For Teachers

These resources are designed to be used flexibly in classrooms, colleges, art groups and independent study.

You do not need to teach all twelve artists, and there is no required order. The project works just as well if you choose one artist, compare two, or use the timeline to place women alongside their better-known contemporaries.

Ways to Use the Project

Start with Looking

Begin with an artwork before giving students the artist’s biography.

Ask:

• What do you notice first?

• What details seem important?

• What might the artist want us to look at?

• What can we infer before we know anything about her life?

• Does knowing the artist was a woman change the way we look at the work — and should it?

This helps keep the art itself at the centre of the discussion.

Compare Artists

Choose one woman artist and place her beside a male contemporary.

For example:

Sofonisba Anguissola and Titian
Portraiture, status and the Renaissance court.

Artemisia Gentileschi and Caravaggio
Drama, light, violence and Baroque storytelling.

Rachel Ruysch and Dutch still-life painters
Observation, symbolism and the status of still life.

Berthe Morisot and Claude Monet or Edgar Degas
Modern life, Impressionism and access to public space.

Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock
Abstract Expressionism, reputation and artistic identity.

The aim is not to decide who is “better”, but to ask why some artists became central to the story of art while others became less visible.

Use the Timeline

The timeline can help students see that women artists were not working in isolation.

Place the twelve artists alongside:

• major art movements

• famous male contemporaries

• political and social events

• changes in artistic training

• the development of academies and museums

A useful classroom question is:

If these women were working at the same time as artists we already study, why are their names often less familiar?

Discuss Access and Opportunity

Talent alone does not create an artistic career.

Students can explore the importance of:

• access to training

• life drawing

• academies and guilds

• money and patronage

• studio space

• family support

• marriage and motherhood

• the subjects artists were permitted or encouraged to paint

• museums, collecting and art-history writing

This makes it possible to discuss inequality without reducing the artists to victims of their circumstances.

Attribution and Rediscovery

Judith Leyster offers an excellent case study.

Some of her paintings were later attributed to better-known male artists before her distinctive monogram helped scholars identify her work.

Questions to consider:

• What happens to an artist’s reputation when her name disappears from her work?

• How much does attribution affect value and status?

• Can art history ever be considered “finished”?

• Who has the authority to decide what belongs in the canon?

What Does “Forgotten” Mean?

Not all of these artists were forgotten during their own lifetimes.

Some were highly successful, internationally known and financially independent.

The more interesting question is often:

How did their place in the story become smaller later?

Students might consider the role of textbooks, museums, collecting, exhibitions and repeated teaching in deciding which artists remain familiar.

Suggested Discussion Questions

• What makes an artist historically important?

• Who decides which artists are taught?

• Does fame during an artist’s lifetime guarantee a lasting reputation?

• How can an artist disappear from the historical record?

• Why might some artistic subjects be valued more highly than others?

• How does access to training affect artistic opportunity?

• Can rediscovering an artist change our understanding of an entire art movement?

• Should we revise the traditional canon or simply expand it?

Practical Classroom Ideas

One Artist, One Lesson

Choose one artist and use the downloadable PDF as the basis for a short lesson or discussion.

Pair and Compare

Give small groups two artists from the same period and ask them to identify similarities and differences in opportunity, subject matter and reputation.

Build a Classroom Timeline

Ask students to add women artists to an existing art-history timeline and compare the result with a conventional textbook chronology.

Research a Missing Artist

Ask students to find another woman artist who could have been included in this project.

They might investigate:

• where she trained

• what she painted

• whether she exhibited

• how successful she was

• why she is or is not widely remembered today

Curate an Exhibition

Ask students to imagine they are curating a small exhibition called:

Who Gets Remembered?

They must choose five works and explain why each belongs in the exhibition.

Free Resources

The individual artist PDFs and timeline are free to download and may be used for personal and educational purposes.

They are intended as starting points rather than complete lesson plans, so please adapt them to suit your students, subject level and teaching style.

A Final Thought

The aim of this project is not to replace one list of “great artists” with another.

It is to encourage students to ask how the story of art is constructed, whose work becomes familiar, and what might be discovered when we look again.

Above all:

look at the art, ask questions, and stay curious.