Little known during her lifetime, American artist Alice Neel is now regarded as one of the most radical painters of the twentieth century. A champion of social justice, she painted still lifes, cityscapes, landscapes and the people she encountered on the streets of New York, from her family and friends to Puerto Rican immigrants, homosexual couples, single mothers and African American writers. “For me, people come first,” Neel once said. “I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.” Devoid of any sentimentality, this striking portrait of the American feminist, activist and artist Irene Peslikis is evidence of Neel’s unflinching approach to her subjects. Peslikis, a founder of the New York Feminist Art Institute, presides over a worn purple chair like a self-possessed sovereign of bohemia. Peslikis’s right leg hangs over the armrest while her curling right arm shows off an unshaven armpit. Her brownish-black eyes confront us with a glare that is vulnerable, yet not uninviting, as though she is too afraid to ask, “Who the hell are you?” Neel was born in Merion Square, Pennsylvania and attended the Philadelphia School of Design. In 1925, she married Cuban painter Carlos Enriquez and moved to Havana, where she participated in the avant-garde art scene. In 1927, Neel and her husband moved back to New York. They separated in 1930 and Enriquez moved back to Cuba, taking their daughter with him. She saw her daughter only twice during her lifetime after that, and never saw her husband again. In 1931, after spending time in a psychiatric hospital, Neel returned to New York and settled in Greenwich Village. In the 1930s, she became one of the first artists to work for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Starting in the 1970s, Neel made a series of portraits of women who were feminists and political activists such as Irene Peslikis, Kate Millett (1970), Adrienne Rich (1973) and Faith Ringgold (1977).

Marxist Girl (Irene Peslikis) by Alice Neel (American) - Oil on canvas / 1972 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) #womeninart #womanartist #AliceNeel #art #artwork #portraitofawoman #womensart #oilpainting #neel #femaleartist #themet #metny #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist #MetropolitanMuseumofArt

More than meets the eye in this Harlem Renaissance painting due to its carefully chosen composition and objects conveying some of Waring’s varied personal, artistic, and activist interests—like the yellow backdrop that covers all but a fragment of a watercolor, possibly inspired by Waring’s travels in the south of France. The artist's careful attention to the pomegranate points to the fruit’s symbolism as an emblem of prosperity, fertility, and sensuality in Greek myths and biblical and ancient Egyptian texts which made it popular for painters and authors during this era. Waring was primarily recognized as an illustrator, like her covers for NAACP’s Crisis magazine, but her paintings are growing in popularity and recognition as the spotlight on long-underappreciated African American women artists shines brighter. The unnamed young Black woman in the portrait is captured in a moment of somber stillness. She calmly sits in a chair as she casually rests her left elbow on a small table with a red bowl of persimmons and pomegranates next to an empty white vase; however, her gaze directly at us with large focused eyes evokes a sense of unspoken appeal. Her short cropped hair is fashionable and parted in the center, but our attention is drawn via her rosy cheeks and beautiful dark skin to her gaze. Her black dress with puffy shoulders and giant white lace collar are refined, but not flashy ... so that our attention is on, as the title says, a "Girl with Pomegranate."

Girl with Pomegranate by Laura Wheeler Waring (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1940 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) #womeninart #art #fineart #portrait #oilpainting #metny #LauraWheelerWaring #womensart #portraitofawoman #portraitofagirl #womanartist #africanamericanartist #africanamericanart

Although intended for public display, Lawrence's Elizabeth Farren, shown in 1790 under the title “Portrait of an Actress,” is perhaps more intimate than many modern family photographs. The Irish actress Farren made her London debut in 1777 and soon became a very popular comic performer. This portrait depicts her as an elegant young woman at the height of her career, before she retired from the stage to marry her aristocratic protector. Lawrence’s bold brushwork captures the sheen of satin and the plushness of fur, but his vivid, romantic painting displeased the actress, who asked the twenty-one-year-old artist to alter the depiction of her unfashionably slender figure. Elizabeth lamented that her friends thought she looked too thin and bent in the middle. Her face, nose, and neck were long, her shoulders and hips unfashionably narrow. Lawrence rather cleverly disguised certain of these traits, and the visual evidence suggests that he never took the canvas back to correct what she perceived to be its defects. Lawrence, an amateur orator and actor, brought to Elizabeth Farren's likeness the implication of motion and speech and an awareness of the role of the viewer in an imagined dialogue. The slight torsion of her upper body and her sidelong glance suggest collusion between the observer and the observed. The saturated coloring of the landscape background and the low horizon line draw attention to her quirky pose and the delicate powdery hues reserved for her face and elegant figure. She advances toward, rather than occupying, the center of the picture field, her torso sharply foreshortened, as if seen from below. Her skirt trails off the canvas in the foreground. The slight formal imbalance confers vitality, and the surface, too, is animated by the energetic and flexible combination of veils of transparent tone, highlights and details modeled in trails and globs of pigment, plus raking strokes made with the bristles of a dry brush.

