Survival of the Feminine

Anna Lawrence | Survival of the Feminine | The Female Impact | University of Amsterdam, Art History | Dr. Judith Noorman & Prof. Frans Grijzenhout | September 2021 – September 2027 | a.m.lawernce@uva.nl

 

Anna Lawrence is an external PhD-candidate studying the conditions of art production and reception for female artists in Netherlands during the seventeenth century. Building on existing research that has explored how male artists strove for success and recognition, she investigates the extent to which Dutch artists’ success strategies were gendered. Her research shows how individual women leveraged their specific conditions in order benefit their artistic practice, earn appreciation from contemporaries, and have their work collected and preserved. Taking Maria van Oosterwijck’s life and oeuvre as a primary case study allows for an in-depth analysis of the parameters of one woman’s agency. This facilitates a detailed understanding of what was and was not possible a female artist of the time. From there, Anna’s research situates Van Oosterwijck within the broader context of female artistic production in the seventeenth century by comparing her choices to the choices other female artists were in a position to make.