American artist Irving Ramsey Wiles painted this vertical oil painting of a young woman standing beneath a tree. She leans against a slanted trunk, shoulders relaxed, head tipped slightly right, eyes unfocused in thought. Her dark hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She wears a pale, loose blouse with open collar and full sleeves plus a long grayish skirt. Her arms hang at her side. Dense leaves and grassy ground with tiny yellow blossoms form the backdrop. Broad, soft strokes of olive, brown, and gold tones create a quiet, dappled, daydreaming mood. Diagonal branches frame her with gaps of glowing soft light. Among the leading American painters of the late 19th century, Wiles was admired for refined portraits and evocative outdoor scenes. Trained under American painter William Merritt Chase, Wiles developed a light, impressionistic touch that balanced society portraiture with quieter works exploring mood and atmosphere. In 1889, he became an Associate of the National Academy of Design, presenting a self-portrait in 1890. By 1897, when elected a full Academician, he offered “Day Dreams” as his official diploma painting. Exhibited at the Academy in 1895, it portrays a young woman beneath leafy branches, absorbed in reverie, bathed in dappled sunlight. Critics praised its beauty and atmosphere, and it was even reproduced under the title “Dreaming” as an emblem of “art for art’s sake.” Years later, Wiles reflected with gentle uncertainty: “The title of my diploma picture is, if I remember right, “Sunshine and Shadow.” Anyway that name will do as well as another.” The remark captures both his modesty and the fluidity of his titles, yet the painting’s lyrical stillness secured his reputation at a moment when his career was rising. “Day Dreams” stands as both a personal meditation on beauty and a formal marker of his election into the nation’s artistic elite.

“Day Dreams” by Irving Ramsey Wiles (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1895 - National Academy of Design (New York) #WomenInArt #art #Wiles #IrvingRamseyWiles #DayDream #artText #AmericanArt #DayDreams #OilPainting #portraitofawoman #PaintingofaWoman #BlueskyArt #IrvingWiles #NationalAcademyofDesign

English painter and illustrator Arthur Hughes painted this striking Pre-Raphaelite depiction of young woman reclining in dense green grass, shown close up at half length. Her long copper-red wavy hair fans across the ground and her bosom. She wears a low-cut dark teal bodice with white lace trim and soft, billowing sheer sleeves. Floral bluebells loop her raised left wrist, and she loosely holds another stem near her face. Tiny pink blossoms dot the turf at the top edge. Her pale skin and large blue-gray eyes are rendered with meticulous detail while her hair, the clothing, and individual blades of grass appear crisp with brilliance. As part of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, Hughes was a painter admired for his tender treatment of youth, nature, and romantic subjects. By 1865, when he painted “In the Grass,” Hughes was in his early thirties, already established as one of the movement’s quieter but most poetic voices. He had trained at the Royal Academy Schools and exhibited early successes praised for their lyrical mood and intricate detail. At this point in his life, Hughes was married to his frequent model and muse Tryphena Foord and raising a young family, balancing the financial demands of illustration with the more precarious rewards of painting. “In the Grass” reflects his sensitivity to intimate, almost private moments: a figure woven into nature with an emphasis on stillness, texture, and innocence. Unlike his peers Millais or Hunt, Hughes favored gentleness over drama, creating paintings suffused with quiet melancholy and devotion. Though he never reached the fame of the leading Pre-Raphaelites, he had a lasting impact through his consistency of vision. His illustrations for publications influenced Victorian book art for many years, while his paintings oozing delicacy, emotional resonance, and technical care inspired later artists attuned to symbolic and lyrical imagery.

