The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution, and Resilience; Five Hundred Years of Women’s Self Portraits

In this volume, London-based Australian art critic Higgie examines self-portraits by women artists from the Western tradition, grouped thematically. She first establishes that women have historically struggled to be socially accepted as artists; forbidden to draw from models in art schools, women artists often turned to themselves as subjects. Then she turns to the self-portraits—some by well-known painters (Frida Kahlo; Alice Neel), but many by artists are little known outside their own countries. Themes include self-portraits of the artist at her easel (Italian Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola); allegorical self-portraits (Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi); and self-portraits by painters who thrived on solitude (20th-century English artist Gwenn John; Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck; Australian artist Nora Heyson). The chapter “Translation” features 20th-century artists (Australian Margaret Preston; New Zealander Rita Angus; Hungarian Indian Amrita Sher-Gil) whose works attempted to reconcile the Western European pictorial language of modernism with the native artistic traditions of their countries.