First ever oil painting depicting an artist at work to star in female Old Master exhibition

"The first-ever exhibition on Europe's most important early female painter, Catharina van Hemessen, will open later this year in Antwerp and come to London in 2027. It starts at the (15 October-31 January 2027), a museum of 16th- and 17th- century Flemish art in the city where she worked, and then goes in a more focused form to the National Gallery (4 March-30 May 2027)."

"Catharina was the daughter of Jan Sanders van Hemessen, an Antwerp Mannerist painter who was influenced by Italian Renaissance art. Her greatest painting, at the Kunstmuseum Basel, is a relatively little-known 1548 work, which represents the earliest known self-portrait by a female artist. Even more significantly, it is the earliest surviving oil painting which depicts an artist (of any gender) at work-with their easel, brushes, palette and mahlstick."

"Finally, she is the earliest known female artist to sign her panel paintings, which she usually did prominently. The Latin inscription in the background of her self-portrait reads: "I Catharina van Hemessen have painted myself/1548/Her age 20." To add to the achievement, Self-portrait at the Easel was painted at a very young age. Ariane Mensger, an Old Master curator at the Kunstmuseum Basel with a special interest in female artists, describes the work as "an important art-historical document, both in terms of the self-image of female painters and the practice of painting itself"."

The exhibition on Catharina van Hemessen opens in Antwerp (15 October–31 January 2027) and travels to the National Gallery in London (4 March–30 May 2027). Snijders & Rockox House will reassemble most of Van Hemessen’s surviving works, alongside pieces by her father Jan Sanders van Hemessen. The Kunstmuseum Basel holds her 1548 Self-portrait at the Easel, the earliest known self-portrait by a female artist and the earliest surviving oil painting showing an artist at work. Van Hemessen signed her panel paintings prominently, and archival research is underway into her artistic family and possible artist brothers.

Read at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events