Women's rights have come a long way in the past hundred years. Part of that progress has been a reassessment of notable women from history, especially those who were overlooked in their own time. The film Hidden Figures, for example, shed light on three African-American women mathematicians who played a crucial part in the US space programme. Intelligent, inventive women who were pushed out of the frame by men can be found throughout history and in every discipline, including art.
Stop somebody in the street and ask them to name three famous artists, and you'll probably hear Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso. Yet countless women have contributed hugely to art. These five are a small selection of our favourites.
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo is perhaps the best known of all women artists. Her style is instantly recognisable, in no small part because of her own iconic look. She put her self-portrait into almost all her paintings, with her raven hair, bushy eyebrows, fierce stare and elaborate headdresses at the centre. 'Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird' is a particularly fine example.
When Kahlo first stepped onto the art scene it was as the wife of Diego Rivera, a mural painter who was then far more widely recognised. Since then she has become the more famous of the two.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe is best known for her large flower paintings, though she also painted landscapes. The flowers remain her most famous, and perhaps notorious, works because of their supposed association with female genitalia. Paintings such as 'Inside Red Canna' attracted attention because many saw a woman's vulva in them.
It was O'Keeffe's husband, Alfred Stieglitz, who first suggested this. O'Keeffe herself was uncomfortable with that reading and tried to counter the male perspective by asking her friend Mabel Dodge Luhan to write about her work. Whatever the truth, she is seen today as a symbol of female empowerment, which, ironically, might not have happened had the association never been made.
Berthe Morisot
Many people know Berthe Morisot's name, but often not as an artist. Born in France in 1841, she lived most of her life in Paris and was a member of the Impressionist circle. Her work was shown at the prestigious Salon de Paris.
Sadly, the painting she is most famous for is not one of her own. In 1872 her fellow Impressionist and brother-in-law Édouard Manet painted her while she was in mourning for her father. 'Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets' is celebrated as one of the great portraits of the Impressionist age and hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
If you've seen Manet's portrait without knowing the sitter's story, it's not too late to discover her own work. Her painting 'The Cradle' hangs in the Musée d'Orsay alongside the Manet portrait and was painted in the same year. Closer to home, her 'Summer's Day' is in London's National Gallery.
Bridget Riley
The 1960s were a decade of experiment, and in art that meant moving away from traditional media, forms and techniques. From today's viewpoint the period can be summed up in three names: the pop art pioneers Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and the abstract painter Bridget Riley.
Even if you don't know Riley's name you will have seen her paintings: vast geometric arrangements in black and white or primary colours that often work as optical illusions. 'Movement in Squares' of 1961 is one of the most iconic. Now known as op art, this mind-bending style aligned itself with the big topics of the era: hallucinogenic drugs, the threat of nuclear war and the capabilities of the human brain. Riley's challenging work made people think about art, and the world, in ways they hadn't before.
Rachel Ruysch
The painters above all worked within the past 200 years, which might suggest that women artists arrived only recently. Not so. Rachel Ruysch was born in the Netherlands in 1664 and became one of the finest still-life painters of her age.
The Dutch Golden Age, like most periods in art, is dominated by male names such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals. None of them was producing work like Ruysch, who invented her own style in order to paint works such as 'Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies, and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge' in breathtaking detail.
More women artists to discover
The list is far longer than five names. Look up Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Cassatt, Lee Krasner, Yayoi Kusama, Cindy Sherman and Tracey Emin. One of the best ways to support women artists, living or dead, is to visit exhibitions of their work.
And if you buy a good Ruysch, Morisot or Kahlo print, visit our Picture Frames & Mounts page, enter the dimensions of your image and we'll make the frame. It's about time these paintings got their spot on the wall.