Maria Bashkirtseff (1858-1884): Maria Bashkirtseff was born in Gavrintsi and died in Paris. She was trained at the Academie Julian in Paris under the tutelage of Jules Lepage and Tony Robert Fleury. She was primarily a potrait painter and sculptor. Her personal account of the struggles of women artists is documented in her published journals. A large number of Bashkirtseff's works were destroyed during the Second World War.
References:
The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, translated and edited by A. Theuriet; Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits by Frances Borzello, pp.114-115; Women Artists: An Illustrated History by Nancy G. Heller, p.106;

Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942): Cecilia Beaux was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and received her art education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.She later trained at the Academie Julian in Paris. Her works were touched with the techniques and philosphy of Impressionism.She painted mostly figures using her friends and family as models. She was widely aclaimed during her lifetime and became the first woman teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Pennsylvania.She was also commissioned during the First World War by the U.S. War Portraits Commission in 1919.
References:
Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits by Frances Borzello, p.137; Women Artists: An Illustrated History by Nancy G. Heller, pp.101-102; Cecelia Beaux and the Art of Portraiture by Tara Leigh Tappert.

Mary Ellen Best (1809-1891): Mary Ellen Best was born in York and died in Darmstadt in 1891. She was primarily a water colorist whose subjects were nearly always women.Best painted most her works between 1828-1840. After this period she appears to have given up painting altogether.
References:
Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits by Frances Borzello, pp.107-108; The World of Mary Ellen Best by C. Davidson.

Anna Bilinska (1857-1893): Anna Bilinska was born in the Ukraine and studied in Russia, Waraw and Paris.A versatile artist, she painted portraits, landscapes as well as seascapes.Her works were widely exhibited and in 1889 she was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle.
References:
Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits by Frances Borzello, pp.119-120.

Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899):Rosa Bonheur was born in Bordeaux.Her first teachers were her parents:her mother, who would die before Bonheur was twelve, taught her to read, write, draw and play the piano. Her father, Raymond Bonheur who was landscape artist of some note himself, continued her artistic education.He was also to play a major role in shaping her feminist and radical ideas regarding androgyny and clothing.She herself was frequently dressed in men's clothes and mantained what John Saslow, in his article on Bonheur, termed a proto-lesbian identity. Her works are mainly of animals. She maintained her own menagerie of animals and honed her animal anatomy skills by visiting slaughter houses.By the age of thirty, Bonheur was already a critical success.She became the first woman ever to win the Legion of Honor.Her spectacular works such as the Horse Fair and Ploughing in the Ninernais were all based on life drawings.Bonheur was in many ways a woman much ahead of her times:besides wearing pants, she cut her hair short, smoked, and rode astride when it was considered more appropriate for womwen to ride side-saddle. At a time when most women were financially dependent, Bonheur earned her own living and became wealthy enough to own a chateau in Fontainebleu. Bonheuer never married but lived with two women successively. Her first live-in companion was the artist Nathalie Micas.After Micas died in 1889, Bonheur's second companion was the American artist Anna Klumpke who survived Bonheur.
References:
Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits by Frances Borzello, pp.114;. Rosa Bonheur: A Life and an Legend by Dore Ashton and Denise Browne Hare; Women Artists: An Illustrated History by Nancy G. Heller, pp.90-91; Rosa Bonher sa vie, son oeuvre by Anna Klumpke; Disagreeably Hidden: Construction and Constriction of the Lesbian Body in Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, by John Saslow, pp. 187-205.

Marie Bracquemond (1841-1916):Marie Bracquemond was part of the generation of women Impressionists. She was born in Morlaix and was a student of Ingres. Unlike Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot and Eva Gonzalez, Bracquemond has remained the least known of this group of artists. Whitney Chadwick attributes this to Bracquemond's misfortune at neither having the economic nor the cultural support for nurturing her artistic abilities. Like Cassatt and Morisot, Bracquemond's works focus on domestic scenes.
References:
Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits by Frances Borzello, p.207; Women, Art and Society, by Whitney Chadwick, p. 235

Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (1850-1936): Jennie Augusta Brownscombe was born in Pennsylvania and trained at the School of Design for Women of Cooper Union. She was also educated at the Antique and Life Schools of the National Academy of Design, the Art Students League of New York and later in Paris and Brittany. She began her career as an illustrator for magazines such as Scribner's and Harper's Weekly. Through her illustrations on greeting cards and calendars, Brownscombe's work became familiar to a wide public. She is frequently described as the Norman Rockwell of her time for the depictions of everyday domestic scenes that were uniquely American in their themes and regional characterizations.
References:
Women, Art and Society, by Whitney Chadwick, p.228

