Famous Female Painters: 10 Women Who Shaped the History of Art

Famous female painters share a history that the men in the museum did not. For most of art’s history, women were locked out of the academies, the studios, and the life-drawing rooms where painters were trained, and they were left out of the exhibitions and collections that built fame. The women below painted their way past all of it, and many were forgotten for generations before the world caught up to them. The best known are Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, Rachel Ruysch, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Hilma af Klint, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, and Yayoi Kusama.

Each one found a way through the closed door of her own era. Here is who they were, what they made, and what they changed.

Sofonisba Anguissola (around 1532 to 1625)

Sofonisba Anguissola was one of the first women to win real international fame as a painter. Born to a noble family in Italy, she was given an education in art that was rare for a woman, and her warm, lively portraits caught the attention of Michelangelo and the Spanish court, where she served as a painter to the queen. Because she was barred from studying the male nude, she focused on portraits and intimate family scenes, and made them feel alive in a way few of her peers could. Her works hang in major museums including the Prado.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 to around 1656)

Artemisia Gentileschi was the most accomplished female painter of the Baroque, a master of drama, shadow, and raw power. Her most famous painting shows the biblical heroine Judith beheading the general Holofernes with a fierce, unflinching strength that no male painter of the subject had ever matched. She built a successful career across Italy at a time when that was nearly impossible for a woman. Her works are held at the Uffizi in Florence and other major museums.

Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755 to 1842)

Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun was one of the finest portrait painters of her century and the favorite painter of Queen Marie Antoinette, whom she painted many times. Her elegant, flattering portraits made her famous across Europe, and when the French Revolution made her royal ties dangerous she fled and simply built a new career in city after city, from Rome to Saint Petersburg. She left behind hundreds of portraits and a remarkable memoir. Her works hang in museums worldwide.

Rachel Ruysch (1664 to 1750)

Rachel Ruysch was the leading flower painter of the Dutch golden age and one of the few women of her time to run a long, internationally successful studio. Her dark, dramatic bouquets twist with life, full of insects and deep shadow, and they often outsold the work of her male contemporaries. She kept painting into her eighties. Her flower pieces are held in major museums across Europe and the United States.

Berthe Morisot (1841 to 1895)

Berthe Morisot was a founding member of the Impressionists and one of the most daring painters in the group, not a follower of the men but a leader among them. Her loose, shimmering brushwork captured private moments of women and children at home, the world she was actually allowed to move in, and she made that world feel luminous and modern. She exhibited in almost every Impressionist show. Her works hang at the Musee d’Orsay and other major museums.

Mary Cassatt (1844 to 1926)

Mary Cassatt was an American who moved to Paris and became a central figure among the Impressionists, invited into the group by Edgar Degas. She is best known for her tender, clear-eyed paintings of mothers and children, painted with real structure and honesty rather than sentiment. She also helped shape American art history by guiding wealthy friends to buy Impressionist work for their collections. Her paintings hang in major museums across the United States and Europe.

Hilma af Klint (1862 to 1944)

Hilma af Klint painted some of the very first fully abstract works in Western art, large glowing canvases of spirals and color made in 1906 and 1907, years before Kandinsky. She believed her time was not ready for them and asked that they stay hidden for decades after her death. When the art world finally saw them, it had to rewrite the story of who invented abstraction. Her works are held by the Hilma af Klint Foundation in Stockholm.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887 to 1986)

Georgia O’Keeffe is often called the mother of American modernism. She is most famous for her giant close-up flowers and the bleached desert landscapes and bones she painted in New Mexico, all rendered in clean, bold shapes and luminous color. She worked for nearly seventy years and built one of the most recognizable bodies of work in American art. Her Jimson Weed set a record as the most expensive painting by a woman. Her works are held at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and major collections worldwide.

Frida Kahlo (1907 to 1954)

Frida Kahlo is likely the most recognized female painter in the world today. She turned her own life, her body, her pain, and her Mexican heritage into vivid, symbolic self-portraits that hide nothing. A bus accident left her in lifelong pain, and she painted from her bed using a mirror, making herself her own most honest subject. Her work is held at the Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City and major museums everywhere.

Yayoi Kusama (born 1929)

Yayoi Kusama is one of the most popular living artists in the world, known for her endless polka dots, her mirrored Infinity Rooms, and her pumpkins. She turned the hallucinations she has lived with since childhood into an art of pure pattern and repetition, work that draws huge crowds wherever it shows. She has worked across painting, sculpture, and installation for more than seventy years. Her work is held in major museums worldwide and at her own museum in Tokyo.

What these painters can teach you

The thread running through all ten is that none of them waited for permission. Anguissola painted portraits because she was forbidden the figure, and made them masterful. Morisot painted the only world she was allowed into, and made it luminous. Af Klint painted for a future she knew she would not see. Each one took the limits of her time and turned them into a voice that was unmistakably her own.

That is the encouraging truth if you paint. You will always have limits, of time, of training, of access. The artists worth remembering did not wait for those limits to lift. They made their work inside the room they were given and made it so good the door finally opened. If their stories move you, our guide to famous self portraits shows how painters like Kahlo and O’Keeffe used their own faces as their subject, and the Impressionism guide places Morisot and Cassatt in their movement. You can see these artists beside the broader most famous paintings of all time, and wander the full art history and famous paintings collection to keep exploring.

Frequently asked questions

Who is the most famous female painter?

Frida Kahlo is probably the most widely recognized female painter in the world today, known for her intense self-portraits. In terms of historical influence, Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, and Georgia O'Keeffe are the names most often cited as the women who changed the course of art.

Why are there fewer famous female painters in history?

It was not a lack of talent. For centuries women were barred from art academies, denied the figure-drawing classes that trained professional painters, and excluded from the patronage and exhibitions that built reputations. The women who did break through usually had a painter father or unusual access, and many were forgotten and only rediscovered much later.

Who was the first famous female painter?

Sofonisba Anguissola, born around 1532, was one of the first women to win international fame as a painter. She became a court artist in Spain and was admired by Michelangelo. Earlier women painted too, but Anguissola is among the earliest whose name, career, and surviving work are well documented.

Which female painter sells for the most money?

Georgia O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed set a record for the most expensive painting by a woman when it sold, and works by Frida Kahlo and Yayoi Kusama also command very high prices. The gap between what work by men and women sells for is still wide, though it has narrowed in recent years.