A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN ARTISTS
March is Women’s History Month and we will be featuring women artists through the centuries. A number of them are “famous,” but others have been overlooked and still being discovered. So enjoy our special online exhibition with fast facts highlights accompanying each image. Generally, the works of art will be presented chronologically.
Louise Moillon, Still Life with a Basket of Fruit and Bunch of Asparagus, 1630, oil on panel, Wirt D. Walker Fund, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
Title: Still Life with a Basket of Fruit and Bunch of Asparagus, 1630
Artist: Louise Moillon (1610-1696)
Fruits, Vegetables, and the Art of Food
I had hoped to present this month’s women painters in historical order. Although she lived about a century before Elisabeth Vigee Lebrun, the subject of Tuesday’s blog (3/5/2024), I couldn’t resist featuring the striking still life of another French artistic figure Louise Moillon today.
FAST FACTS: Born in 1610 in Paris, to an artist father; trained by him, then later by her stepfather, who practiced the same profession; acknowledged for her work in still life even in her teens; her style possibly influenced by distinctive realism of Dutch tradition; highly esteemed for her technique and subjects attracting important patrons; after marriage in 1640, she seemed to stop creating for several years, perhaps as a result of marital responsibilities.
Sources include: Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800, websites of National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., and Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
CCO Public Domain Designation
The Art Institute of Chicago does not endorse or approve use of the above image or any of the material on this website. Nor has the Art Institute of Chicago participated in any projects utilizing the said image.
