Two Remarkable Female Artists

T his devotional painting of Saint Agnes is an early work by the 17th-century Italian artist, Orsola Maddalena Caccia (1596-1676), who was trained to paint by her father, Guglielmo Caccia, called Moncalvo. At the age of twenty-four, she took her vows and became a nun at a convent in Piedmont. There she established a studio for herself and her five sisters, also nuns, and produced paintings both of religious subjects and still lifes, themselves endowed with spiritual symbolism, to provide a means of support to the institution where she later became abbess.

The subjects chosen by Caccia reflect not only her position as a nun, but the position of female artists at the time more generally. Still life is a genre common to early women painters because they were typically denied access to academic training or nude models from which to learn figure painting. This did not prevent female artists from painting other subjects, however, as the work of Lavinia Fontana, Sofonisba Anguissola, or Artemisia Gentileschi testifies. But these figures were by far the exception to the rule, and they undoubtedly first learnt to depict religious and other subjects through the examples of prints, or works in their fathers’ studios, and used themselves or members of their families to sit for their portraits, before they gained wider recognition and professional commissions.

Many paintings by these artists have been misattributed to men in the centuries that have followed their careers. This is particularly true of Caccia’s work, since she often followed drawings and designs by her father – of which the Saint Agnes is one example. The growing interest in the work of female artists generally, however, is rightly leading to the re-evaluation of the careers and artistic output of these figures, many of whom were widely celebrated during their own lifetimes but have since fallen into obscurity.

The above portrait by Daniel Gardner portrays Anne Seymour Damer (1748-1828), generally regarded as England’s foremost female sculptor of her day. Damer is depicted with the tools of her trade and a clay model for one of her most famous sculptures, A Daughter of Niobe, on which she worked between 1780-81, which are likely the years when the portrait was painted.

Damer showed great interest in sculpture from a young age and became the protégée of Horace Walpole – he was convinced of her genius and promoted her tirelessly. At his death he bequeathed her a life interest in his famed gothic villa Strawberry Hill, where she lived from 1797 to 1811. Damer was born into an aristocratic Whig family with strong literary connections, which had a lasting impact upon her life. Her family connections enabled her to travel widely and she claimed acquaintance with highly influential figures of the day such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir William Hamilton, Sir Horace Mann and Charles James Fox. More extraordinarily she became a close friend and correspondent of Josephine Bonaparte and even visited Napoleon to exchange gifts with him during his exile on the isle of Elba in 1815.

For too long Damer has been classified as a woman who took to sculpting as a hobby. But she is now regarded as an artist who rowed very strongly against an unfavourable critical tide and managed to produce a thoroughly professional body of work despite the odds against her. Among her most notable sculptures are her self-portrait in the Uffizi, Florence, the portrait of her mother Lady Ailesbury, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, as well as her heads of Joseph Banks, of Admiral Lord Nelson, and of Elizabeth Farren, Countess of Derby. Her full-length statue of George III is in the General Register House in Edinburgh.

Damer’s place in queer history is also the subject of growing interest. Her passionate friendship with Mary Berry, whom she had been introduced to by Walpole in 1789, and with whom she lived together in her later years, is recorded in many letters and notebooks, offering a compelling case for viewing their relationship through a queer lens. Even during her lifetime she had a public reputation as a Sapphist (an eighteenth-century term for a woman who has sexual relations with other women) due to her likings for male clothing and demonstrative friendships with other women.

These were publicly noted and satirised by hostile commentators such as Hester Thrale and in the anonymous pamphlet A Sapphick Epistle from Jack Cavendish to the Honourable and most Beautiful, Mrs D— (circa 1770). Damer was a player in major political and intellectual movements of her day, operating within a network of other women with influence. In Gardner's 1775 painting The Three Witches from Macbeth, Damer is depicted alongside Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire and Elizabeth Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne. This group portrait, depicting three of the most politically influential and socially notorious women of the period, is unusual in Gardner’s œuvre and it is possible that either Damer or Melbourne suggested the design.

Past Auction

Old Masters Day Sale

2–8 July 2021 | 2:00 PM BST | London