She was right. In the intervening years, several Wautier works have been unearthed, including the masterly suite of paintings titled The Five Senses (1650), known previously only by a black-and-white illustration in a 1975 auction catalogue, as well as Flower Garland with a Butterfly (1652). These will be among the 25 works by Wautier going on show at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) in London this month, introducing UK audiences to one of the most important artists of the Baroque period, who until the 21st century was barely an art historical footnote. <\/p>\n
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Wautier\u2019s Flower Garland with a Butterfly (1652) Het Noordbrabants Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch; longterm loan of private collection; Photo: Peter Cox<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is genuinely a rediscovery of the last 20 or 30 years,\u201d says the RA\u2019s curator Julien Domercq. Little is known about the life of Michaelina Wautier though. She is thought to have been born in Mons around 1614 and later lived in Brussels. She had an older brother, Charles, who was also an artist and he is recorded as having trained abroad, possibly in Italy. It may be, therefore, that Wautier too trained abroad, and it is most likely she worked alongside Charles in his studio.<\/p>\n
So little is known about Wautier\u2019s training and development as an artist that it is as though her first history painting appears in 1649 \u201cseemingly out of nowhere\u201d, writes Van der Stighelen in the catalogue. Furthermore, Wautier was unique among known female artists of the period in that she painted all the main genres, from portraits to still-lifes, history paintings to genre scenes.<\/p>\n
During her lifetime Wautier seems to have had some success though. For example, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria owned four of her works. But as the centuries passed following her death in Brussels in 1689, she began to be forgotten. Like other artists of the 17th century, \u201cit seems that her works go out of fashion in the 18th century\u201d, Domercq says. Furthermore, \u201cher works end up being attributed to a whole swathe of male painters\u201d, he adds, even when, on at least one occasion, her name was inscribed on the work.<\/p>\n
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Wautier\u2019s The Triumph of Bacchus (around 1655-59) Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna; Photo: \u00a9 KHM-Museumsverband<\/p>\n
The Triumph of Bacchus (around 1655-59)\u2014the painting that first sparked Stighelen\u2019s interest in Wautier\u2014is a case in point. Over the years Wautier\u2019s 3.5m-wide painting has variously been said to be by the School of Rubens, a copy after Rubens, by Luca Giordano or by Cornelis Schut. In the early 20th century, the curator of Flemish painting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gustav Gl\u00fcck, said: \u201ceven in our age of female emancipation, one would hardly wish to ascribe this picture, which shows a highly vigorous, almost coarse conception, to a woman\u2019s hand.\u201d The painting is on loan from the Kunsthistorisches, where a version<\/a> of this show debuted last year. <\/p>\n Because of the lack of archival material, analysis of Wautier\u2019s painting technique has been especially revealing. For example, a detailed study of The Five Senses showed the presence of a very limited number of pigments in the paintings (which tallies with the colours on Wautier\u2019s palette in Self-portrait, around 1650). Notably, there is no colour blue present, which was expensive at the time, and yet the scarf of the boy playing the flute appears to be painted from that very colour. It was instead achieved \u201cby creating an optical illusion,\u201d Domercq says. \u201cBy using contrasting colours around [the scarf] she is able to make a grey look blue.\u201d<\/p>\n Wautier\u2019s careful use of contrasting colours makes the boy\u2019s scarf in\u00a0Hearing (1650), from the Five Senses series, appear to be blue even though there is no blue pigment in the painting Rose-Marie and Eijk Van Otterloo Collection<\/p>\n Wautier\u2019s skill and handling of paint is what makes her stand out amongst her peers. \u201cWhat defines her from a lot of other people [of the period], including her brother, is a real virtuosic way of painting,\u201d Domercq says. Wautier had \u201ca very free, very assured way\u2014like Rubens, like Van Dyck \u2014of painting something very quickly but the brushwork is just right, it expresses things very clearly\u201d.<\/p>\n Despite this being the biggest show of Wautier\u2019s work, Domercq sees it as another \u201cbrick in the reconstruction of her oeuvre\u201d. Wautier\u2019s dated paintings span only 16 years, from when she was in her late 20s to mid 40s, but she lived into her 70s, so there is the possibility that there are many more paintings waiting to be found. Domercq adds that the hope is that \u201cthe catalogue will be almost obsolete when the show ends, because more works will be discovered.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/964338d7e8a470ff6a556d90035de22bc6bce000-3149x3630.jpg\"\/)
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