Home > Michaelina Wautier at the Royal Academy (Social Evening)
Michaelina Wautier at the Royal Academy (Social Evening)
Join fellow ABS members to discover the remarkable world of Michaelina Wautier.
M. WAUTIER @ ROYAL ACADEMY
A first encounter with a 17th century trailblazer, this exhibition puts Michaelina Wautier (Mons 1604 – Brussels 1689), an outstanding lost artist, back in her rightful place as one of Europe's most important artists and establishes her as the greatest artistic rediscovery of the century. The reconstruction of her oeuvre over the last two decades has fundamentally altered our understanding of the 17th century Southern Netherlands Baroque, although such exceptional range and level of ambition was rarely accessible to women then.
Although hugely successful at the time, her breathtaking paintings and her place in art history were almost lost in the 18th century and often misattributed to her male peers for 300 years. Ascribing such pictures of vigorous and almost coarse conception to a woman's hand was hardly imaginable and it was eventually put in storage!
Welcoming the current international exhibition organised by the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, the Royal Academy makes the most powerful case for connaisseurship: the identification of artistic auteurship by recognising a characteristic painterly "feel". Auction houses and galleries tend to favour the safer conclusions of science and scholarship – but these are, however, nothing without the former, nonetheless unquantifiable, feel. In this case that of the remarkable Belgian art historian Katlijne Van der Stighelen.
Wautier's unearthing by chance and coincidence is a huge privilege, from practically non-existent to conjuring an entirely new person...
If you want, I can also produce a lightly polished version that keeps your structure but improves grammar and flow while still staying very close to your original wording.
Dinner will be organised after the visit in a nearby restaurant at own expense.
Gathering a few minutes before 7pm (timed entry tickets 7pm) at Burlington House (accessible from Piccadilly).
Booking before 6 May (non‑refundable after 6 May).