8 Women Artists History Almost Forgot

For centuries the story of art was told as a list of famous men. That wasn't because women weren't painting — many trained, exhibited, sold, and led studios — but because the systems that recorded art often shut them out. Guilds barred them, their works were quietly reattributed to male relatives or teachers, and the surveys that shaped the canon simply left them off. Here are eight women that history nearly forgot, and is now remembering.

Judith Leyster (1609–1660)

Judith Leyster was a respected master in the Dutch Golden Age, one of the first women admitted to the Haarlem painters' guild and running her own workshop. Then, after her death, her paintings were quietly absorbed into the catalog of Frans Hals — it took until the late 1800s for scholars to find her monogram and give the work back. Read her full story in who was Judith Leyster.

Clara Peeters (active c. 1607–1621)

Clara Peeters was a pioneer of still life, painting laden tables of cheese, fish, and gleaming metal at a time when very few women were exhibiting at all. Scholars have identified a striking detail: in the polished surfaces of her pewter and goblets you can make out tiny reflected figures that appear to be the artist herself — a documented flourish, though what exactly she intended by it we can't say for certain. Her world is part of the Dutch Golden Age of painting.

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895)

Morisot was not a guest of Impressionism but a founder of it, showing in the very first independent exhibition in 1874 and nearly every one after. Critics of her day praised her loose, luminous brushwork, yet later histories often reduced her to Manet's model and sister-in-law. Her reputation has been climbing back ever since — see who was Berthe Morisot.

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926)

Mary Cassatt was the only American in the Impressionist circle and one of its few women, invited to exhibit by Edgar Degas. She painted mothers and children with a clear-eyed seriousness that refused sentimentality, and she helped fill American museums with Impressionist art. More in who was Mary Cassatt.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–c. 1656)

Gentileschi was one of the most accomplished painters of the Italian Baroque, working in the dramatic, high-contrast manner of Caravaggio and winning commissions across Italy. Her large, muscular biblical scenes — often centered on women who act rather than suffer — were long overshadowed by the details of her biography, but recent exhibitions have put the paintings back at the center.

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842)

Vigée Le Brun was among the most sought-after portraitists in Europe, famous for her flattering, softly lit likenesses of Marie Antoinette and the aristocracy. She painted hundreds of portraits, was admitted to the French Academy, and kept working through revolution and exile — a career that by any measure belongs in the main story, not the footnotes.

Rosa Bonheur (1822–1899)

Bonheur was one of the most celebrated animal painters of the 19th century, known for enormous, carefully observed canvases of horses and cattle. She was hugely successful in her lifetime, decorated by the French state, and secured official permission to wear trousers so she could sketch at livestock markets and slaughterhouses — a fame that faded far more than the quality of the work justifies.

Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532–1625)

Anguissola was a Renaissance portraitist so admired that she served at the Spanish court and reportedly drew praise from Michelangelo. Because women were barred from studying anatomy and large religious commissions, she made portraiture her field and brought to it an unusual warmth and informality. Much of her work was later credited to others — a reattribution that is still being untangled.

Keep looking

None of these women needs rediscovering so much as re-seeing — the paintings were always good; the histories were incomplete. Follow the artists you can here and go look closely: sometimes the correction to the record is just a viewer who stops and pays attention. Start on DiscoverArt.