A Different View

A Different View - Women Artists at Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum

Women have been creating and collecting artworks for centuries, but few have reached the status and renown of their male counterparts. Historicallly, they have been under-represented in national collections and excluded from art historical narratives. Since the 1970s curators and art historians have worked to challenge the accepted view and show how these artists have always been part of the story of art.

There is still a long way to go through - the National Gallery in London for instance, contains less than 2% of work by women. 

This exhibition showcases some of the work in Leamington Art Gallery's collection and includes the work of four contemporary artists as a way of looking to the future. The contemporary artists are Laura Adkins, Julie de Bastion, Lou Blakeway and Mary Riley.

Vera Morosoff, Portrait, 1938, (oil on canvas)

Celia Frances Bedford, Lady with Powder Puff, 1936, (oil on canvas)

Vanessa Bell, A Venetian Window, 1928, (oil on canvas)

Julie de Bastion, Figure with Mirrors, 1982, (oil on canvas)

Gertrude Lindsay, Sally at her Window, 1935, (oil on canvas)

Dod Procter, The Innocent, A New Day, 1935, (oil on canvas)

Procter is perhaps most acclaimed for her evocative portraits of young women and her subtle use of light. Procter was among the first generation of female artists that had unimpeded access to nude life drawing classes, adding further significance to this work. Her focus on figures on the cusp of womanhood perhaps tells us something of how she saw herself as a woman and an artist at a time of increasing female liberation.

Nan Youngman, Portrait of Alma Ramsey-Hosking, 1930, (oil on canvas)

Laura Sylvia Gosse, Trumpet Vendor of Enverneu, (oil on canvas)

Lou Blakeway, Rape In Culture, 2023, (oil on canvas)

Beatrice Mary Seccombe Leech, Bastia, The Old Fort, (watercolour on paper)

Elizabeth Whitehead, Amsterdam, (watercolour on paper)

Anne St John Partridge, Bruges Under Snow, (watercolour on paper)

Partridge was influlenced by the work of the Impressionists. From 1900 she became involved with the Women's Suffrage movement.

Alma Ramsey, Mother and Child, 1980, (marble)

Cathleen Mann, Jane Posing, 1931, (oil on canvas)

Anne Finlay, Ronnie At Bedtime, 1935, (oil on board)

Christine Borland, English Family China, 1998, (bone china)

A porcelain baby's head sits within a female pubis bone moulded from obstetric models. The porcelain is painted with traditional designs associated with 19th century English tableware. The work reflects on the original meaning of bone china, when porcelain was made of ground bone. It also associated the genetic links between mother and child and the repeated patterns on the china and considers the risks historically involved in childbirth.

Amy Sharrocks, Thistledown, 2018, (ink on paper)

Therese Lessore, Pulteney Bridge, Bath, 1942, (oil on canvas)

Tessa Beaver, Snow: Near Urbino II, 1970, (oil on board)

Alice Maud Fanner, Burnham Restricted Class Beating to Windward, in Pegwell Bay, 1927, (oil on canvas)

Mary Duncan, Whitesand Bay, (oil on canvas)

Lucy Kemp-Welch, Winter's White Silence, 1923-24, (oil on canvas)

Dorothea Sharp, Where Children Play and Seagulls Fly, 1928, (oil on canvas)

Winifred Nicholson, Summer, 1928, (oil on board)

In this painting, the frame of the window is omitted, creating an unusual, almost surreal, dual image of still life and landscape.

Nicholson was credited with pioneering this new and distinctive type of 'flowerpiece' in the 1920s and continued to experiment with the style throughout her life.

Here, she contrasts the naturalistic shades of the fields and trees with the vibrancy of the shimmering river and bright boats. The bold tones and forms of the flowers in the foreground provide the initial focus, however the artist keeps the eye moving around the image by repeating touches of the same iridiscent turquoise used to represent the river. These small vivid patches radiate outwards toward the edges of the work and in this way the foreground and background are unified and balanced.