Have there ever been great female composers, artists or chefs in history?

Question

Why don't we hear of great female concert pianists or cooks or Renaissance painters in history? Is there a female equivalent of Beethoven or Renoir?

Answer 1

Well, as for composers or chefs I can't really answer your question, because I don't know much about those things, but in terms of visual arts, a few spring to mind.
The most obvious is Mary Cassatt, the only American to paint in Paris with the french impressionists. She's not renaissance by any means, but she was an excellent painter. To go a little further back, a woman named Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun was a painter in the french courts in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and was actually exiled after the French revolution (I forget which one exactly, very close to the year 1800). She did incredible portraits of monarchs, especially women, whom she often painted with an incredible energy. The further back you go the more difficult it gets to find women artists. One of the reasons was that women simply were not allowed to get formal training in Europe, and weren't allowed to be in the Academie in France. Women's art was not very common because of this lack of training, and any art done by women for personal reasons wasn't really considered anything for the history books. The people recording what "great" art was just weren't interested in recording art made by women.
Even in the twentieth century, with art schools mostly women and art considered an emotional and womanly thing, famous artists are often men. Jackson Pollack is a household name, but what about his wife, Lee Krasner, also an excellent and revolutionary painter? Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Miro, Joan Mitchell, the Guerrilla Girls, these are all twentieth century women artists I hope you'll check out. To get really contemporary, Nikki Lee is a pretty awesome photographer. Again not renaissance, but I hope you will take a look at them!

Answer 2

I must point out that Joan Miro, whom a previous respondent mentioned, was a man. It's pronounced like "Juan."

Anyway, it's true that most of the examples I can think of are more modern--Georgia O'Keeffe, for example. Mary Cassatt, of course. But I can't think of anyone during the Renaissance time period.

That doesn't mean that there weren't brilliant women, just that their work was not taken seriously or that they were not permitted to do it, or, most likely, far too busy with domestic duties.

The women who were able to practice these disciplines were probably not as well educated as the men, and certainly would not have received the kind of tutelage and patronage that men would have. So their work may not have survived as well.

You would enjoy reading "A Room of One's Own," by Virginia Woolf, an essay in which she wonders what would have happened had Shakespeare had an equally brilliant sister.

Answer 3

Maire Annetoinette.. Didn't half bake a good cake.. Joan of Arc was famous for her barbecues.
Bodicea was supposed to be a bit of a savage Briton.
And then a lot of people think God is a woman.. Now this dude should be able to do pretty much everything.
Then there was maire curie.. the mother of radiation.

What you have to understand that in the past, child bearing and rearing took up a lot more time than it does now.. Being a woman and "keeping the blood line going" didn't really give you a lot of time to do other stuff...

Answer 4

i will bypass way out on a limb right here. there became an abbess contained in the small city of Bingen am Rhein, through the call of Hildegard. this became contained in the middle a even as, (1098-1179) and so she is time-honored in each and each and every of the chronicles as Hildegard von Bingen. no longer truly became she the Abbess, which meant she became also the manager/ess of the convent, yet she became an expert on herbs and medicines ( so a strategies as they were time-honored in her time) as wellas a composer of many of the song which became sung through her nuns. that isn't any longer song that knocks your socks off, yet in uncomplicated of her outstanding multi-tasking, i presumed i might want to factor out her. yet another who has been forgotten contained in the wash is Alma Mahler. Granted, her songs do not have the gut twisting characteristics that her husband's did, yet they're particularly respectable works, and that i love them more advantageous effective than Fanny's or Clara's. an quite modern-day composer is Libby Larson. She blends the trendy harmonic structure with some very singable cantabile lines. a speedy look on the easy get admission to "women composers" on the wiki will teach us actually thousands of names. a number of the individuals choose researching, so enable's get at it, ladies!

Answer 5

Yes, there have been may female artists in the Romanticism and the Realist stages of art, but I'm not sure of their names. They're probably not famous because women were frowned upon if they ever tried to make a life outside of serving their husbands and children.

Answer 6

Georgia O'Keefe was a great artist, but female artists (music and otherwise) didn't really come out until the 19th and 20th centuries. Mary Shelly wrote Frankinstien and you have Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Answer 7

for the most part there weren't many female equivalents of great men in history. but this is not to say that there is something wrong with women. women weren't given the same opportunities as men. they weren't sent to great schools of music and art like many men of the same period so they were basically set up to fail in those areas.

Answer 8

There are now but back then the fragile male ego kept getting in the way. Women were not allowed to be or do much without some males' permission.Peace.

Answer 9

women weren't invented yet. They didn't exist until 1930. Many Scholars rewrite history to include women in it. Women are just mindless drones with no genitals. Women aren't people like men.

Answer 10

Nope, but that's not to say they are unimportant. Women have the greatest role - mother. Anyone who argues about that has never been a mother. Any mother who might think that, hasn't breastfed her baby. Therein is the crux of my argument.