Women Painters of the World: From the Time of Caterina Vigri, 1413-1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the Present Day

This book is an act of historical justice dressed as reference work. Assembled in 1905 by Walter Shaw Sparrow, it stands as a deliberate refutation of the lazy assumption that women's artistic achievements have been 'second-rate.' Sparrow spent years tracking down painters across Italy, England, France, Spain, America, and beyond, documenting hundreds of artists whose names had been systematically erased from art history. The book contains over 300 images of works by more than 200 painters, most born in the nineteenth century, many of whom won medals at international exhibitions. Starting with Caterina Vigri, the fifteenth-century nun-painter, and extending to Rosa Bonheur, this volume proves something uncomfortable to the male-dominated art establishment: that women painted, women excelled, and women were ignored. More than a century later, it remains essential reading, not as a relic but as evidence. The difficulty Sparrow faced in gathering these images was immense - no internet, no online galleries, often only rumor and trace evidence to follow. That he succeeded at all feels almost miraculous.