“Self-Portrait” by Catharina van Hemessen
“Self-Portrait” by Catharina van Hemessen depicts the artist when she was 20 years old. It is considered the first self-portrait of any artist depicted working at an easel.
Her father, Jan Sanders van Hemessen was a painter in Antwerp and her teacher. This portrait, created in 1548, shows the artist in the early stages of painting a portrait.
She was a successful painter, and her paintings can be found at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery, London, and the Kunstmuseum Basel.
Her paintings have a quiet dignity to them and tend to be small with plain dark backgrounds that provide no sense of location or space.
Catharina van Hemessen
Catharina van Hemessen (1528 – 1587) was a Flemish Renaissance painter. She is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom there are verifiable surviving artworks.
She is known for a series of small scale female portraits completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s and a few religious compositions.
“Self-Portrait” by Catharina van Hemessen
- Title: Self-Portrait
- Artist: Catharina van Hemessen
- Year: 1548
- Medium: tempera on oak panel
- Dimensions: Height: 32 cm (12.5 in); Width: 25 cm (9.8 in)
- Museum: Kunstmuseum Basel
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- Rosa Bonheur (1822 – 1899)
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- Artists and their Art
- Women in the Arts
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“Every artist was first an amateur.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Photo Credit: 1) Gerrit Dou / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons; Barent Fabritius / Public domain; François Boucher / Public domain; Rembrandt / Public domain; Adriaen van Ostade / Public domain; Catharina van Hemessen / Public domain
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