Go to pretty well any bookshop and you will find prominent displays of Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art without Men. Originally published in 2022, and now in its tenth printing, sales of the book have presumably proved so gratifying to the publisher that they have felt no need to issue a cheaper, paperback edition. But it’s certainly not just Hessel. Some bookshops make a significant feature of books about women in art. However, while the extent of the displays may represent an innovation, I am not so sure that there is anything new about the individual books. Linda Nochlin’s extended essay:  Why have there been no great women artists? is a seminal text of feminist art history, but the edition currently available was published in 2021 to mark its 50th anniversary. In five years’ time it will be the 50th anniversary of Germaine Greer’s: The Obstacle Race: The fortunes of women painters and their work.  And in her review of Greer’s book in the Times Literary Supplement Anita Brookner referred to a compendium of essays and photographs entitled Women Painters of the World. Edited by Walter Shaw

Sparrow, it was published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1905, priced five shillings.

Meanwhile exhibitions devoted to women artists seem to proliferate. Back in March I visited the Angelica Kauffmann show at the Royal Academy, a suitable venue as she was one of only two female founder members in 1769. Perfectly decent work, not strikingly original. The irony, I suppose, is that if these paintings were by a man we would not now be looking at them. The same could surely be said of the paintings by Dorothy Hepworth (originally credited to her partner Patricia Preece) that formed the subject of an exhibition at Charleston Lewes in April. The show began with a lurid video. We were informed that the Preece/Hepworth ‘narrative’ had previously been ‘owned by others’. Furthermore, they had been the victims of ‘patriarchal narratives’ disseminated ‘ by spurned lovers’. It was a story that had been ‘previously told only in whispers’. What on earth all this meant was no clearer to me when I left the exhibition 45 minutes later. What would have been of interest was to discover how Patricia Preece persuaded various members of the Bloomsbury Group, particularly Roger Fry, to give considerable support to the art. But again, I left none the wiser. I think a certain amount of arm-twisting must have been going on, but what facilitated the arm-twisting? Clive Bell’s rather grudging endorsement, unfortunately on view in a display cabinet, included the rather painful assessment: ‘The art of Patricia Preece is limited and, some may think, monotonous’.

Never mind.  The future is bright. I am especially looking forward to the Dora Carrington show at Pallant House, Chichester (until 27 April 2025) and even more so to Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious at Dulwich Picture Gallery (until May 26). In 1987 I bought a splendid book entitled The Wood-Engravings of Tirzah Ravilious at the old Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne. Limited to 1,000 copies it now changes hands at very imaginative prices. So the Dulwich catalogue will prove a much more affordable alternative.