and 1612. After 1612, she was married off, and she moved to Florence, and really she thrived. She was extraordinary because she carried this courage and this conviction with her wherever she went, but also in her paintings. She immortalizes herself as St. Catherine of Alexandria, this saint who was rescued by divinity, but also this saint who also looks at us whilst her hand is resting on a wheel of vicious spikes and a feather in her other hand, and with this crown as well. Almost you could interpret her gaze looking towards a distant memory that is quite painful.

What Artemisia Gentileschi did, is she actually really immortalized the stories of female heroines. The lights of Judith's, the Susanna's, the Lucretia's, the Diana's, they really took center stage in her work. I think what has made her such a lasting legacy, as well as someone who lives in 2023 as a woman, is she really gives voice to the person, she gives voice to the woman.

When we look at how Susanna and the Elders, this subject that has teared as old as time, a young virginal woman bathing in her garden, when two lecherous men try and seduce her, when actually so much of the time in our history, this is depicted as a really violent, as almost glorification of violence against women, but when we see her version, she paints it with anguish and tension as if to give voice to the woman of 17th century Rome.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Katy Hessel. The name of her book is The Story of Art Without Men. In the Baroque period, that while women artists were not necessarily a curiosity any longer, they were by no means the norm. What was the role of the female artist during the Baroque period?

Katy Hessel: Really that's in relation to someone like Bologna, which was extraordinary. Bologna as a city had championed the work of women artists since the 13th century. They championed women scholars, they championed women's education, but also as artists, as writers, as thinkers.

Not only did they get them to sign their own work to claim it as their own, but also this idea of them being remembered, was so important as well. I think it's also because of the success of someone like Artemisia Gentileschi in Rome. She was an international celebrity during her lifetime. It's crazy that it took centuries after her death for her name to be reimmortalized, but it's the fact that people were so mad about Artemisia Gentileschi. They would commission portraits of her hand just so they can get close to this divine like essence.

Really, it's a time of flourishment, especially in Bologna in the 17th century. It's been recorded over 60 women artists working in the city. That was thanks to people like Elisabetta Sirani, Lavinia Fontana, and really these were household names, and it was thanks to people patronizing their work of all different classes and all different professions. It was thanks to people championing their work, really.

Alison Stewart: You spoke about how Artemisia's father was given credit for her work. This was fascinating that the work of Judith Leyster was often attributed to Frans Hals.

Katy Hessel: It's correct, yes. This idea of misattribution has long been an issue with women artists in art history. With Judith Leyster, who was a remarkable painter, really prominent in the Dutch Haarlem Guild in the 1620s, really one of the most prominent artists of the Dutch golden age. She was a contemporary of Frans Hals, and she was very well-known, but she had a very short career. That was the issue because actually after she was married off, she married an artist, she was actually tasked with being his assistant, as well as raising their five children. Really after the later 1630s, her name fell into obscurity. As a result, especially in the 19th century, dealers would actually be known to scratch out a female artist's name and replace them with a male contemporary, because it was a way for their work to get sold. Actually, it wasn't until a court case in 1897 which contested this painting that was by Frans Hals at the Louver, that they realized it was actually signed with a star, and that was Judith Leyster's thing, because her name was Judith Leyster, it means Lodestar.

She would always sign her work with a star, and they suddenly realized, because they worked in quite similar styles, that actually all these works were by her. This is not even the start of this idea of misattribution. One of my favorite stories is actually a work that is by Marie [unintelligible 00:16:37], but how many people have heard of her? It was a work that was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1917 for $200,000 when it was under the impression that the famous Neoclassical painter, Jacques-Louis David, had painted it. That also has to make us think about this idea of how we place monetary value on women in society as well, and would the Met have paid as much money for that painting had they known that it was by a woman.

Alison Stewart: Before we leave the 1700s, I do want to ask about art academies. There were art academies at this time. How much access did women have to formal art education, and if they did have any access, were they welcome?

Katy Hessel: Well, it's fascinating because, like I said, women couldn't even enter the life room until the 1890s. Really that is the first port of call in terms of even being an artist at that time, working in this academic style. They were already at a massive disadvantage. They could attend some classes with the academies. There were artists such as Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who was part of the French Academy, but also they were very restricted. The French Academy in Paris, they would actually restrict, they would cap the number of women artists admitted to four at a time. Really, they were such a disadvantage, and they had to really work around all these issues.

It was as almost as though the Academy was set-up to exclude women, because what the academies did was they also established this hierarchy between art forms, but also art genres. Painting and sculpture were at the top, and not only were painting and sculpture at the top, but when we think about those hierarchies within that, it was these grand biblical mythological multi-figured works, these history paintings that were at the top, and still life and portraiture were at the bottom. What did women have access to? Still life and portraiture, because they could work on a domestic level. Really, they were at such a disadvantage.