“In the grass” by Arthur Hughes (British) - Oil on board / 1865 - Sheffield Museums (England) #WomenInArt #art #Hughes #artwork #artText #ArthurHughes #BritishArtist #EnglishArtist #SheffieldMuseums #BlueskyArt #BritishArt #Pre-Raphaelite #PreRaphaelite #PaintingofaWoman #FineArt #OilPainting #1860s

B. Prabha, born Prabha Agge in 1933, in the village of Bela near Nagpur in Maharashtra, India, depicts a rural woman seated in profile against a pale, open background. She wears a green top with a black sari draped across her body, the fabric streaming diagonally in the wind. She has gold earrings, bangles, and a small orange flower tucked into the bun of her black hair. One hand rests near a rounded clay pot beside her. Her elongated neck and arms emphasize grace and stillness, while her gaze is turned away, suggesting peaceful thoughtfulness. Prabha’s "Untitled" embodies her signature vision of rural womanhood. The composition centers on a single seated figure, shown in profile, her elongated form outlined against a pared-down sky-like ground. A black and green sari billows diagonally across the canvas, counterbalancing the calm horizontality of the background. Subtle accents—a flower tucked into her hair, gold jewelry, the curve of an earthen pot—anchor the woman’s identity in everyday village life. Prabha often declared that her aim was to paint “the trauma and tragedy of women,” yet her canvases also convey strength and dignity. Here, the woman’s averted gaze and wind-caught drape suggest a pause between labors: a quiet interiority rarely acknowledged in representations of working-class women. The restrained palette and stylized elongation transform a simple moment into something monumental, allowing viewers to reflect on endurance, beauty, and resilience. Influenced by legendary Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil and European modernists, Prabha forged her own visual language—elegant, empathetic, and socially attuned. This painting exemplifies her lifelong commitment to depicting the realities of women in rural India, preserving their presence in India’s modernist canon while insisting on their individuality and humanity.

"Untitled" by B. Prabha (Indian) - Oil on canvas / Undated - Kerala Museum (Kochi, India) #WomenInArt #art #WomanArtist #WomensArt #FemaleArtist #artwork #artText #WomenArtists #IndianArt #IndianArtist #B.Prabha #Prabha #KeralaMuseum #WomenPaintingWomen #BlueskyArt #Indian #bskyart #PaintingofaWoman

Throughout his life, French artist Edgar Degas (Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas) painted ballet pictures including many produced in the 1890s. In these works, he frequently did not show the ballet stars on stage during their performances, but instead observed the young ballerinas in the ensemble offstage and at their everyday dance rehearsals. Most likely, Degas had a season ticket for the Opéra Garnier in Paris, which opened in 1875, and thus also had access to behind the scenes and to the practice room of the dancers, the so-called foyer. He commonly captured the atmosphere of the rehearsals in fleeting moments, showing the young women between their dances. He portrays them standing or sitting, exhausted, straightening their tutus, or even adjusting their shoulder straps, as is the case here in the “Bremen Dancer” (which this pastel painting is sometimes called because it is part of the collection at the art museum in Bremen, Germany). Close-up, firmly embedded in the narrow picture detail, the young female dancer dynamically extends her elbow into the foreground, the kind of moment that Degas captures in several works, one that reveals his particular interest in depicting sequences of movement. In many places, the pastel has merely been sketched, revealing the bare paper ground. Degas regarded this work as finished, however—attested to by his signature at the lower right—selling this artwork while he was still alive. Although Degas is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rejected the term, preferring to be called a Realist; nor did he paint outdoors as many Impressionists did. More than half of Degas works depict dancers. He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement. In addition to ballet dancers and bathing women, Degas often painted racehorses and racing jockeys, as well as portraits. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and their portrayal of human isolation.

Dancer by Edgar Degas (French) - Pastel on ocher-colored cardboard / c. 1895-1899 - Kunsthalle Bremen (Germany) #womeninart #art #pastel #EdgarDegas #dancer #ballet #artwork #womensart #ballerina #Degas #KunsthalleBremen #FrenchArt #pastelart #FrenchArtist #impressionism #paintingofawoman #bskyart

