Gone but No Longer Forgotten -- the Women of Ghent

How was it that all but a few women artists became excised from art history? It wasn't as if there weren't plenty of them around, making stunning paintings, and lots of money, particularly in the Low Countries in the 17th and 18th century. Art history is of course now being rewritten, to rescue the forgotten from oblivion. To find out what happened and how the record is being put right, you should go to Ghent to see Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750 at the Museum of Fine Arts. 

Michaelina Wautier is a case in point: a woman who could compete on her own terms with the Baroque masters of the southern Netherlands, but whose work was disregarded or attributed to men until the last couple of decades. Wautier may well be the biggest rediscovery among forgotten women painters in recent years -- she's got an exhibition of her own on now at the Royal Academy in London -- and one of her pictures is among the stand-out works at this show in the heart of Flanders. 

It's not just a portrait of two young girls, it's a religious painting at the same time; on the left are a basket of apples surrounded by roses, the traditional attributes of St Dorothea, who carries a palm leaf to indicate her martyrdom, while at the bottom right is a lamb, representing St Agnes. It's an ambitious painting, from the very top tier in the hierarchy of genres -- still lifes and portraits being seen at that epoch as far less significant than historical themes. And beautifully rendered. There's another Wautier, Boy with Tobacco, elsewhere in the show.

Wautier turns up early on in this very extensive exhibition -- there are nearly 150 objects created by more than 40 women artists -- but let's cut next to the final picture on display, with two little boys, probably twins, playing at being soldiers, rather than two small girls posing as saints. It's by the Antwerp painter Johanna Vergouwen, who also worked as an art dealer and was praised for her output in her own time. 

Vergouwen really seems to have had a feminine touch. Yes, the two lads (aged about 8, though they look younger) are soldiers, with their armour and swords and riding off on a hobby horse to war. But Vergouwen seems to have captured a certain sweet side to their character, with those faces under the wonderfully feathered headgear and above the flowing skirts in delicate shades. As the audioguide points out, however, even though Vergouwen signed and dated this painting, art connoisseurs in later centuries were less interested in her than in the identity of the boys (one of whom, if the identification is accurate, rejoiced in the unfortunate name of Everhard Kockman).  

Let's head north from Flanders to Holland, to encounter Judith Leyster; she was from Haarlem, like Frans Hals. We see her early on with a very confident self-portrait, as might be expected from a woman good enough to join the Guild of St Luke, the artists' trade association. This is another painting from around the same time, when she was about 20, depicting a woman getting on diligently with the very virtuous act of sewing, trying to ignore the fact that she's being bothered by a man who seems to be offering her money....

Leyster's career stalled when she got married to another Haarlem painter, Jan Miense Molenaer, and had a house and their business to run and five children to bring up. She kept her hand in with flower paintings, one of which is in the show. Posterity would attribute her work to Hals or Molenaer, but Leyster is now possibly the most famous woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age, though Rachel Ruysch, who's also represented here with some still lifes, might give her a run for her money. 

When it came to still-life paintings, women could compete on equal terms with the men -- and in fact, those depictions of cut flowers were often where the money was in the 17th-century Netherlands (though they were looked down on as lesser works in later centuries). And it wasn't just botanical wonders; how about Still Life with Cheeses and Crayfish by Clara Peeters? Just look at the details: the texture of the cheese, the light and reflections in the filled wine glass, the softness of the white bread roll with its golden crust and and the knife on the edge of the table that appears to be slanting out of the canvas. 

The Antwerp-based Peeters was one of the great exponents of the food still life and an innovator in the genre; we can remember her starring in a show on the theme at the Mauritshuis a few years ago. And, if you want to compare and contrast with her male contemporaries, we've picked out a couple of works by Floris van Dijck (he seemed to like lots of fruit) and Pieter Claesz. It's worth remembering though, that many women didn't get the chance to train on painting real people from life; Peeters's only known work featuring a prominent human figure, on show in Ghent, comes across as extremely awkward. 

Now, oddly, we don't really get to learn anything about this next painting, the poster image for the exhibition, with surely one of the most bizarre pieces of headgear you'll ever see in historic art. (This may be the moment to mention that individual wall captions for the artworks contain only the bare minimum of info; you're reliant on the audioguide, which doesn't cover every piece, for commentary).  

