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end notes
FORGOTTEN WOMEN ARTISTS #4: Michaelina Wautier: entering the limelight after 300 years

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[1]
Katlijne Van der Stighelen, “Doing justice to an artist no-one knows is quite an undertaking”, Apollo Magazine, 2 July 2018 https://www.apollo-magazine.com/doing-justice-to-an-artist-no-one-knows-is-quite-an-undertaking/
[2] Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Michaelina Wautier 1604-1689 Glorifying a Forgotten Talent, BAI, Kontich, 2018. This invaluable book, the principal source of information on the artist, accompanied the 2018 retrospective exhibition in Antwerp, ‘Michaelina Wautier, Baroque’s Leading Lady’, which was curated by Van der Stighelen. I have drawn heavily on it in the preparation of this article.
[3] Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 25.
[4] Michaelina’ brother Charles actually painted a portrait of Leopold Wilhelm in 1655: Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 27.
[5] The other three were two portraits of St Joachim and one of St Joseph: Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 53, 63.
[6] There is also an entry in the accounts book of Adam-Pierre de la Grenée, official dance-master to the Brussels Court, recording his purchase of a work from “Madamoiselle Woutier”, in January 1650: Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 296-7.
[7] Such as The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine.
[8] Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 36.
[9] Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 46.
[10] By Walter Shaw Sparrow in his monumental Women Painters of the World, 1905.
[11] Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 41ff.
[12] Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 43.
[13] Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 45.
[14] Germaine Greer, The Obstacle Race: The fortunes of women painters and their work, Picador, London, 1981; Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 254, 352.
[15] Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2, at 46.
[15A] However, a partly-finished and less impressive “Portrait Historie” (c 1650), attributed to Michaelina Wautier, failed to sell at auction in December 2018: Blount Artinfo, 25 December 2018 
https://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/3450158/a-long-lost-michaelina-wautier-painting-failed-to-get-a-buyer
[16] Van der Stighelen, op cit note 1.
[17] The Art Newspaper, 20 June 2018, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/new-discovery-by-baroque-s-forgotten-female-master-michaelina-wautier-added-to-recently-opened-first-exhibition
[18] "MFA Boston to Open Suite of Seven Renovated Galleries Dedicated to New Displays and Interpretation of Dutch and Flemish Art", 18 November 2021, https://www.mfa.org/press-release/dutch-and-flemish-art; Katrijn Van Bragt, “Six Paintings by 17th century artist Michaelina Wautier sought by Rubens House”, 26 April 2017 https://www.codart.nl/art-works/six-paintings-17th-century-artist-michaelina-wautier-sought-rubens-house/
[19] Ben Van Beneden, “Acknowledgements” in Van der Stighelen, op cit note 2.
​
© Philip McCouat 2019. First published April 2019, updated December 2021.

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