A light-skinned woman, her thin hair tightly wrapped in a white scarf, looks forward with teary eyes and a toothless smile. The urban poor of Rome and the peasants of the neighboring countryside inspired Flemish artist Michael Sweerts during his stay in Italy in the mid-1600s. The practice of painting the lower classes was relatively new at the time, and pictures of the poor were often derisive caricatures. Sweerts treated his subject with compassion, vividly capturing the woman's inner beauty while accurately recording her external appearance: the loose skin, thinning hair, and wart on the left side of her face. Although the painting is highly finished, Sweerts's rich brushwork is evident in alternately blended and separated strokes of different shades, creating a strong sense of three-dimensional form. This brushwork is especially striking in the head scarf and the collar. Though a Flemish painter Michael Sweerts worked in Italy, Syria, and India. By the age of twenty-eight, Sweerts was living in Rome and was a member of the painters' academy there. In subsequent years, Sweerts worked as a representative at the papal customs house, collecting wool for a wealthy Antwerp merchant. At the age of thirty-eight, he returned to his native Brussels, where he founded an academy of drawing and joined the painters' guild. Almost all of Sweerts's existing paintings date from his time in Rome. Sweerts painted religious and secular works, but he is most noted for his realistic portraits like this one. His paintings exhibited his interest not only in the observation of daily life but also in the study of classical sculpture, which he pursued in Rome. Four years after returning to Brussels, Sweerts left again, this time to Asia as a missionary. In Aleppo, Syria, Sweerts painted and proselytized, but he was dismissed from the mission after only two years because of his unstable and undisciplined character. He eventually reached Goa, India, where he died two years later.

Head of a Woman by Michael Sweerts (Flemish) - Oil on panel / c. 1654 - Getty Museum (Los Angeles, California) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #womensart #MichaelSweerts #artwork #portraitofawoman #FlemishArtist #FlemishArt #oldage #GettyCenter #GettyMuseum #Sweerts #TheGetty #paintingofawoman

Painted by Japanese artist Eisaku Wada (和田英作), an old woman walks supported by an umbrella with the sun setting. Dressed in traditional Japanese clothing for the early 1900s and hunched over with age she makes her way to her destination. There is a quiet sadness to this portrait as she looks at the ground, walking alone. Where is she going? What kind of hardships has she encountered? Wada's depiction of a radiant body of water beneath a setting sun, focuses on the single figure of an old Japanese woman, bent in profile on the right, her left hand gripping her long umbrella as if it were a cane, while she focuses on the path in front of her feet. She walks along a dirt road, bordered by grasses, plants, and a bit of shore that gives way to luminous gold and rosy waters, illuminated by the horizontal line of the sun's light intersecting the canvas on the right. The contrast between the flowing forms of water and land and the upright form of the woman and vertical line of reflected sun suggests the transitory nature of human life. The woman ignores the sublime view, focusing intently at the step before her, and the setting sun alludes to her age, still leaning forward into the flow of the water and road but already bent by natural forces. The painting's subject, a humble person in an ordinary activity, draws upon the Edo period's portrayal of everyday life and Japanese leisure activities Yet, this work's effect is almost photographic, and shows the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage's Naturalism, to which Wada as part of the first graduating class of the Tokyo Art School's Western Painting Department was introduced while studying with Kuroda. Wada was a luminary of the yōga (洋画 or Western-style) art scene in the late Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa eras. As a member of the Japan Art Academy and an Imperial Household Artist, he was a recipient of numerous awards and honors in Japan throughout the first half of 20th century.

おうな (Old Woman) by 和田栄作 (Wada Eisaku, Japanese) - Oil on canvas / 1908 - The National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo, Japan) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #和田栄作 #WadaEisaku #artwork #JapaneseArtist #JapaneseArt #womensart #NationalMuseumofModernArt #東京国立近代美術館 #fineart #paintingofawoman #oldage #walking

