Sunday in the Art Room SITAR

 Welcome to

SITAR is about ANYTHING art. Your art, someone else's art, writing, photography, the art of cooking, the art of sewing and textiles. Sharing historical art, street art, a story about art. Do you have a question or need help with art? Write a blog post and link it up here. We will all try to help with it. My only rule is that if someone asks for critique it must be done with generosity and consideration. 

This is a place of learning, encouragement and inspiration.

 

I have so many subjects that I want to share on SITAR that I have made a list so I don't forget them. LOL

One of our bloggers, Andrea, From the Sol

Has a question for anyone about watercolor. I'm not a watercolor person at all so for those of you who are please visit Andrea.  

Being in bed for over a week, I have been watching some great art, and art lessons on YouTube. As we know every instructor has their own way of doing things that might not work for us. However, there is always something to learn. The more I learn the more I can find my own style.

Here is a few of the YouTubes.

This first one is beginner pastels. I actually learned a few tips from him.

 

I also have been watching this guy.

He has a lot of videos in different venues. 

 

I found a great website that features Forgotten Women Artists.

If you visit real art galleries and museums you may find a few of the women who pioneered the way for all women in art. But, probably not. Those woman struggled to get their talent recognized and presented in the galleries that were virtually all men. Even today, the women of old are not given the notoriety they deserve.

 

This first woman,  

Plautilla Nelli

(1524–1588)

 Was a self taught artist and the first ever known female Renaissance painter of Florence. She became a nun at the age of 14, taking the name Suor Plautilla, at the Dominican convent of St Catherine of Siena. She is one of the few female artists mentioned in Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Her work is characterized by religious themes, with vivid portrayals of emotion on her characters' faces. Nelli lacked any formal training and her male figures are said to have “feminine characteristics”, as her religious vocation prohibited study of the nude male.

You can read her history here and here 

 

Next we have

Sofonisba Anguissola
(1532–1625)

This is a self portrait from the Smithsonian. 

Sofonisba Anguissola was an artist who came from a noble family in Cremona (northern Italy). She is well known for the paintings she made of herself and her family (she was the oldest of seven children). In 1559, she became a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Spain, Elisabeth de Valois, and continued to produce works while at the court of King Philip II until 1573. Interestingly, Sofonisba painted at least twelve self-portraits at a time when this was not a particularly common subject for artists (in the next century, Rembrandt would be the first artist to make the self-portrait a major part of his oeuvre). 

 

Next is  

  Lavinia Fontana

 (1552–1614)

She made great strides in the field of portraiture, which garnered her fame within and beyond Italy. In fact, Fontana is regarded as the first woman artist, working within the same sphere as her male counterparts, outside a court or convent. At age 25, Fontana married a fellow painter from a noble family, who acted as his wife’s assistant and managed their growing household (the couple had 11 children, only three of whom outlived their mother). For 20 years beginning in the 1580s, Fontana was the portraitist of choice among Bolognese noblewomen. She also painted likenesses of important individuals connected with the University of Bologna. You can finish this at the National Museum of Women in the arts.
 

The last one today is 

Artemisia Gentileschi
(1593–1624) 

Taken from  The National Gallery in London

Artemisia is the most celebrated female painter of the 17th century. She worked in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples and London, for the highest echelons of European society, including the Grand Duke of Tuscany and Philip IV of Spain.

Artemisia was born in Rome, the eldest of five children and only daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, under whom she trained. Artemisia’s earliest signed and dated painting, ‘Susanna and the Elders’ (Schloss Weißenstein collection, Pommersfelden, Germany), is from 1610. A year later Artemisia was raped by the painter Agostino Tassi, an acquaintance and collaborator of her father’s. An infamous trial, meticulously recorded in documents that survive, ensued in 1612. Tassi was found guilty and banished from Rome, though his punishment was never enforced. Just going to court in that time is an accomplishment.

Following the trial Artemisia married a little-known Florentine artist by the name of Pierantonio di Vincenzo Stiattesi, and left Rome for Florence shortly thereafter. There she had five children and established herself as an independent artist, becoming an early woman member of the Academy of the Arts of Drawing in 1616. Artemisia returned to Rome in 1620, beset by creditors after running up debts, and she remained there for 10 years (except for a trip to Venice in 1628).

From 1630 she settled in Naples, where she ran a successful studio until her death. She briefly visited London in 1639, perhaps to assist her ailing father on the ceiling painting of the Queen’s House in Greenwich (now at Marlborough House in London), but was back in Naples the following year. The precise date of her death is not known but a recently discovered document records her still living in Naples in August 1654.

 

I hope you enjoyed the history and will look up to read more in depth about these incredible women artist.

 

That's it for now. I look forward to seeing you in Sunday in the Art Room 

Nicole