The Impressionist painting style is one of the most popular among collectors and for good reason. It is colorful, vibrant, and full of life and emotion. There are many artists who create works using this style, even today, so if you want to start collecting impressionist pieces, it’s not too late! However, what if you don’t know which painters you like best? Finding the women impressionists you should know can help when shopping for a new painting.
Women painting in the Impressionist style have created some of the most moving and amazing works of art that you can see in galleries or private collections. If you want to collect specifically from the works of female impressionist painters, you need to know where to start. This list of the women impressionists that you should know will help you to find paintings that speak to you and that you want to add to your personal collection to enjoy on a daily basis.
Women Impressionists You Should Know About
1. Berthe Morisot
Berthe was a French Impressionist who was well-known in her time for being asked to exhibit her works at the 1864 Salon de Paris. She was actually sponsored by the French government as well and created many unique and special works of art that are still well-regarded as foundational among Impressionist works today.
Berthe married Edouard Manet’s family and worked alongside the famous artist from time to time as she created beautiful oil paintings as well as watercolors and pastels. Many of her best-known pieces are actually studies done on human models, which is a break in the normal tradition of Impressionist works created to make the most of nature and the light in the sky.
Jeune Fille au Manteau Vert is one of these classic studies, but she also painted the well-known Grain Field in 1875, which is a very traditional Impressionist work. Berthe complained in her diaries about the struggle to be taken seriously as a female artist and felt that art critic wrote only about how good her paintings were, considering that she was a woman. The fact that she was one of the founding members of the Impressionist movement is not even mentioned in many histories related to the subject, which tells modern collectors just how truly segregated women’s works were from the pieces done by men at this time.
2. Mary Cassatt
Mar Cassatt was an American, but she spent most of her life in France. There, she met Edgar Degas and created some of the most beautiful Impressionist pieces that exist today. Her subjects were almost always the private lives of women, meant to capture the bonds between women and children or women and other women.
Cassatt’s family was not supportive of her goal to be an artist at first, and she undertook her training without their approval. However, when she moved to Paris, her mother and family friends went with her to act as her chaperones. The first work of Cassatt’s that was displayed was Two Women Throwing Flowers During Carnival. This piece was displayed at the Salon in 1872 and was well-received. Cassatt was also asked to create a commissioned piece for the Archbishop of Pittsburgh.
Cassatt created many beautiful and evocative pieces that are considered some of the most moving and important pieces within the Impressionist movement today. Their subject matter is unique and special and helped to capture the daily lives of women during the late 1800s.
3. Cecilia Beaux
Beaux was an American artist who was born in Philadelphia. She took art lessons from an early age, and her work was so good that she opened a studio in Philadelphia in 1883. She had a piece called Last Days of Infancy which was displayed at the Paris Salon in 1886, which led to her becoming one of the most acclaimed American Impressionists when she returned home.
Beaux actually became one of the first female instructors to teach at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and she taught her unique style of Impressionism to her students. While influenced by French painting styles, Beaux created paintings that offered more seamless brushstrokes and a smaller focus on contrast.
Her piece, Self-Portrait, which was painted in 1894, hangs at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington. It shows very clearly the lighter brush strokes and the low-contrast tones that are staples of her work. It is also really wonderful to see a self-portrait of the artist as it puts a face to the art itself in such a direct fashion.
4. Marie Bracquemond
Bracquemond came from a working-class family, which made it difficult for her to receive training or to make connections with other Impressionist painters. As a result, she was largely self-taught, but that did not mean that her work was not beautiful and moving just like other Impressionist artists of her day.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres discovered her work, which helped make her a well-known name among Impressionists for the first time. She loved to paint still lives, but she was also captivated by creating paintings that showed people in conversation or scenes of daily life.
Partially because she was not taught in an academy, Bracquemond felt free to paint any subject that caught her interest. This means that she created en plein air as well as in-studio. Her On the Terrace at Sevres is one of her best-known works that she created, and it shows quite clearly the beautiful interplay of light and shadows in her works, as well as the bright bursts of pastel color that she is known for.
5. Eva Gonzalez
Gonzalez was a student of Edouard Manet. Despite being associated with one of the greats of the Impressionist movement, she created her own very unique pieces of art that show her voice and vision quite clearly. Gonzalez’s likeness was captured by Manet, but she also created various self-portraits which are beautiful, wistful, and very unique in their style.