It's a self-portrait by Princess Louise Hollandine of the Palatinate, who grew up in The Hague in the early 17th century (take a look at the link for biographical details), and it's one of a number of striking paintings by her on display in Ghent. There's a portrait of her sister Sophia in a Brazilian cape, as well as another self-portrait apparently after a painting by her teacher Gerard van Honthorst. But in her mid-30s, Louise left the court in secret, converted to Catholicism, became a nun and went on to be an abbess at a convent in France. And she continued to paint; you can see a self-portrait as a Benedictine sister; same face, but a black-and-white habit has replaced the gorgeous and curious headgear. 

Our next painting exemplifies how women artists were erased from the record. It's Young Woman Accepting Grapes from a Boy by Maria Schalcken, the sister and pupil of Godefridus Schalcken, a genre painter who was an apprentice of Samuel van Hoogstraten and later studied under Gerrit Dou, and who was highly successful in his lifetime. 

The name Schalcken appears as a signature at the top left of this picture, but the first name has been obliterated. It was long attributed to Godefridus and only recognised as the work of Maria 20 years ago. The only other painting certainly known to be by her -- a self-portrait at the easel -- is also in this show. There must surely be others. 

These are only a handful of the artists in this exhibition, which is fascinating, if a little frustrating. Clearly, we don't know biographical details for many, but you're also not given that much info about artists who are well documented when you really want to find out more (rather oddly, we had a very similar experience in a show about women artists at the Arp Museum a couple of years ago). And then there's nothing at all revealed about one or two of the most intriguing artworks, such as how it came to pass that a woman artist called Katharina Pepijn painted an abbot in Catholic Flanders in the 1650s. 

Let's end with a picture that we couldn't resist putting in. Two of the most scary and feared animals are clearly in a battle, even if amid the deadly drama there's something of a feeling that this is an image Dr Seuss might have concocted. The caiman is defending her two eggs, one of which has already been attacked by the snake coiled around her tail. This work by Maria Sibylla Merian, who travelled to South America in her 50s at the very end of the 17th century, is a masterpiece of scientific observation as well as an artwork of the highest order, filled with magical colours and patterns. 

So much to see and remember in this show in Ghent: Go if you get the chance. 

Practicalities

Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750 is on at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent until May 31. The museum is open from 0930 to 1730 Tuesdays to Fridays, from 1000 to 1800 at weekends and on school holidays, and until 2200 on the first Thursday of the month. We spent several hours in the exhibition; allow yourself plenty of time. Full-price tickets cost 19 euros, and you can book online in advance here. Make sure you download the audioguide to your phone (you can borrow headphones) to make up for the lack of captions. It's informative, though we found it rather clunky to use.

The gallery is situated on Fernand Scribedreef, a half-hour on foot south of Ghent's historic centre and about 15 minutes' walk from the city's main Sint-Pieters station. There are four trains an hour to Ghent from Brussels on weekdays, taking less than half an hour from Bruxelles Midi, where the Eurostar from London arrives.

Elsewhere in the Museum, and in Ghent

The fine-arts museum has an extensive collection, spanning the centuries from Hieronymus Bosch to Théo van Rysselberghe. And you can also see the workshop where restoration is continuing on some of the panels of the fabulous Mystic Lamb altarpiece -- one of the world's great works of art -- by Jan van Eyck and his brother Hubert from Ghent's St Bavo's Cathedral. 

To view the whole altarpiece with the already restored panels in situ and the replicas of the ones being worked on, head north to the cathedral in the city centre. It's open from 0830 to 1730 Monday to Saturday, 1300 to 1730 on Sunday. An augmented-reality tour costs 16 euros; if you just want to see the altarpiece without the frills it's 12.50 euros. You can book tickets here; we turned up on a spring Saturday afternoon without tickets and waited just five minutes to get in, though the AR option was, we noted, fully booked.

Images

Michaelina Wautier (c. 1614-1689), Two Girls as Saints Agnes and Dorothea, c. 1650, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) -- Flemish Community Collection

Johanna Vergouwen (1630-1714), Portrait of Two Children, Possibly the Twins Everhard and Hendrik Kockman (1660-1728, 1660-1683), 1668, Private collection 

Judith Leyster (1609-1660), Young Woman being Harassed by a Man, 1631, Mauritshuis, The Hague
Clara Peeters (1587-after 1636), Still Life with Cheeses and Crayfish, c. 1612-21, Private collection
Louise Hollandine of the Palatinate (1622-1709), Self-Portrait, c. 1650-55, Private collection
Maria Schalcken (c. 1645/50-?), Young Woman Accepting Grapes from a Boy, c. 1675-82, The Leiden Collection, New York
Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), Spectacled Caiman and South African False Coral Snake from Dissertation on the Origin and Metamorphoses of Surinamese Insects, 1719 (1705). National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC