- most female artists around that time were Dutch, because the Dutch Republic in the 1600ds was a really good place for artists, and if you were good enough it didn't matter what gender you were. Some names include Judith Leyster, Rachel Ryusch and Clara Peeters.
- The reason they were never as well known as Artemisia is because they mostly painted still life and portraits, and Artemisia painted "historical paintings" which were on top on the food chain of arts
- And even then, Artemisia didn't have it easy as an artist, either, she was often cheated and/or paid less, and people would accuse her of getting help from her father painting stuff, etc etc
- The reason women didn't become artists was because they weren't allowed access to the academies, because oh noo a woman can't look at nude models now can she + a bunch of other dumb reasons. Male artists and critics went around all "blah blah geniuses are BORN with genius in them, and women clearly aren't" when men could utilize their 'genius', women never got the chance to
- and that's just seeing it from the "women can be as good as men" perspective, women DID make a lot of art all the time throughout western art history, except a lot of it was weaving and tapestries and other things that have been ignored (+ seen as unimportant because men didn't do these things) until recently, when feminists started to dig up on what women in art history have actually achieved
- and yeah it's easy to feel guilty about not knowing about female artists, but honestly it's hard to find them because they've been ignored for so long and you have to make an actual effort to find them.
Back in high school we got an art history assignment to write about various artists of our choice, and I went out of my way to write about female artists and my classmate was all "um does it REALLY MATTER" and i quietly fumed in response because it SHOULDN'T matter, but how else are we going to fight this systematic ignorance of female artists
im not gonna give you a full retelling of feminist art history, but LONG STORY SHORT the internet is probably the best thing that has happened to female artists because now teenage girls can get acknowledgement and fame for their art and I think it's beautiful