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926):Mary Cassatt was born in Allegheny City and died in Le Mesnil-Teribus, France in 1926. She began her art studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts but continued in Paris and Rome. She had begun exhibiting her works at the National Academy of Design in Europe as well as in Paris by the 1870's. She settled permanently in Paris in 1874 where she was later joined by her family. Cassatt is the best-known woman artist of the group of Impressionists. She was a close associate of painters such as Manet and Degas whose influnce may be seen in her works. Cassatt has become best-known for her mother and child studies, but she was a versatile artist whose canon of works ranges widely over different genres. She was a muralist--her most notable work being the mural for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition--and etcher.Cassatt's etchings were influenced by Japanese wood block prints that were popular at the time.She was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1904.
References:
Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits by Frances Borzello, p.110; Women, Art and Society, by Whitney Chadwick, pp. 230-235; Women Artists:An Illustrated History, by Nancy G. Heller, pp. 98-99; Mary Cassatt by Griselda Pollock.

Camille Claudel (1864-1943): Camille Claudel's talents emerged from the time she was a child. When she was twelve her father, a well-to-do civil servant, brought her to Nogent-sur-Seine where her works were introduced to Alfred Boucher and Paul Dubois.Both men would become Claudel's teachers and mentors. With their help she was accepted into the Academie Colarossi.Boucher was to move to Italy and his students, including Claudel, were handed over to Rodin.It was during Claudel's years at Rodin's studio that the latter's output was at its highest.Claudel assisted Rodin in the production of masterpieces such as the Gates of Hell and the Burghers of Calais.In their fifteen-year relationship, where she was not only his student but his lover, model and artistic collaborator, Claudel was to refine her technique as well produce her own important pieces. After the end of their relationship, Claudel experienced numerous financial and psychological difficulties. She destroyed most of her work and suffered from depression and a persecution complex. She was institutionalized in 1913 by her family and was to spend the rest of her life in various mental institutions.
References:
Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits by Frances Borzello, p.123; Women, Art and Society, by Whitney Chadwick, pp. 295-296; Women Artists:An Illustrated History by Nancy G. Heller, pp. 106-107; Camille Claudel (1864-1943) by Reine-Marie Paris; Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel by Ellsworth J.A. Schmollgen

Susan Macdowell Eakins (1851-1938): Susan Macdowell Eakins was the daughter of a Philadelphia engraver whose large family included Susan and her sisster Elizabeth. From an early age both Susan and Elizabeth demonstrated their interest in art and they established a studio with the support of their parents.Susan studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where she met and married one of her teachers the artist Thomas Eakins. Although she had a large output of work, Eakin's paintings were never exhibited at a solo exhibition until well over thirty years after her death.
References:
Susan Macdowell Eakins, 1851-1938 by Susan P. Casteras and Seymour Adelman Women Artists:An Illustrated History by Nancy G. Heller, p.102.

Eva Gonzalez (1849-1883) :Eva Gonzalez was the daughter of the novelist Emmanuel Gonzalez, a Frenchman of Spanish descent. She was taught by Charles Chaplin who was also Mary Cassatt's teacher. She met Manet in 1869 and was to become his student,colleague and model.Her paintings reflect Manet's influence but critics note that the Impressionistic style was less influential in Gonzalez's works.Gonzalez exhibited regularly and her paintings were well-received not only in France but in Belgium and England. She died suddenly the year after giving birth to a son at the age of thirty-four.
References:
Women, Art and Society by Whitney Chadwick, pp 235, 238; Women Artists: An Illustrated History by Nancy G. Heller, p. 94; Eva Gonzalez, 1849-1883, Etude critique et catalogue raisonne, by Marie-Caroline Sainsaulieu and Jacques de Mons.