Elizabeth Farren, Later Countess of Derby by Sir Thomas Lawrence (British) - Oil on canvas / 1790 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) #womeninart #art #portrait #fineart #SirThomasLawrence #oilpainting #ThomasLawrence #portraitofawoman #irishactress #britishartist #themet #met #metny #lawrence

Over a career that spanned more than six decades, Ruysch attracted royal patronage, high prices, and effusive praise for her still-life paintings. Here, she collaborated with Van Musscher, a portraitist, contributing an extravagant floral arrangement to his depiction of the painter in her studio. A poetic inscription on the album of floral studies in the foreground documents the collaboration and invites viewers to evaluate the two artists’ respective merits. As one of the most celebrated Dutch artists of her time, floral still life painter Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750) became a key figure in contemporary botanical art. Her artwork was found in collections owned by the Amsterdam elite, the Medici family, and Elector Johann Wilhelm Von der Pfalz (1658–1716). Influenced by Dutch seventeenth-century artists such as Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606–1684), she used colour and light to create perspective, and her dynamic compositions were influenced by her teacher, Willem van Aelst (1627–1683). In addition, her artworks testify to her botanical knowledge. She portrayed exotic and local flowers in different stages of growth, which she was able to observe and study in great detail in the hortus botanicus where her father, Frederick Ruysch (1638–1731), taught botany. In Still Life with Flowers in a Glass Vase (c. 1690–1720) and Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Table Top (1716), for example, each flower petal and leaf is depicted with great precision.

Rachel Ruysch by Rachel Ruysch (Dutch) and Michiel van Musscher (Dutch) - Oil on canvas / 1692 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) #womeninart #womanartist #met #metny #art #artwork #womensart #painting #oilpainting #themet #portrait #fineart #dutchart #bskyart #artoftheday #oldmasters #dutch

The Princesse de Broglie is shown in three-quarters view, her arms resting on a lavishly upholstered, pale gold damask easy chair. Her head is tilted to the viewer's left, and her black hair tightly pulled back and bound by blue satin ribbons. She is pictured in the family home at 90 rue de l'Université in Paris, in an evening dress that implies she is about to go out for the evening. She is dressed in the height of contemporary Parisian fashion, in particular the opulent Second Empire fashions then current in clothing, jewelry and furniture. She wears a gold embroidered evening shawl, and an off-the-shoulder, pale blue satin hoop skirt gown, with short sleeves and a lace and ribbon trim, highly emblematic of 1850s evening dress. Her hair is covered with a sheer frill trimmed with matching blue ribbon knots, and is swept back parted in the middle. Her adornments include a necklace, tasseled earrings and bracelets on each wrist. Her pendant with cross pattée signifies her piety. Her earrings are made from cascades of small natural pearls. Her left wrist has a bracelet of roped pearls; the one on her right is made of enameled red and diamond set gold links. The necklace is held by a double looped chain holding a gold pendant, which appears to be an original Roman bulla. Her neck is unusually elongated, and her arms seem boneless or dislocated, while her left forearm appears to be under modeled and lacking in musculature. Her oval face and her expression are idealised, lacking the level of detail given to other foreground elements, although she was widely known as a great beauty. The painting is composed of gray, white, blue, yellow and gold hues.

La Princesse de Broglie (Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French) - Oil on canvas / 1853 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, NY) #womeninart #fineart #ingres #themet #painting #art #portrait #bskyart #artwork #french #bsky.art #portraitofawoman #metny

The full-length portrait of Susan Walker Morse (1819–1885), the eldest daughter of the artist, was painted during the crucial years of the invention of Morse's telegraph (ca. 1835–37). The painting shows the girl in an elegant off-the-shoulder beige dress with lace fringe at about the age of seventeen, sitting with a sketchbook in her lap and pencil in hand with her eyes raised in contemplation. Morse drew on the full extent of his European training, taking from the works of Rubens and Veronese in what was to be an ambitious farewell to his career as an artist. Stymied by a lack of financial success, he abandoned painting for science and inventing. This painting was first exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1837, where it won enthusiastic praise.

Susan Walker Morse (The Muse) by Samuel F. B. Morse (American) - Oul on canvas / c. 1836–1837 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY) #womeninart #portrait #art #themet #painting #morse #metny #artoftheday #themuse #muse #americanart #americanpainting #met