Gonzalez was from an artistic family. Her father was a writer, and her mother created music. This led to them being highly approving of her painting efforts and helped to make it possible for her to meet Manet. Gonzalez died in childbirth quite young, but her pieces were displayed at various exhibits before her death.
Her Morning Awakening remains one of the best pieces of her work. This work shows clearly the more accurate and portrait-style work that she used to capture the faces and details of the appearance of her subjects. Her style bridges the gap between Impressionism and portrait-making beautifully, making her own unique voice very clear in every piece.
6. Lila Cabot Perry
Another American Impressionist, Lilla Cabot Perry was born in Boston. She was inspired by the works of the classic French Impressionists, but her works are still considered to be fundamental to the creation of a unique Impressionist art style in the US. Perry frequently painted her three daughters, but she also did some portrait-style work and painted outdoor scenes. Lady with a Bowl of Violets is a classic example of her work during the earlier periods of her painting career.
Later, after living in Tokyo for some years, her painting style changed due to her exposure to Japanese motifs. She created many works that showed the influence of Japanese woodblock and which were more geometric in nature than is common for Impressionism.
Perry was influential in bringing the influence of an entirely different style of art into her Impressionist works. This was something that has carried over into the work that is done by many modern Impressionists today. The contributions of different art styles to the current modes of Impressionist work are invaluable and cannot be overstated.
7. Laura Muntz Lyall
Muntz Lyall was born in England, but her family moved to Canada when she was young. She started out her adult life with a career in teaching but then followed her passion for art through painting lessons that she took. She became a globally recognized artist over time, and her works have been exhibited all over the world.
She was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists in the late 1800s, and her works were used as foundational examples of the new impressionism that was starting to make its presence felt in the art world. She painted various kinds of subjects during her career, many of them still-life-type works. She also captured the emotion in a portrait-style painting with an Impressionist flair. A good example of her later work is The Watcher, which was painted in 1894.
Muntz Lyall’s works are considered to be important in the timeline of the Impressionist movement as it changed and spread its wings in the late 1800s. Today’s Impressionist artists use these kinds of works to help inspire them to use Impressionism in new and exciting ways that do not necessarily adhere to the older standards of the original movement.
8. Alicia Leeke
Leeke is a contemporary Impressionist painter who has long been in love with the work of French Impressionists. She has used some of the same painting techniques and values in her own work and creates many of her landscape pieces in Montmartre. Paintings like Around the Bend feel taken right out of an early 1800s art Impressionist art exhibition. Her use of color and movement is strongly reminiscent of the early Impressionist movement but with a modern twist.
There are few painters who are currently creating works that can create the same sense of movement and light that the early Impressionist movement conveyed in its works. Leeke sells to private collections and galleries, and you can see all of her collected works on her website as well. She is a very accessible artist and one who creates regularly. This means that you can continue to collect her pieces over time and into the future if you want to be able to add to your own unique Impressionist collection of modern Impressionist artists.
9. Erin Hansen
Erin Hansen is an Impressionist painter located in Oregon who creates playful and stunning Impressionist works that combine the features of other art styles with the dreamy light and shadow of Impressionism. She is always creating new works of art, which means that you can start collecting her works now and add them in the future if you love the new pieces that she has created.
She is very influential in the Impressionist painting community due to her use of bold colors that somehow still don’t trod upon the emotional nature of Impressionist works. She is considered a modern master, and her paintings are displayed all over the United States. Collectors can reach out to her directly on her site or collect her works through connections with gallery owners.
She is the founder of Open Impressionism, which is its own recognized painting style and which has started to gather momentum around the US. Emotional impact, bold and bright colors, and a playful tone characterize her works.
Women’s Impressionist Works Are Highly Collectible
If you have been working on collecting Impressionist art, you cannot have a complete collection without considering the beauty of works that have been done by creative female artists. There are so many wonderful contemporary Impressionists who are currently creating new and exciting pieces of art today. Many of these artists are women, and you can enjoy contrasting the older pieces that inspired their works with the creativity and inspiration that they have used to make new and exciting artistic works possible today.
All of these women have contributed to the Impressionist movement, and the unique voice of female painters can add something special to your collection. If you are looking for unique and beautiful pieces of art to enjoy in your home or gallery, the works of these artists might be the perfect fit for your needs. Female Impressionists have created some of the most moving and recognizable artistic works associated with the movement. Collecting these pieces and supporting women Impressionists is an ideal way to make sure that new artistic voices can be seen and heard.