Mary Edmonia Lewis (1845-1879):Mary Edmonia Lewis was the daughter of a Chipewa Indian mother and an African American father. She was educated at Oberlin College. Upon completion of her education, Lewis moved to Boston where she was, in Whitney Chadwick's words,cultivated by the white liberal community. Boston, however, offered no means for training sculptors:women were not permitted to attend anatomy demonstrations and those who aspired to study the human form were given pieces of sculture to copy on their own. Edmonia Lewis was no exception and as far as we know she received no formal training in what would become her forte. As an artist, Lewis insisted on separating her ethnicity from her art.In 1863 she requested that her work not be recognized simply because she was a colored girl. Her subjects were largely non-African Americans and after going to Rome in 1865, her sculptures reflected the influence of Neo-Classicism.
References:
The Ideal Works of Edmonia Lewis by Kirsten Buick in American Art, volume 9, 1995, pp. 5-19; Women, Art and Society by Whitney Chadwick, pp. 28-30; Sharing Traditions:Five Black Artists in the Nineteenth Century by Linda R. Hartigan, National Museum of American Art Catalog, pp. 90-91;

Evelyn Pickering de Morgan (1850-1919): Evelyn Pickering de Morgan was one of the women artists of the Pre-Raphaelite School.She was born into a wealthy family who had hoped she would make a socially prominent marriage.Evelyn, however, aspired to a career in art and she secretly studied art. Her teacher was her uncle the artist John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope. She later attended the Slade School of Art and was able to enjoy a distinguished career. She was married to the potter William de Morgan and was part of the Pre-Raphaelite circle that included Edward Burne-Jones. Morgan's paintings reflect the influence of Jones, but in addition to the Pre-Raphaelite themes and subject, de Morgan also evolved into more allegorical and symbolic themes and subjects. Her painting The Prisoner for instance is a poignant commentary on the status of women during the Victorian and early Edwardian eras.
References:
Women, Art and Society, by Whitney Chadwick, p. 204.

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895): Berthe Morisot was born in Bourges to a well-to-do family devoted to art. Both Berthe and sister Edma studied with several well-known painters, but Berthe was to be most influenced by Corot. She joined the circle of Impressionists and dedicatedly pursued the style and philosophy of Impressionism despite the criticisms that were generally laid on to its adherents.Manet was to become influenced by Morisot as seen in his later works. Morisot herself painted a broad range of subjects.Her paintings include still-life studies, paintings of women in domestic as well as social surroundings, and landscapes.
References:
Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits by Frances Borzello, p.110; Women Artists: An Illustrated History by Nancy G. Heller, pp. 94-95; Berthe Morisot by Anne Higonnet; Berthe Morisot:Impressionist, by Charles F. Stuckey.

Lilla Cabot Perry (1848-1933): Lilla Cabot began to train professionally for an art career only at the age of thirty-six years when she was already married and the mother of three children. In her forty-nine year career between 1884 and 1933, she exhibited in Europe and America, and received a sufficient number of commissions to support her entire family. In 1889, Perry had become acquainted with Monet's work. Her own style underwent a radical transformation during the years she studied in France where she was able to pick up Monet's techniques. Perry was responsible for introducing Impressionism to America:Upon her return from France, she exhibited the works of Monet and other Impressionists in her home. In 1898, Perry moved to Japan where her husband held an academic position. Here, she acquired the characteristics of Japanese art which she was to incorporate into her own work.
References:
Women Artists: An Illustrated History by Nancy G. Heller, pp. 99-100; Lilla Cabot Perry: An American Impressionist by Meredith Martindale

Zinaida Serebryakova(1884-1967):Zinaida Serebryakova was born in Russia and trained unde Alexander Repin at the Tenisheva School. She also studied and exhibited in St. Petersburg, Italy and Paris. Serebryakova is associated with the World of Art Society. She settled in France in 11924 and died in paris in 1967.
References: Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits by Frances Borzello, pp.137-138; Women Artists of Russia's New Age, by M.N.Yablonskaya.

Rebecca Solomon (1832-1886):Rebecca Solomon came from a distinguished London Jewish family of artists.Her brother Abrahan Solomon was an award winning artist from the Royal Academy, and another younger brother Simeon was a member of the Pre-Raphaelites. Simeon's paintings were greatly admired by Burne-Jones and Pater.Rebecca was taught by Abraham and successfully exhibited her paintings between 1852-1869. Tragedy, however, beset all the Solomons:Abraham died young, Simeon's alcoholism as well as the criminal charges that were brought against resulted in his ending his days in a workhouse.Rebecca's alcoholicism became a public scandal and would die insane.
References:
Women, Art and Society by Whitney Chadwick, pp. 177, 185; The Art of Victorian Childhood by Richard O'Neill, p.55;

Marie Spartali Stillman (1844-1927): Marie Stillman was a noted not only for her artistic talent but for her outstanding beauty. She was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite school for whom she often posed. Both Rossetti and Burne-Jones painted her and she was later also a model for the phtographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Stillman trianed with Ford Madox Brown. Her paintings, particularly her watercolours, were often inspired by the Italian poetry such as those by Boccaccio.