The Most Sought-After Female Artists
In galleries across Europe and North America, only 13.7% of living artists represented are women
09/12/2024
Women are historically underrepresented in the world of art, in all areas of the field. In galleries across Europe and North America, only 13.7% of living artists represented are women. The Burns Halperin Report, conducted in 2022, found that between 2008 and mid-2022, art produced by women accounted for just 3.3% of auction sales.
In spite of this, there are a great wealth of brilliant female artists, who have worked against the grain to produce artworks which rival those of their male peers. In such an environment, their success is a testament to their talent and their refusal to be side-lined. Indeed, over time, the market has begun to shift: the 2022 UBS report A Survey of Global Collecting found that female artist representation in 2022 reached 42%, rising 9 percentage points from 2018. Below, we explore a handful of these artists, including details surrounding their performance at auction.
Angelica Kauffman – Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) was a Swiss Neoclassical painter, working with portraits, landscapes, and decoration paintings. Her career spanned across London and Rome, playing a crucial role in establishing the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768. Much of her work depicted female protagonists in classical history and mythology, repositioning these scenes so as to emphasise the key roles the women played in these stories. Kauffman was celebrated in her time and continues to be revered today – her painting, ‘Return of a Knight in Armour’, sold for £67,000 in 2023 at a Dawsons auction.
‘Return of a Knight in Armour’ by Angelica Kauffman
Laura Knight - Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) was an English artist working in the medium of oils, watercolours, etching, engraving, and drypoint. Much of Knight’s work can be classified within the English impressionism movement, but she found a great variety of inspirations throughout her career, not least through her work as a war artist during the Second World War. Her famous work, ‘Self Portrait with Nude’, using a mise-en-abyme effect, depicts Knight within the work, painting a nude model, as a reaction to the barriers and restrictions often placed against female artists at the time. This work is a reflection of Knight’s broader influence in establishing women within the visual art world. Earlier this year, Knight’s self-portrait, drawn in pencil, sold for £1,400 at a Dawsons auction.
Dame Laura Knight, RA, RWS (British, 1877-1970), self portrait, pencil on paper
Mary Fedden – Mary Fedden (1915-2012) was a British artist hailing from Bristol. After studying at the Slade School of Art in London, she found a career painting portraits, and subsequently stage and propaganda painting during the Second World War. From 1947 onwards, she found herself presenting regular exhibitions, adding to her portrait work with still life and flower paintings. Fedden’s 1992 work, ‘Cat & Egg’, sold for £3,000 at Dawsons in 2021.
Mary Fedden OBE, RA, RWA (1915-2012), 'Cat & Egg'
Elisabeth Frink – Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993) was an English sculptor and printmaker. Inspired greatly by the events of the Second World War, many of her early works depict images of men and birds alike, felled by injuries and violence. Later, her works began to find focus in her unique sculpting technique, inspiring the Frink School of Figurative Sculpture, which ran from 1996-2005. Frink’s works have performed increasingly well at auction in the past few years including her drawing, ‘Long-Eared Owl’, which sold for £1,500 at Dawson’s in 2021. Notably, a collection of eleven of her works, consisting of seven bronze sculptures and four paper works, sold at auction for £255,000 in 2023.
Barbara Hepworth – Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) was an English artist and sculpture, and a leading figure in the Modernist movement. She was a key figure in the St Ives School, a set of artists who resided in St Ives together during and after the Second World War. She is perhaps most famous for her work ‘Two Forms (Divided Circle)’, a bronze sculpture completed in 1969, of which six copies were made. Hepworth’s bronze sculpture, ‘Two Forms (Atlantic)’, sold for £36,000 at a Dawsons auction in 2022.
Barbara Hepwroth - 'Two Forms (Atlantic)’
Bridget Riley - Bridget Riley (b.1931) is an English painter known for optical art. Following attendance at the Royal College of Art, she has focalised her career around geometric works, producing dynamic and disorientating pieces, often in monochrome. Over the past five years, Riley’s works have nearly doubled in sales, including her 1974 work, ‘Gala’, which sold for a staggering £4.4 million in 2022.
As has been demonstrated above, in spite of their underrepresentation, many female artists have nonetheless found success in a market saturated by male contemporaries, and at auction their works perform exponentially better year upon year. If you have a work produced by any of the artists mentioned above, or by another prominent female artist, you should obtain a professional valuation to examine the quality and condition of the item. For this, there is no better choice than a reputable international auction business like Dawsons. We provide thoughtful and expert valuations for artworks, specialising in Modern & Contemporary Art, a service offered both through online and in-person consultations.
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