The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work

Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch was a landmark of modern feminist writing. Witty, vigorous, incisive, and erudite, it spoke out for women no longer willing to accept a cramped and stereotyped role in a masculine world. Now she extends the argument, focusing on the world of women painters to show how the imposition of traditional social constraints has robbed women in particular, and the world at large, of the chance of excellence. It is an answer to the question: If men and women are equally capable of genius, why has there been no female Leonardo, no Titian, no Poussin?
Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster, Angelica Kauffmann, Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun, Rosa Bonheur, Natalia Goncharova—these women are all acknowledged figures in the history of Western painting. But why are there so few of the first rank? What of the many hundreds of women artists of the last five centuries who were recognized in their own times but are now forgotten? Some were close relatives of the famous—Joshua Reynolds's sister Frances, Anthony van Dyck's daughter Justina, the van Eycks' sister Margarethe—but this protected them no more than others from the barriers thrown up by the demands of family and childbirth, the effects of female submissiveness and erotic entanglement with adored male masters, the distortions of patronizing overpraise, the humiliations of sexual innuendo, the limitations of working on a small, domestic scale, and the oblivion of neglect and misattribution.
During the past decade Germaine Greer traveled throughout Europe and the United States collecting material for The Obstacle Race, to the point of searching museum cellars and storerooms for the ignored and abandoned works of important or interesting women painters. Now, with the same blend of wit, passion, and insight that turned The Female Eunuch into an international best seller, she describes the barriers and frustrations that for so long blocked the way to the acceptance of women painters as artists in their own right—both by the male world and by themselves. Germaine Greer's clarity of vision, reasoned argument, and scholarly erudition will undoubtedly make this the definitive book on the subject.