As with too many fields there’s a gender bias in classic art when it comes to value and prominence. Recently, a mix of acquisitions by museums, Instagram accounts and celebrity involvement, however, have seen women of major movements become more appealing to the public and fetch higher auction prices. “There’s been some strong prices for works by female artists in recent years, which can certainly be linked to a growing demand from galleries and museums wanting to redress the balance and ensure that female artists are properly represented in public collections,” Clementine Sinclair of Christie’s says. “Three new top prices have been achieved at Christie’s for works by this artist over the past three years, all of which exceeded their initial high auction estimate.”
Among these works is a self-portrait of Elisabeth Lousie Vigée Le Brun, who was a court painter to Marie Antoinette, and one of the first woman artists to achieve international fame. In 2017, Christie’s New York had estimated the painting would not sell for more than $800,000, but the winning bid was $1.5 million. Two of the artist’s other works also exceeded auction house estimates by nearly double. The upset did not come out of the blue. The year before, Le Brun had her first solo retrospective exhibition that travelled to major venues, such as the Grand Palais in Paris and the Metropolitain Museum in New York, as well as the National Gallery of Canada in Ottowa.
It’s not just Le Brun getting attention. Designer, Victoria Beckham, hosted an in-store showcase last month of trailblazing female artists, including Angelika Kauffmann, Fede Galizia and Marie-Victoire Lemoine, titled Female Triumphant. Instagram is also highlighting female artists from male-dominated artistic periods. Accounts like @thegreatwomenartists are not only platforming women’s work to thousands of followers, they are providing context to place the works in specific time periods and movements.
Many factors contribute to the lack in numbers of female master painters, such as women’s access to education in times like the seventeenth century, but for once, the lack of female counterparts actually works to women’s advantage as it makes the pieces rare – a valuable quality in art collections. “An obvious example is Artemisia Gentileschi, whose self-portrait was acquired by the National Gallery, London, as announced in July last year,” Sinclair says. “But it is not just major names that museums are pursuing – Tate Britain acquired a work by a less well known British female artist, Joan Carlisle, in 2016.”
While the extra attention may not be enough to create an art history that is equally weighted between the genders, it is dispelling myths about female art and creating a basis for women’s work to be valued more.