About

Join MonLife Heritage Museums’ exciting new art history course. Explore the art of major women painters from the 16th century on, some of whose names you will know – Artemesia Gentileschi, Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun – and some may be new: Lavinia Fontana, Judith Leyster and Rosalba Carriera, to mention just a few.

Click here to book onto the course

Course Length - 10 weeks of two hour morning lectures (one week off for half term)
Course Dates - Wednesday 22nd January - Wednesday 2nd April (no class Wednesday 26th February)
Time - 10:30am - 12:30pm
Medium - Online via Zoom (with recordings available afterwards) 
(Click here if you wanted to book the in-person version of this course, rather than the online version.)
Course fee - £110

(Recordings available to members of this course, so that any lectures missed can be caught within 4 weeks, on Zoom)

Throughout the centuries, female artists have been producing beautiful art, art as brilliant as their male colleagues’, but many of them were written out of the art historical canon. This ten-week course explores the art of major women painters from the 16th century on, some of whose names you will know – Artemesia Gentileschi, Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun – and some may be new: Lavinia Fontana, Judith Leyster and Rosalba Carriera, to mention just a few.

These painters’ works were praised, purchased and often known across the courts of Europe. Their portraits, still-lifes and narrative pictures make captivating viewing. As the lecture series moves towards the early 20th century, we meet artists who will be familiar, such as Berthe Morisot and Frida Kahlo, and shine a brighter light on their fascinating paintings and life-stories.

Image: Laura Knight, (detail) Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring, 1943 (Imperial War Museum)