An indigenous Taos woman in a purple-blue dress with red sash, tall loose off-white boots, and a long black shawl covering her head and shoulders stands in an adobe house interior with a black ceramic jug to her right and a blue door behind her to her left. Kenneth Miller Adams painted his portraits of Pueblo Indians from life. Born in 1897 in Topeka, Kansas, his childhood artistic efforts were confined to copying paintings from books. The aspiring painter eventually found his way to programs at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York before eventually travelling to Europe from 1921-23. In 1924, Adams traveled for the first time to Taos, New Mexico, in search of honest subject matter. He soon fell in love with the unique landscape and light, as well as the quality of life in the region. The young painter was quickly brought into the famed Taos Society of Artists art colony and, by 1927, was formally accepted into their ranks, becoming both the youngest and last member of this esteemed movement. Adams reveled in the area, its clear atmosphere, distinct architecture and unique inhabitants. Adams became an Associate of the National Academy of Design by the time he was twenty eight and worked for the Federal Art Project in the 1930s. Over the course of his career he completed murals in Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico and held teaching positions at several schools.

Taos Woman by Kenneth M. Adams (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1924 - Tacoma Art Museum (Washington) #womeninart #taos #art #oilpainting #womensart #tacomaartmuseum #KennethmAdams #fineart #portrait #paintingofawoman #indigenous #americanart #nativeamerican #taospueblo #tam #americanartist #bskyart

Lê Phô was one of the first Vietnamese artists to graduate from the École des Beaux Arts de l’Indochine (Indochina School of Fine Arts) in Hanoi, and his work represents the ambitious artistic experiments of his generation. In Jeune fille à la rose (1942), Phô depicts a young woman with a serene expression, dressed in traditional attire, set against a backdrop of a stylized garden and buildings. It is a moody painting utilizing a muted color palette of grays, beiges, and greens. The brushstrokes are visible, giving the painting a textured quality that is soft and evocative. The Vietnamese woman is presented with soft and rounded features with her eyes almost closed looking down with a calm and peaceful expression. Her red lips stand out from the light beige-gray, loose-fitting traditional clothing that harmonizes well with the background subtly rendered, suggesting a courtyard, with light and shadow plus buildings at a distance used to create depth and a sense of space. The soft colors and brushstrokes create a sense of tranquility. Her pose is slightly turned towards her right, and her gaze is directed downward, creating a sense of introspection although she seems quite relaxed.

Jeune fille à la rose (Young girl with a rose) by Lê Phô (Vietnamese) - Pigment and Ink on silk / 1942 - Musée Cernuschi (Paris, France) #womeninart #art #lepho #artwork #vietnameseart #silkart #painting #womensart #MuséeCernuschi #LêPhô #vietnameseartist #fineart #paintingofawoman #vietnamese #rose

Miguel Carbonell Selva's painting "Death of Sappho," created in 1881, is a dramatic portrayal of the ancient Greek poet Sappho at the moment she is about to end her life. Sappho, known for her lyrical poetry and often referred to as the "Tenth Muse," lived on the island of Lesbos around 630–570 BC. The painting captures the legendary story of Sappho's leap from the cliffs of Leucadia into the sea, driven by unrequited love for a ferryman named Phaon. Selva's work is rich in emotion and symbolism. He depicts Sappho standing on the edge of the cliff at sunset, her face filled with sorrow and resolve. The setting sun enhances the scene's melancholic atmosphere, symbolizing the end of her life and her final farewell to the world. The painter's use of light and shadow, along with the detailed depiction of Sappho's flowing garments and the rugged cliff, adds to the dramatic intensity of the moment. The painting reflects the 19th-century fascination with classical themes and tragic heroines. It stands as a powerful reminder of the timeless impact of Sappho's poetry and her enduring legacy in literature and art.

Death of Sappho by Miguel Carbonell Selva (Spanish) - Oil on canvas / 1881 #womeninart #tragedy #painting #catalanart #MiguelCarbonellSelva #art #womensart #poetry #artwork #spanishart #artoftheday #muse #fineart #greekpoetry #sapphic #bskyart #selva #bsky.art #paintingofawoman #sappho

A glamorous woman wearing black shoes, black pants, black belt, black gloves, black cape, black scarf, and red shirt plus dark sunglasses stands with ankles crossed while leaning against a golden beige automobile while holding a cigarette upright in her right hand and left hand on the window sill of the car as she looks to her left. This painting was originally located in Jack Vettriano’s London flat. Painted over a cupboard door, it depicts an old love of the artist’s. Jack Vettriano described, ‘To cover up the boiler cupboard I painted directly over the door. It was inspired by a love affair I had with a married woman some time ago and I called it Suddenly Last Summer.’