What was extraordinary is the fact that when we think about the Royal Academy of Arts in London, 2 out of the 36 founding members were actually women, Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, which was extraordinary despite the fact that a woman wasn't even admitted to the Royal Academy until well over 100 years after that, but the fact that they were there is so important because these women were formidable. They broke down boundaries. Also when it came to depicting the portrait of all the new academicians, which is by Johan Zoffany in 1771 to 1772, just a few years after the founding in 1768, what we see is all these men in suits gathered around this nude figure ready to study the anatomy, and where are the women? They are immortalized in almost unrecognizable portrait busts in the corner, as well as if they weren't even allowed to be actually part of this.

Again, when we think about how we immortalize people, how we immortalize stories, it's almost as they've been shunned and hidden from view.

Alison Stewart: My guest is art historian, Katy Hessel. The name of her book is The Story of Art Without Men. Let's get to the 19th century. The first line of chapter three is, "The 19th century was revolutionary for women."

What are a few history-shaping and shifting moments that would impact women in the arts?

Katy Hessel: Really, it's the admittance to the life room. That is what was so important. It's the fact that women were gaining more freedoms than ever. Really, when we look at the way that some women achieved monumental success during this era, that I think has to be [unintelligible 00:20:22], the likes of Rosa Bonheur with Realism.

Again, because women couldn't access the life room, what she did, she turned to animal painting. As a kid, she would go to her local butcher and study the carcasses of animals. She would study days, after days, after days, and there's the most amazing painting by her at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York called The Horse Fair, which really earned her international recognition. This was a work that went on tour, this was a work that was made into prints.

Again, this idea of new technologies, the 19th century was the era of the Industrial Revolution which meant so much, whether it be new technologies. We have to think about photography, printmaking, again, these mediums that were more accessible to women than they had before, and also didn't have these kind of histories of patriarchy embedded within them like painting and sculpture had.

Also, when we think about Rosa Bonheur, she won the French Legion of Honor for her work. She was internationally acclaimed, and this work, The Horse Fair, she studied, and for years she went to a horse fair in Paris, and what she would do, she would get a special license in order to wear trousers, which she called her great protectors, in order for people to not realize she was even a woman just to be left alone like that.

Alison Stewart: Up until this point, we've been mostly discussing European women. I want to bring in Edmonia Lewis, who you write about in your book, Born a Free Black Woman in 1844. She worked with white marble as a sculptor. How did she begin her career?

Katy Hessel: Edmonia Lewis is one of the most remarkable artists in history. Just the fact that she even worked in marble as well. This was a medium that not only required prior anatomical skill and training, but also marble was expensive. It's so unheard of for artists, especially women artists, to use marble in history, because, again, they had to have the right patron. She got started because she attended Oberlin College, she was very much encouraged by her brother, who was wealthy and could support her education. She then moved to Boston. This was the 1850s. It was a really politically changing time. Then in the 1860s, made her way to Rome, which is really where she thrived.

Rome, during that time, was home to a lot of women artists who were working in marble. There's this city of you couldn't help but being inspired by Rome as well when you think about what's happening around it, just the splendors of the Roman architecture and sculpture, but also the fact that what she did, which was so special, is the fact that she carved in marble what might look like this kind of neoclassical sculptures were actually narratives of what was happening politically at the time.

For example, she's got this extraordinary work called Forever Free, and what we see here is actually of-- This was made in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery and the Emancipation Proclamation. What we see here is this man and woman who are breaking from their chains, and the fact that she could use these contemporary narratives was extraordinary, because it's almost as though, when we look at this work, we see this muscular and heroic male figure breaking from his chains and raising a clenched fist, and he is protecting the figure on the left which she was an elegant, free woman who kneels in prayer. Again, this is symbol of the Emancipation Proclamation, and how eyes are wide, her expression hopeful.

This is what happens when we give artists, who have so often been left out of the one singular narrative that we see in our history, an opportunity, and the fact that she inspired a whole generation of artists and sculptors working in the Harlem Renaissance such as Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller or Augusta Savage, and the fact that she broke through like Rosa Bonheur. It's the fact that actually what we see in the 19th century are these women who break through into the mainstream. Edmonia Lewis was probably the most successful African American sculptor of any gender in the 19th century.

Alison Stewart: Tomorrow we'll continue our conversation with Katy Hessel, the author of The History of Art Without Men, and learn about a woman who helped launch the Impressionist movement.

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