Judith Leyster. Self-Portrait, c.1630. Oil on canvas, Unframed 74.6 × 65.1 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, 1949.6.1. Courtesy National Gallery.
. It offers paintings, many prints and a handful of sculptures, but dismisses the traditional hierarchy of the so-called fine arts over the decorative arts to include ceramics, silverware and textiles. It also largely ignores the distinction between professional artists and amateurs, featuring private domestic crafts and devotional handiwork made in convents.
The show also includes samplers, those technical displays of a young woman’s best needlework. Here, a precise and graphically powerful map of Europe stands out. It was stitched by a boarding-school student named Elizabeth Hawkins in Britain in 1797. Nearby is a 300-year-old crewelwork bed curtain embroidered with wool, silk and cottonSophia Jane Maria Bonnell and Mary Anne Harvey Bonnell Paper Filigree Cabinet on Stand with Hairwork and Watercolor Panels, c.1789.
The painters, competing in a male realm where individual artists were celebrated, tend to better known, and there are lots of fine paintings and drawings in this exhibition – as well as some not so fine. Flower paintings and portraits dominate, as women could not aspire higher up the hierarchy of genres to religious or historical scenes.