Suddenly Last Summer by Jack Vettriano (Scottish) - Oil on panel / 1999 #womeninart #painting #art #oilpainting #artwork #jackvettriano #artoftheday #scottishartist #vettriano #bsky.art #bskyart #womansart #paintingofawoman #vibes #smoking #scottishpainter #fineart

Lost in her thoughts, a languid young woman lounges on a smooth, veined marble bench terminating in a herm figure, probably representing the type of the poet Homer with its heavy beard, thick hair, and narrow ribbon around the head. The cloth wrapped around her hips, over her silky chiton, or tunic, is not an authentic element of ancient costume, but it bears a repeated palmette border based on a common ancient design. The fluffy, spotted animal fur is almost tactile but has no specific connection to antiquity. John William Godward probably included it for the delight of juxtaposing such varied textures and colors. He painted the silk, fur, and marble with great accuracy, approaching photographic realism, and arranged them to enliven the subtly colored composition. The alternate name for the neoclassical painting is “In the Days of Sappho.” Godward specialized in portraying women alone in settings suggesting antiquity, usually decorative, dark-haired beauties in diaphanous gowns created with ingenious contrasts of colors and flesh tones.

Reverie by John William Godward (British) - Oil on canvas / 1904 - The Getty Center (Los Angeles, California) #womeninart #painting #gettycenter #godward #art #fineart #thegetty #britishartist #artwork #oilpainting #johnwilliamgodward #bskyart #bsky.art #neoclassical #artoftheday #paintingofawoman

A woman with wavy green hair looks to her left while gently using her right hand to touch the palm of her left hand. Her bare shoulders are exposed by a dark green dress with orange plus designs.

Untitled portrait by Lance Wood Hart (American) - Gouache, black ink, and colored pencil or pastel on paper / 1929 - Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (Eugene, Oregon) #art #womeninart #lancewoodhart #jordanschnitzermuseumofart #uofo #eugeneoregon #paintingofawoman #artoftheday #painting

A woman wearing a bright red antique-style dress slightly rippling like a flag wrapped with a wide gold-patterned cloth belt sits with ankles crossed and open-toe sandals while looking anxiously to her right with her right hand shading her eyes as she scans the horizon waiting to hear from a loved one. Her look contrasts sharply with the smooth marble balustrade supporting her and the coastal seascape in the background.

The Signal by John William Godward (British) - Oil on canvas / 1899 - Getty Museum (Los Angeles, California) #art #painting #johnwilliamgodward #womeninart #britishartist #thesignal #gettymuseum #artoftheday #thegetty #paintingofawoman

A woman with short brown hair and serene expression slumps in a chair leaning forward with her arms laying flat on a desk while resting her head on her hands staring at fish swimming in a small glass fishbowl

Woman before an Aquarium by Henri Matisse (French) - Oil on canvas / 1921–1923 - Art Institute of Chicago (Illinois) #matisse #painting #womeninart #artic #artinchicago #frenchart #henrimatisse #art #paintingofawoman

Young woman in a blue and white dress sitting facing left with her head resting on her lady hand

Spanish Woman by Gustave Courbet (French) - Oil on canvas / 1855 - Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Museum of Art #painting #spanishwoman #gustavecourbet #art #womeninart #courbet #paintingofawoman #oilpainting #frenchart

Colorful Pablo Picasso oil on canvas painting of a woman with black hair wearing a hat with a plume

Woman with a Plumed Hat by Pablo Picasso (Spanish) - Oil on canvas / 1901 - McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, Texas) #picasso #art #womeninart #mcnayartmuseum #painting #paintingofawoman #sanantonio #hat